The Kite Runner

Afghanistan -- hardly the locale to choose if you're aiming at commercial success in movies, one would think. But, just as happened when the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini debuted, perhaps quality will count for something: a runaway best-seller becomes a movie blockbuster -- even with Afghani-subtitled dialogue. Certainly, Marc Forster's direction could hardly be more masterful. (Previous efforts of his, including Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland -- which received the 2004 NBR best film award -- and Stranger Than Fiction, suggest the range of talent that may have attracted the producers to him.)

In this tale of intense youthful friendship between two boys in 1970's Kabul, its betrayal because of family and class conflicts, and its playing out over three decades between the United States and Afghanistan (actually filmed in China's western province abutting Afghanistan), the panorama of human emotion is set against the ghastly Soviet intervention, the internecine Taliban insurrection, and their aftermath over a vast physical and psychological stage. Young Amir (Zekiria Ebrahami), son of a prosperous father, is brought up with young Hasson (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), son of his father's servant, who in turn had been brought up as a companion to Amir's father, Baba (Homayoun Ershadi). After a triumphant day of kite flying, an enduring custom and contest in Kabul, after which Amir wins -- with Hasson's essential help -- and uncharacteristically pleases Baba, there occurs an incident of sexual violence against Hasson, a lower-class servant, not a Pashtun, in which Amir does not intervene. The inner shame of this flames first in Amir's renunciation of friendship with Hasson and then during decades of guilt for Amir over his cowardice and betrayal, realized most fully after his and Baba's flight from the Taliban to America. When twenty years later he is informed that Hasson is dead but has left a son behind, he decides -- despite a recent marriage-- that he must right a wrong and rescue the boy by going to Kabul. This plays out against a frightening Taliban background, and Amir discovers that Hasson had been another son of Baba, i. e., his half-brother. Thus he is rescuing his nephew.

Marc Forster handles the high drama of the rescue as well as he handles the electric emotions of the grown Amir (Khaled Adballa, one of the terrorists in Flight 93) and the nephew, Sohrab (Ali Danesh Bahktyari). He has the inestimable help of a taut, character-driven, credibly dialogued script by David Benioff (Troy), which has made only the necessary emendations and elisions from the novel. And the extensive use of extraordinary non-actors (including the three young boys) provides a vital, breathing authenticity that ironically (or not) emphasizes the universal in the story. This is certainly not to deny the talent of Mr. Adballa, who unhistrionically underscores the anguish of the grown Amir as he remembers and expiates his past sins. He seems to speak for us all.

                                                              Howard Buck