The Kite Runner Movie Review

I‘m almost at a loss for worlds. Almost. Every now and then a film comes along that evokes more emotion than I’m sure is medically safe to experience within a two hour period. The Kite Runner is one of those films. Not melancholy or depressing, yet deeply moving, it follows the story of Amir, a writer from Afghanistan that lives in San Francisco, CA. The film spends the first half exploring Amir’s upbringing in pre-Taliban Afghanistan with his best friend Hassan. And that’s where I will stop. I don’t want to paint any image that may bracket such a beautiful film into a class or genre or category. I will instead jump to the end where Amir has to travel back to visit a childhood friend and travel into Taliban controlled Afghanistan. The  location is almost secondary to the depth of the film but it is still an added experience to see the change from 1978 to 2000 in Amir’s Homeland. This is another masterpiece in movie making from Marc Forster, the Director of the phenomenal Finding Neverland. I my opinion Marc is become legendary with his ability to reach out to the audience and evoke deep compassion for his characters. Yes, credit is due primarily to Khaled Hosseini for writing such a landmark novel but I feel that many directors attempt the novel-film conversion and screw it up to the point where the audience is under-whelmed by a film that doesn’t deliver the depth and experience of a novel, and left so disappointed that they don’t read the novel either. Not Forster. I have put off seeing Atonement because the novel is sitting on my shelf, waiting for a read. I took a risk with The Kite Runner and, honestly, I would still read the novel to experience the story again. A word of warning to people that don’t like / can’t read. Most of the film is in Dari – the Afghan dialect of the Persian language and hence subtitled.

 

Verdict:

 

A truly moving experience.9.5/10

 

Tags: , ,

WP-Definitions