Review of “The Kite Runner”
Amongst the global clash of religious and social systems and the local clash of class systems, the ordinary people of the world – fathers and sons, boys and their best friends – try to find a daily life of comfort and continue their own rituals and rhythms in peace. Wrapping all these levels of storytelling together in one tale is the lofty ambition of The Kite Runner, a story about a young boy growing up in Kabul during the period when firstly the Russians, and then the Taliban took control of the proud and traditional country we know as Afghanistan.
For the most part - at least for the first half - the film succeeds in its bold intentions, introducing us to Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi) – only son of a wealthy and privileged Afghan family - and Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada) son of the family servant. The two boys are best friends and fly kites together, but their innocent friendship is constantly threatened by the status attached to their families – Amir is from the ruling Pashtun people and Hassan from the oppressed Hazara. When Russian tanks roll into Kabul, lives are changed forever, and so too is the feel of the film. We move forward to an older Amir, now in America, dealing with secrets and skeletons about his childhood days. Perhaps reflecting Amir’s new home in California, the storytelling in the second half of the film becomes more extravagant, romanticised, and in places just downright unbelievable.
Swiss Director Marc Foster has brought us some wonderfully structured films over the years (Stranger Than Fiction & Monster’s Ball) but he doesn’t quite reign in the difficulties of David Benioff’s screen adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s best selling novel. It’s clearly an epic tale, layered with stories within stories, and the film is much more grounded in its home territory of scruffy boys working the beautiful ballet of kite flying than it is in all-action antics of skirmishes with the Taliban.
Having said all that, this film is all about story and there’s much to enjoy there – it keeps rolling on like life itself. The performances of the two boys at the heart of the story are wonderful, only surpassed by Homayoun Ershadi as Amir’s father Baba, who finds – for his most crucial character - that delicate and human space between pride and a fall. For those concerned about language, the dialogue is mostly in English, with a few subtitled scenes.
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