The Kite Runner: tear-jerker with weak plot and unappealing hero

Marc Forster, “The Kite Runner” (2006)

Based on a best-selling novel by Afghan writer Khaled Hosseini, this is a picturesque film of childhood friendship that for a brief time transcends class and ethnic barriers but is torn apart permanently by rape, politics and war. The two young friends are Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi) and Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada) who spend time together playing kites and reading stories in an idyllic pre-1979 Afghanistan. Amir is an only child who lives with his stern upper-class father or Baba (Homayoun Ershadi) in a large house and Hassan is the son of Baba’s servant Ali. Early scenes of Kabul (actually Kashgar in western China) are very picturesque with stunning blue skies and mountain scenery which set off the colourful kite-fighting scenes perfectly. Unfortunately the boys run into a gang of teenagers led by Assef (Elham Ehsas) who reminds the two that they are ethnically separate and prepares to attack Amir for associating with Hassan; Hassan prepares to defend Amir and Assef backs off. Not for long though – the next time the boys run into Assef and his lot is during a kite-fighting festival with Hassan running after Amir’s winning kite and into Assef’s clutches. Assef rapes the boy and Amir looks on, unseen, but becomes filled with guilt for not defending Hassan the way Hassan would if he’d been attacked. Because of his guilt, Amir frames Hassan as a thief; Hassan confesses to protect Amir and Baba, perhaps understanding Hassan’s motive, forgives the boy. Ali decides to leave Baba’s employ out of shame at what the child has supposedly done and takes Hassan with him.

Soon after the Soviets invade Afghanistan and Baba, having long been critical of Communism, takes Amir and flees the country. While crossing the border, Baba, Amir and some refugees are accosted by Soviet soldiers who threaten to rape a female refugee. Baba risks his life defending the woman’s honour and the soldiers back down. Baba and Amir eventually end up in the United States where they are holed up in a tiny apartment and Baba takes a job as an attendant at a petrol station. The years pass and Amir (Khalid Abdalla) achieves his ambition of becoming a writer and marries Soraya (Atossa Leoni), the daughter of a former Afghan general.

Not longer after Baba dies, at least in the film anyway, an old friend of Baba’s, Rahim Khan (Shaun Toub), who has long known of Amir’s difficult relationship with his dad, contacts Amir to come to Pakistan where he tells Amir of what befell Hassan and Ali after the Soviet invasion and then after the warlord period and the Taliban’s ascent to power, and reveals a secret about Hassan’s paternity. Amir goes to Kabul to find Hassan’s son Sohrab (Ali Danish Bakhtiyari) and discovers the child being used as a dancing boy by a Taliban official who is none other than his old childhood nemesis Assef (Abdul Salaam Yusoufzai). In a slapstick scene, Assef beats up Amir and Sohrab defends Amir; the two then escape Assef and Amir takes Sohrab back to the United States where he and Atossa adopt him.

The first pre-1980’s half of the film is not bad with the emphasis on the two small boys who share a close bond and look as though they were made to be pals. The kite-flying scenes, enhanced with CGI technology, can be spectacular though they wear very thin on plausibility. Ershadi as Baba strikes a fine balance between being stern, austere and patriarchal on the one hand, and being a man of integrity and loving father on the other. One feels for Baba when he has to take a low-paying, low-status job once the father and son are safe in America but Baba retains his quiet dignity right to his dying day. Once Ershadi’s out of the way, the film becomes seriously unhinged and degenerates into Hollywood B-grade action-thriller mode. The scenes where Amir, with the help of his guide Farid, finds and rescues Sohrab are beyond farce: they re-enact Amir’s first meeting with Assef when both were children and Hassan then threatened to hit Assef with his slingshot if he hurt Amir. Except this time Assef doesn’t back off and the spirit of Hassan in Sohrab carries out the slingshot threat. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry for the film’s integrity, and cheering for Amir and Sohrab was out of the question. I know that, to paraphrase Anton Chekhov, if a slingshot is presented early on, it has to be used later in the drama but Chekhov didn’t have a whole scene re-enactment in mind, much less the weapon as heirloom. Freudian psychoanalysts watching “The Kite Runner” will be having a field day analysing this film and pronouncing that someone’s imagination has gone into Moebius-strip overdrive.

The major problem with the film is not so much what happens once Baba is out of the way but with the development of Amir’s character as he grows up. The film establishes early on that Amir lacks moral fortitude and maintains Amir’s character weakness right up to the rescue scene. Opportunities for Amir to grow up morally during his teenage years are missed: the film could have featured a scene or two where Baba is treated badly or discriminated against and Amir, remembering his father’s defence of the refugee woman and the danger he put himself in, defends him in turn. At least by the time Amir graduates from college, we might see the beginnings of someone with a moral backbone, someone ready to be tested. Unfortunately the film persists in giving Amir an unchanging character so he ends up a rather unremarkable novelist and not really the kind of heroic man who’d travel all the way to Kabul just to rescue some unknown kid related to someone he’s probably tried to forget over the years.

I found the happy ending of Amir teaching Sohrab how to fly kites smug and not at all satisfying. Now that they’re father and son and Amir has “atoned” for his sins against Hassan, he, Sohrab and Soraya can sink into middle-class happy-family complacency and presumably forget all about Afghanistan. This points to another big problem with the film: that much of what happens in “The Kite Runner” is presented in a way that makes no attempt to relate the plot’s twists and turns to their specific political and cultural context. The second half of the film in which Amir travels back to Kabul fits into a pre-determined template about rescuing an innocent from a hell and the hero somehow becoming blessed or excused for past wrongs by doing so. The Taliban simply appear in the second half of the film and hey-ho Assef turns up as a card-carrying member. Nothing to say how the Taliban and Assef found each other and why they should be a perfect fit other than they’re just “bad”. There’s no background information as to how the Soviets left Afghanistan and how the Taliban became top dogs, necessitating Sohrab’s rescue: anything that might suggest the United States or anyone else had anything to do with the Taliban’s rise to power is avoided.

With a plot that falls into an infantile good-versus-evil scenario and the main character lacking appeal due to a script that doesn’t encourage his moral development, the film wastes a good cast and good locations and turns into just a tear-jerker about a broken friendship that must be repaired somehow. An opportunity to educate the public a little about the plight of orphans in Afghanistan and the political and social developments in that country since 1979 is missed. The film didn’t inspire me to find the book to read.

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