Salon.com > Erika Milvy

The “Kite Runner” controversy

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 13:00:00 +0000

In March 2001, Khaled Hosseini started writing "The Kite Runner," his semiautobiographical saga about coming of age in Afghanistan and coming to America after the Soviet invasion -- and returning to Afghanistan after the rise of the Taliban.

Six months into his work on the book, the events of 9/11 occurred. The times were cataclysmic, but for Hosseini, a practicing physician with an unpublished manuscript, the timing was propitious.

It was the year many Americans first learned where Kabul, the country's capital, was and who the Taliban were. To a great extent, Americans had pictured Afghanistan as a land of cave-dwelling terrorists. "The Kite Runner," which became an international bestseller -- translated into 40 languages, it has sold 8 million copies worldwide -- helped fill in that very rudimentary picture. The book has served to bridge the cultural divide and surmount headlines with its story of a young boy contending with political and personal turmoil.

Bud Cort

Sat, 04 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Many a first date has been given an adrenaline boost as soon as each member of the dubious couple discovers that "Harold and Maude" is the other's favorite film. More meaningful than merely cultpopular, "Harold and Maude" was a spiritual experience to many an earnest college kid who thrilled to its anti-establishment, devil-may-care spirit and its macabre sensibility, set to the tune of Cat Stevens' glorious soundtrack.

Gloomy, ashen and nearly necrophiliac, the 20-year-old Harold Chasen, played with comic catatonia by Bud Cort, is addicted to committing suicide. Then he meets a feisty, vital septuagenarian named Maude. Under Maude's sexualized tutelage, Harold learns to embrace life. Following her groove, Harold learns to heed Stevens' do-your-own-thing musical creed: "If you want to sing out sing out/And if you want to be free be free/'Cause there's a million ways to be/You know that there are."

Movie Interview: “I wanted to make a beautiful movie”

Fri, 30 Oct 1998 17:12:00 +0000

Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos may have taken home the Palme d'Or from Cannes last spring for his drama "Eternity and a Day," but it was Italian comic Roberto Benigni who stole hearts and headlines with "Life Is Beautiful." An unlikely comedy about a father's struggle to protect his son from the horrors of the Holocaust, "Life Is Beautiful" swept the Italian version of the Oscars as well, winning eight out of 15 David di Donatello Awards -- three of which went to Benigni himself for best film, best director and best actor.

Though Benigni had already challenged people's notion of what is acceptable comic subject matter by making "The Monster" (1994), a comedy about female dismemberment, "Life Is Beautiful" has created a much greater controversy. During the press conference at Cannes, one French journalist stood up to accuse Benigni of mocking the victims of the Holocaust, declaring that he was "scandalized" by the picture. A reporter from the International Herald Tribune vocalized that she "loathed this film," and the London Guardian wrote that it is "a hopelessly inadequate memorial to the vile events of the Holocaust." And yet, in July, Israel honored Benigni, inviting him to screen the film at the Jerusalem Film Festival, where Jerusalem's mayor awarded Benigni with a special commendation for "furthering the universal understanding of Jewish history."