Producer Michael London was equally impressed with the screenplay. “You don’t often read a script that makes you say, ‘I have to produce this movie,’” he states. “I remember that by the time I put it down, I felt—like many of the people who ultimately took part in the movie—compelled to raise my hand and say, ‘I need to be involved in this.’ Every bone in my body was deeply affected by the story.”
London offers, “I think what the two central characters are after is something very fundamental: a home—literally a house and also figuratively a place to live and have a family—which Kathy has lost and Behrani is trying to hold on to. The thing these people are battling over is not cerebral, it’s not abstract, it’s very personal. Another thing I found so rich about the story is that you care about both of these people. There is no clear right and wrong. You believe that Kathy has been unfairly dislodged from her home, but you also become invested in Behrani’s struggle and his desire to give his family a better life. It defies any easy answers, and I believe that is where the ‘page-turner’ aspect of the movie kicks in.”
“One of the most important things I tried to achieve with this film is for people to root for Kathy and Behrani equally,” Perelman expounds. “They are both flawed people, but they both want something noble in a way. They don’t understand each other, though, and that is what will ultimately destroy them.”
Dubus agrees, “Their desires work against them. I think they both want this house so badly, it blinds them to the other’s motives. They prejudge each other terribly, the way, unfortunately, we tend to do with people from different classes and cultural backgrounds. When that’s the case, we are in dangerous territory.”
With a screenplay in hand, Perelman turned to casting the movie, beginning with the role of Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani. His first and only choice for the role was Ben Kingsley, but he soon learned that the book’s author was way ahead of him—or rather, the author’s wife, Fontaine Dubus, was. Perelman relates, “When I first contacted him about playing the part of Behrani, he told me he’d already read it. I asked, ‘You’ve read the script?’ and he said, ‘No, I read the book. Andre’s wife sent it to me right after it was published.”
Kingsley picks up the story. “She had taken it upon herself to send me the book with a very charming cover letter saying that her husband had written Behrani with a silhouette very similar to mine in mind. Not to say that he wrote it for me or about me, but that he used me as a kind of benchmark, if I may.
“I loved the book,” Kingsley continues, “and then, months later, Vadim sent me his beautiful screenplay. I felt Behrani was a man with whom I could empathize. I wanted to tell this man’s story. I was curious about his degree of commitment and his ability to endure loss and even humiliation in order to be the patriarch he feels he was born to be.”
“Ben was meant to play the role of Behrani; no one else could have even come close,” Perelman states. “Ben is the center, the rock of the movie. He is a great man as well as a brilliant actor…intuitive and wonderfully generous. I did not have to direct him because he didn’t need any direction; he simply embodied the character. Ben has a very regal bearing about him and a very proud demeanor, which was ideal for Behrani, who is proud, almost to a fault. Behrani has to work two menial jobs, which is demeaning to his core, but he will never show it. Even working on a road crew or at a convenience store, he carries himself like the Colonel he once was.”
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