7th writing- A film review – The kite Runner

The Kite Runner is a 2007 film directed by Marc Forster and based on the book of the same name by Khaled Hosseini, which was published in Britain in 2003 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. I could not compare this film with others by the same director, because he is totally unknown to me.

This is the story of Amir, an Afghan man who explains his experience of life in Afghanistan and how he fled the country after the Soviet invasion. He also tells his change of status in Fremont, California, his trip to Afghanistan to retrieve Hassan's son and his return to America.

The film begins in San Francisco, where Amir lives with his wife Soraya. They are unpacking the first copies of his first book "A Season for Ashes", which has been sent by his producer and suddenly he receives an intriguing call from his father's old friend, Rahim Khan.

The film is a coming and going between past and present. It recalls Amir’s childhood and his experiences with his father, Agha Sahib, with his servant Ali and Ali’s son, Hassan. We could be part of the story of a complicated life, his sense of desolation and distance from his father became hurtful. His past is a time in which Amir is torn between his weaknesses in front of other boys their age and his fortune to have a strong and famous father, but who does not pay him much attention. Amir fills his life with his love of reading and writing, the adventures with Hassan, with whom he has grown and shared games. Rahim Khan also has an important role in his environment. He is a partner and friend of his father who supported Amir’s love for writing and listened to him when Agha Sahib was deaf.

This childhood is shattered by two events that marked Amir for ever; he and Hassan won a renowned winter kite tournament in Kabul, but the end of the day is bloody. Hassan is raped by Assef, a tortuous, violent youngster, and Amir witnesses the fact and does not intervene to save his friend Hassan. This secret is the trigger of his guilt.

The coup in Afghanistan and the subsequent Soviet invasion are the reasons for his trip to America. He and his father try to lead a simple life and to carve out a future for themselves in a country with different customs and where they were initially welcomed with suspicion.

In Fremont he met his wife, Soraya, with whom Amir gets married after following the strict Afghan’s rules of courtship. In Fremont also his father died. After receiving the call from Rahim Khan Amir decides to return to Kabul. On this trip back to his country, through Pakistan, the memories haunt him. The experiences and the reality of his country at war and under the power of the Taliban scare him again. He returned to Afghanistan and to his past to rescue the son of Hassan, Sohrab, from the hands of the Taliban, and he does it even if it costs him having to face one of his ghosts, Assef, again.

I loved the photography and music that accompany this stark story. They exceptionally involve the complicated atmosphere that floats throughout the film. The actors align themselves with shocking reality, they seem to be very implicated and make you part of the sensations; pain, jealousy, hope and fear are obvious. The plot is devastating, vivid and compelling and you find yourself in the story of Amir, even though this is not your intention.

I recommend this film but only if you like drama, it is not a funny story. Although, as it happens to me, whenever I see a movie based on a book I have read, I warn you that if you are planning to read the book, you had better to see the movie first and enjoy the book afterwards. And why do I make this recommendation? Because movies always run faster, they jump over details that have drawn your attention in the written story and that do not appear on the screen.

In this film an example of these missing details is Hassan's cleft lip, which in the book is the subject of an unexpected birthday gift for the young Hassan and a scar on Amir's memory when he goes to Kabul to rescue Sohrab. Nothing is told in the film about Sohrab's suicide attempt, the complications that Amir has to recover himself from the beating after the rescue, the difficulties to get the boy out of the country. And there's a scene, the flight of Amir from Assef's house after receiving a brutal beating, which reflects the situation of the escape in a totally opposite way as it is explained in the book, in which incidentally it is much more credible.

I must also note that if you have thought that the movie is hard, then you should better not read the book, since it is far more explicit in some scenes, such as the one of the rape, and it may even hurt feelings. This scene is softened in the movie, like others of a violent nature that do not reflect accurately what the book says.