Acting, visuals help live out spellbinding story
Director Marc Forster’s new film “Kite Runner,” based on the novel of the same title by Khaled Hosseini, opens with the touching story of a relationship between two young Afghani boys that blossoms into a metaphor for dignity and honor.
In a stark desert environment surrounded by rugged mountains lies Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Amir and Hassan are best friends who live together in a wealthy household.
The divide? Hassan is a servant for Amir’s family.
As a result of this inherent separation, Amir becomes the intrepid writer while Hassan turns into his bodyguard. They share their love of flying kites in the sandy streets of the city and Amir reads to the illiterate Hassan. However, the film turns dark as brutality replaces their former camaraderie.
Despite the gratuitous amount of violence in “Kite Runner,” the story is so touching that the violence becomes necessary to tell it. As Kabul becomes a war-ravaged wasteland, a result of Soviet invasion during the Cold War, the film begins to turn bloody and political.
The film’s actors give an outstanding performance, especially Homayoun Ershadi who plays Amir’s father.
I read the book several years ago, and this is one of the few movies I have ever seen that could hold a candle to the book it was based on. There is something more tragic and poignant about a visual portrayal of the pain rather than simply a textual one.
The one thing that the movie did far better than the novel was to incorporate a sense of humor into certain scenes. This was partly due to the fact that the main character, Amir, was drastically different from his character in the book in that he had a much weaker sense of self.
Both the introduction and the finale of the film are absolutely beautiful and the cinematography breathes life into this painful story.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Sarah Stern at sarah.stern@colorado.edu
