Cast: Khalid Abdalla, Homayon Ershadi, Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada, Zekeria Ebrahimi

Director: Marc Foster

Running time: 2 hrs 8 mins

Genre: Drama/Adaptation


REVIEW:

Ever since Bush landed blows on the Middle East, Hollywood has been unhesitatingly pouring greenlight on films that could mirror the grim condition. And since then, stories that involve racial issues are hot-buttons of award races. However, THE KITE RUNNER, based on the globally-loved novel of Khaled Hosseini of the same name, isn’t about different races clashing with each other. Set against the backdrop of the troubled nation of Afghanistan, here is a story about a contradiction of a race with its own: an Afghan man, whom as a child had committed an act of cowardice, forced to face the ghosts of his guilt from turning down his best friend of his own blood – if you read between the lines, this doesn’t say America sending missiles, or militants killing each other. It’s a one-man odyssey in understanding the pathos of his own race, while trying to face his own country’s misery by proving that “there’s still a way to be good again.”

The film begins on a formulaic setting, on a sad note: novelist Amir (Khalid Abdalla) looks longingly at his finished novel circa 2000, San Francisco, and he receives a call from his home country that tells him he should go back.

Expectedly, this was the movie’s method to start telling the story by plunging back into the past and showing us the events that explains “why”. Albeit used effectively, it’s probably used a thousand times before.

It was Kabul, 1978, and young Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi), born to a rich businessman, and best friend Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada), a lower-class “Hazara” Afghan of the same race but of a different tribe, are kite-flying prodigies; the latter, superior in skill, triumphs in kite-duelling, while the former sulks in the shadow of his friend. Amir is interested in stories and books, while his own father is telling him to have more “spine” like his best friend. In the film’s best part, this is a type of childhood told in a way of sheer, vivid imagery. The kite-flying scenes are as gripping, as fantastic as its CGI-assisted kites, also showing us the art of flying kites, with children moving on rooftops as though they were dancing in a rhythm. Freedom could be inhaled in the air, and seen through the soaring of kites – but it all ends in a devastating gloom as Hassan is raped by a hooligan, all witnessed by Amir yet couldn’t gather his courage to stop it.

It was a happening that was set to change the rest of their lives.

There are many conflicts in the film, but they are too neatly tucked away into a corner and instead show in the surface the boiling story of loyalty, friendship, family, and well, atonement, to redeem what was lost and what was wrongly done in the past. Amir, as an adult, goes back to his torn country by Afghan rebels, the country he considered home before, to save one child that was Hassan’s son. The ethical message of this film glows like a burning torch in darkness.

Heavy as it is, it tackles subject matters that could be very delicate to handle, but Marc Foster, after his glorious pieces of FINDING NEVERLAND, MONSTER’S BALL, and STRANGER THAN FICTION, holds THE KITE RUNNER with strong threads. His visceral landscape photography captures Afghanistan in a haunting echo, and although he irons the complexity of the tale in neat folds, it doesn’t wander away from its focus subjects. It even shows an excellent, honest, pivotal scene in a football stadium where a couple was stoned to death – one scene that was courageous enough to be shown. One good move was its casting, as this film is powered by terrific, unknown actors. This time, the kids’ performances by Ebrahimi and Mahmidzada are exceptionally convincing, but thanks to Abdalla as he holds Amir with dignity and justice.

VERDICT:

Literally soaked-up with melodrama and all-too-idealistic portrait of a redeeming central character, THE KITE RUNNER bathes in an intention of goodness. Yet it’s also a moving story of humanity, heart-aching and convincing. This film, in its entirety, might not have soared but it’s the performances that take flight.


RATING: A-