MAKING THIS ‘KITE’ FLY

SCAN the list of films directed by Marc Forster and it quickly becomes evident that he has pulled off something of note in today’s Hollywood: He has defied stereotyping.

His first film was “Everything Put Together,” the story of a young mother who loses her 1-day-old baby. Then came “Monster’s Ball,” a searing, racially tinged drama that won Halle Berry an Oscar, followed by the period biographical film “Finding Neverland,” which earned Johnny Depp an Oscar nomination. Throw in one artsy mystery and Will Ferrell playing against type in “Stranger Than Fiction” and it’s a real grab bag. And now, his newest film, “The Kite Runner,” based on Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestselling novel set against the backdrop of war-torn Afghanistan, adds another layer of texture.

Oh, wait, did we mention that his next assignment will be a big-budget action film? James Bond, anyone?

“I feel very fortunate,” the tall, soft-spoken Forster replies when asked how he has pulled off this feat. “I try to do the best I can.”

Born in Germany and raised in Switzerland, he has been working in Hollywood long enough not to be thought of as a European director. Forster’s view of the world remains distinctly global.

“I think probably in Europe, educationally, you have a wider perspective of the world internationally because the countries are relatively small,” he said. “Especially in Switzerland, where I grew up. You study the world and other cultures. I think in America, mainly, a lot of education is more about America.”

Ask Forster if there is a style to his directing and he shakes his head. “No. I think usually the story dictates the style, how one should tell a story.”

For “The Kite Runner,” Forster certainly had a popular story to tap into but there were cinematic minefields along the way. One was that he accurately depict the people of Afghanistan and their turbulent recent history, from the Russian invasion in the late 1970s to the rise of the Taliban two decades later. He also had to film in a remote corner of western China, just across from Afghanistan, since the Afghan capital of Kabul was too war-ravaged to re-create the city as it was in 1978 and because Afghanistan still lacks the infrastructure for making a major film. Then there was the tricky issue of doing justice to Hosseini’s enormously popular novel.

FORSTER managed to hurdle the first two obstacles but says he quickly learned what true pressure is while dealing with fans of the book. Seated in a room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills recently, Forster rose from his chair and suddenly, the mild-mannered Swiss became animated. You don’t know what pressure is until you make a movie out of “a book that sold 8 million copies and everybody tells you, ‘My wife is in this book club; it’s her favorite book. Don’t mess it up!’ ‘What did you take out of the book? We’re going to boycott the movie if everything isn’t like it was in the novel!’ ”

A moment later, Forster sat back in his chair. “You know,” he said, “the thing that made me happy was that the author loved the movie. I felt I captured the spirit of the book. I felt if he is happy, I’m happy. If other people don’t like that, so be it.”

Still, controversy of another sort blindsided Forster and officials at distributor Paramount Vantage when concerns were raised that a child rape scene in the movie might stir up cultural tensions in Afghanistan because it plays on stereotypes of Afghan ethnic groups, pitting a Pashtun bully against a lower-class ethnic Hazara boy. As a result, the studio delayed releasing the film from Nov. 2 to Dec. 14 and, out of concern for the boys’ safety, Paramount gave the child actors the chance to temporarily come to America after their school year ends to avoid any possible ramifications should a pirated version of the film be shown in Afghanistan.

Forster said he was surprised by the controversy, since the rape scene is not graphic and the boys’ parents were aware of the story line. “It was discussed [with the parents] many times,” Forster said. The boy’s body was never exposed, Forster says -- “it was never an issue” -- because he had always envisioned the rape scene as being more “impressionistic” than graphic because he wanted the movie to be rated PG-13.

“On the set, I met the father when he arrived in China,” Forster recalled. “I rehearsed the scene twice with the boy. Even on the day we shot the scene, afterward, we were such a family. Everybody got along and we had a very positive experience.”

The rape scene was essential to the story, he pointed out. “The rape, I think, is symbolic for what happened to Afghanistan by the Russians,” Forster said. And the character of Amir, who watches his friend being assaulted in a Kabul alley and fails to come to his rescue, “represents the world not doing anything” after the Russians invaded Afghanistan three decades ago, Forster said.

robert.welkos@latimes.com