The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini's best-seller arrives on the big screen just in time for Oscar season - and has already been rewarded with two Golden Globe nominations.
It's a middling effort overall, although it has some good passages and points of interest. I haven't read the novel, but apparently this is a reasonably faithful condensation, with a few shortcuts towards the end. Most of the book's fans seem satisfied, but that's not necessarily a good sign for anybody else. Seeing the movie persuaded me not to bother with the novel.
Most of the first hour plays out (in Dari and Pashtu) in an uninterrupted flashback to Kabul in 1978. Amir (played as a boy by Zekeria Ebrahimi) is the privileged son of a well-to-do but outspoken father, Baba (Homayoun Ershadi) an intellectual who is openly contemptuous of the mullahs. Amir's best friend is Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), the son of Ali, the family servant.
While Amir is bookish and a bit of a coward, Hassan is so devoted he bravely stands up to the local bullies and takes the blows his friend runs away from. And quotes The Magnificent Seven while he does it. Kabul is a poor Third World city, and there are palpable social and religious tensions, but it's also possible to have fun, throw a party, watch a western movie or fly a kite.
Amir, like his father, is a gifted practitioner of this sport, which in the aggressive Afghan version involves cutting up your opponents to slice through their string with yours. The last kite still flying is the winner. Hassan helps his friend by running after the loose kites - spoils for the victor - and he has an unerring instinct for guessing where they'll land.
Tragically, one day Hassan is cornered by local bullies led by Assef, who rapes him - a shocking turn of events which has necessitated the emigration of the child actors involved, and which might strike some as gratuitous. It's discreetly shot, but only exists to traumatize poor Amir, spying and suffering in the shadows.
He feels so guilty afterwards he spurns his friend and frames him for theft. Shortly afterwards, he and his father flee to America when the Soviets invade.
The film fast-forwards to the late 80s. Amir (now played by Khalid Abdalli) is a young writer trying to get published. He lives with Baba, who now works as a gas station attendant and is showing his age.
The wind goes right out of the movie's sails at this point. There's a romance with another immigrant, a general's daughter. There's the old man's illness. There's culture clash, Tradition battering heads with the New World. It's nicely acted - especially by Ershadi (The Taste Of Cherry) - but none of this is as interesting as what has come before, and frankly I'd rather have stayed with Hassan, whose struggles must have been ten times more dramatic. The movie is frank about the Amir's cowardice, but seems oblivious to the author's solipsism and vanity.
Eventually Amir gets a call that draws him back to his homeland, the year before the September 11 attack. His excursion into Taliban territory is vicious and terrible, but at last he has a chance to redeem himself.
Directed by the versatile - and variable - Marc Forster (whose CV includes Monster's Ball; Finding Neverland; Stranger than Fiction and the next Bond movie), and adapted by David Benioff (The 25th Hour), The Kite Runner acknowledges personal guilt but only to expiate it in risibly melodramatic fashion.
It's a real achievement to make anyone feel sorry for the Taliban, but this manipulative movie paints them not as vicious religious zealots - which would certainly seem justified - but as hypocritical pederasts - which may not be.
Forster scarcely engages with religion or politics. There's one strong scene when Amir is castigated for his arrogance by a man running an orphanage, but that's about it.
Almost everything that's interesting about the film is in the background: the recreation of Kabul in comparatively peaceful times; the landscapes (actually China, but an effective stand-in all the same); later, a horrific stoning, the half time entertainment at a football game.
Then there are the kites, which are pretty enough, but evidently computer generated. I'm intrigued to know how Afghan strings slice through each other in the way they're shown to here - cat gut? - and couldn't help feeling sorry for the innocent American kite flyer who gets the same treatment. In any case, I wish Forster would've stopped pulling our strings for a minute. This sentimental treatment risks trivializing a situation that needs understanding as much as it needs sympathy.
Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com
December 20, 2007
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