Much like the best-selling novel on which it's based, The Kite Runner tells the story of an Afghan refugee who, long after arriving in the US, sifts through memories of his cosseted childhood, his emotionally remote father, his devoted best friend, the kites they flew and the stories they shared. The back of my paperback copy of this Khaled Hosseini novel is sprinkled with words like “powerful” and “haunting” and “riveting” and “unforgettable.” It's a good guess that this film will be rolled around in a similarly large helping of lard.
There's another word on the back of my copy: “genuine.” The portrait of Afghan culture broadly painted by its narrator, a 38-year-old novelist known as Amir (played in the film by the Scottish-born Khalid Abdalla), certainly seems like the real deal, a sense of authenticity underscored by the book's evocation of the Afghan diaspora in the US, its descriptions of traditions and rituals and the numerous foreign words like Kocheh-Morgha (Chicken Bazaar) and Shirini-khori (Eating of the Sweets' ceremony). That said, it is difficult to believe in the authenticity of any book (and its author) in which a born and bred Afghan narrator asks of the Taliban — as this one does in June 2001 — “Is it as bad as I hear?”
David Benioff's clumsy screenplay doesn't broadcast its political naivete as openly, but only because the filmmakers seem to assume that unlike the book's readers, the movie audience doesn't care about such matters. Benioff gestures in the direction of Communists and mullahs, the Soviet invaders and the Taliban insurgents, but none of these players figure into the story in any meaningful fashion. The director Marc Forster, following the script's lead, scrupulously avoids politics and history — there are no causes or positions, just villains and horrors — and instead offers us a succession of atmospheric, realistic landscapes, colorful sights and smiling boys. And kites. Lots and lots of bobbing, darting, high-flying kites.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF UIP
Like the recent film version of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, another story ignited by the destructive behavior of a pubescent child, The Kite Runner presents a world informed by a variant of original sin. In both, a child's damaging words and deeds give way to — and seem to foreshadow and somehow even to incite — the larger violence of war. The two stories register very differently, both on the page and on screen, yet what's curious is how each presents childhood as an already corrupted state that is redeemed only by adult grace. In these stories war becomes a kind of cleansing agent for the destructive child, who, after enduring hardships, matures into a properly contrite adult (and a fiction writer to boot).
It takes a while for that contrition to surface in The Kite Runner. First the adult Amir has to conjure up a leisurely flashback during which his 12-year-old self (Zekiria Ebrahimi) rushes through the dust and the exotica — past the woman in a burka and the severed animal heads — pausing to read, write and fly kites. He worships his gruff father, Baba (Homayoun Ershadi), a businessman who swills alcohol and dismisses the mullahs as “monkeys.” Amir, in turn, is adored by the illiterate servant boy Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), whose father has worked for Baba his entire life. Amir loves his younger friend in his selfish fashion, but because Baba favors Hassan (if not enough to educate the boy), Amir also betrays him.
Forster, who previously directed Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland, has been soundly defeated by The Kite Runner. Despite the film's far-flung locations (it was shot primarily in China), there is remarkably little of visual interest here; the setups are banal, and the scenes lack tension, which no amount of editing can provide. With the exception of Ershadi, whom art-house audiences may remember from Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, it also lacks credible performances. The two lead child actors, both nonprofessionals, are predictably appealing, but only because they're children. Unlike Kiarostami, who has a genius for translating the natural rhythms of nonprofessional performers to the screen, who siphons real life and bottles it, Forster never makes you believe in these children or their woes.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF UIP
In both novel and film form, The Kite Runner recounts a simple yet shrewd story about that favorite American pastime: self-improvement. Amir's childhood mistake isn't a careless juvenile offense; it's a human stain that must be scrubbed out through self-abnegation, confession and personal transformation. Yet, watching this film, you are left to wonder whom precisely is all this suffering for — is it for Amir? Hassan? Afghanistan? Or do Hassan and the story's other sad children — especially those hollow-eyed boys and girls glimpsed during the preposterous climax in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan — suffer because it's possible to package other people's pain and turn it into a commercial diversion? It's no surprise that for all its foreign trappings, The Kite Runner tells the same old comforting story. We wouldn't have it any other way.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS