Z/Web

I knew little about this going in — so little I thought the title was a metaphor. It turns about to be about kids flying kites in Afghanistan (apparently they do that there, though it seems an odd hobby for such a place). While overall this is an excellent movie, I found the beginning confusing: we open with a writer receiving a batch of his first book in the mail and the way it was shot you only caught a glimpse at the title and I must have been halucinating because I could have sworn in one shot it was a copy of The Kite Runner, which made me think the author’s character was the author of the movie and that the extended flashback was everything that had happened to that author when he was a kid. Instead, it turns out the story is utter fiction — but that confusing premise at the beginning weakened the film for me. Why not just show the book clearly so we can see what’s going on? Why purposely play coy with the book like that? It was an odd directing decision that hurt an otherwise excellent film. The story is a powerful one of redemption: two boys grow up together in Afghanistan, but apparently one is lower class, the son of the other’s family servant (this was also not clearly presented in the film until too late). When the rich boy doesn’t rescue the servant boy he resents him for he reminds him of his guilt and he contrives to have the servant boy — his former “best friend” — sent away. Later the rich boy and his father must flee the country when the Russians invade and they end up in America, where the boy becomes an author, but he’s still haunted by the way he treated his supposed best friend and returns to Afghanistan to make ammends. Some people I was with seemed shocked or horrified by the Afghanistan lifestyle (quite brutal under the Taliban), but I was much more intrigued by the bond of the two boys and felt that should have been explored more in the film as that was the core subject. Still, despite a few flaws, this is an excellent film and I highly recommend it.