Today I watched a beautiful movie called “The Kite Runner” based on the popular novel by the same name authored by Khaled Hosseini. The story, which is somewhat autobiographical, “floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee” without mincing words. I wonder what it is in mankind that sheds a tear for the loss of another. Is it the same mankind or another-kind that rapes and plunders everything around it? Undeniably we all have in us that dark, perverted animal that sleeps somewhere deep inside. For some unfortunately this animal roams freely, controlling their thoughts and actions.
The Kite Runner is a story of such pure love on one hand, and violent hatred on the other. The ugly and oppressive regime of the Taliban is portrayed by bodies hung by the roadside, women stoned in public in a stadium, and men and children without limbs. When a guard checks the protagonist Amir for weapons and tells his companions that he has a soft body you feel your bile rising. There are many such moments when you find yourself writhing and rejoicing in the destinies of the characters. This in my opinion is the mark of a great movie, which The Kite Runner undeniably is.
This brings us back to the stark realities in Afghanistan. When a country is banned from movies, television, videos, music, dancing, hanging pictures in homes, clapping hands, equipments that produce music, statues, pictures, you cannot blame the country’s people for watching public executions in soccer stadiums. This does not have to do with Islam. This has to do with human nature.
1 comment:
To witness the downfall of humanity in humans we need not watch movies today. Though movies do recapture and remind us that its happening. I sometimes feel that movies also exaggerate the enormity of the conditions potrayed. The Pianist disturbed me last time when I watched it. As m trying to close gaps with humanity within me m getting scared that such disturbances might prove to be adverse for me. Tryin to avoid those movies for the time being...
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