[LMS] The kite runner

The kite runner, by Mark Forster (USA 2007)


There is both good and bad to say about this movie that tells a story of betrayal of a friendship and subsequent partial reparation. For the records, it is based on a novel (of the same name) by the Afghan American author Khaled Hosseini.

Briefly, and without too many spoilers, it is about the friendship between to children in Kabul, before the russian invasion; one of the two (Amir)is the son of a rich businessman, the other (Hassan) is the son of one the men at the service of the businessman.

It is, obviously, the rich kid that betrays the poor one. This is maybe a bit of a conventional thing, the things that develop because of the betrayal however are treated with keen attention; for example, it had never come into my mind that it could be the person who feels to be at fault the one that feels the need to push away from themselves the person whom they know to be indebted to; making recourse to grave additional dishonesties in order to achieve their end of getting rid of their moral creditor; in the movie this is shown with clarity and to me as a spectator it seemed even a natural consequence of shame and fear.

I point out that there are, moreover, some beautiful shots. For example the birthday party for Amir, and even more the panoramic shots over Kabul on the day of the city kite competition (the two friends in fact love crazily kite contests; and the game consists in cutting the line of the rival "kiter" using deft kite maneuvers).

I liked less other things. For example, the director feels the need to let us know that Talibans secretly smoked cigarettes: that's a believable fact, but gives the movie that slandering touch which I didn't feel the need of - I would have preferred that the smoking issue would be completely ignored, I am not lacking arguments against extremists.

I would say that, even if I by and large share in the political line implicit in the movie, I don't feel comfortable with attacks against political enemies that are carried out in a sort of sneaky way.

Form the aesthetical point of view I did not like much certain hsots of the kid running around the city, they seemed like two animation characters pasted on top of a semi-artificial backdrop. The same observation for same of the shots of the protagonist as a young adult in the devastated Kabul of the Taleban regime (post-Russian occupation). I add that the second aprt of the movie loses some of its rhythm and does not find the way to tell synthetically a series of events that yes are important but could be told in a shorter way in my opinion.

My conclusion is that despite the defects this is a work made with great care on a story that is worth listening to.