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THE KITE RUNNER Send This Review to a Friend
Khaled Hosseini’s popular novel has been adapted for the screen by writer David Benioff and director Marc Forster, and the result is a charming, often moving film that stands on its own. Book comparisons aside, “The Kite Runner” invokes memories of life in Afghanistan and transports us back there for a dramatic situation and harrowing rescue.
It is a story of friendship, betrayal and the desire to make amends. With Roberto Schaefer’s cinematography and a rich score by Alberto Iglesias, the film has a novelistic texture that takes what is basically an intimate story and tells it on a grand scale.
The film is from the perspective of the grown up Amir (Khalid Abdalla), with flashbacks into childhood when Amir had a boyhood pal, Hassan, the son of an employee of Amir’s father. Amir is infected with the idea of Hassan’s inferiority, and he cowers instead of trying to help his young friend when Hassan is attacked by bullies. The guilt he feels but suppresses stays with him. His father has been a stickler for values and berates his son for adopting false ones instilled by prejudicial local attitudes, and the father, played stalwartly by Homayoun Ershadi, demonstrates his bravery by saving a woman from rape by invading Russians.
The kite imagery is there early on as the boys are inspired to participate in kite-flying contests, and such scenes are filmed quite beautifully.
The key dramatic events occur later when the grown Amir returns to Afghanistan to rescue the son of Hassan in the frightening atmosphere of control by the bearded fundamentalist militants empowered in the wake of the Russian defeat.
One can expect in a film like this that when all is done, and the grown Amir now can care for Hassan’s rescued son, they will most certainly be flying kites in new, safe surroundings. That they do. It is a lyrical if clichéd touch that affixes a gentle ending to what has been a sweeping personal saga. A Paramount Vantage release.
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