The Kite Runner

Stories provide viewers a series of hypothetical situations, imagined in such a way that we accept as believable the actions and response of the characters. What interests us in such make-believe is not a story’s factuality, but its possibility, how it connects with our deepest sense of ourselves and our world. Here is what happened to us when we saw Marc Forster’s The Kite Runner.

Visually stunning and emotionally compelling, the movie allowed us to enter into another world and to find ourselves in it. It isn’t just that many of us have warm memories of flying kites as children, though this might be true. Somehow the characters in this movie invited us to test our responses and actions against theirs. We were challenged to think about who we are and what we might/should do.

Chiefly set in Afghanistan, the movie tells the story of an educated Afghan widower raising his young son Amir with the help of his much-loved servant, Ali, and his “son” Hassan, who is Amir’s best friend. Amir is the kite flier, the child who, like his kite, is expected to soar. Hassan is the kite runner – someone who serves the person holding the string. He is the one who projects where the kite will fall after it has been cut from its string and runs to retrieve it. Here is the primary metaphor of the movie. Though the story centers on the kite flier, it is ultimately the kite runner who must help restore and renew.

First separated from Ali and Hassan because of a tragic falling out between the two boys, then forced to flee the country because of wars and religious fundamentalism, the father and son endup in California, working at a gas station and selling goods at swap meets. But though Hassan has been hurt by Amir, he is faithful to his original friendship. And the movie ends with Amir’s trip back to Afghanistan at Hassan’s behest, a trip that proves to be for them both a mission of redemption.

Based on the best selling novel (2003) by Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner offers viewers a glimpse into the tragedy of Afghanistan and its people, a land of breathtaking natural, rugged beauty that has been raped and destroyed by forces both within and without. But the movie also provides viewers an opportunity to insert themselves into the story – to ask not just what should have been done, but what “I” might do. Three examples come to mind:

When Amir, an upper class Pashtu, sees his friend Hassan, a member of the minority Hazara tribe, being attacked in a back alley by older Pashtu boys, he is confused and fearful, and does not intervene. This even after Hassan has days earlier rescued Amir from harassment by bravely threatening to hit the older boys with rocks in his loaded slingshot. Guilty at not coming to the defense of his friend as he is being sexually molested (the scene is horrible to watch, given the multiple levels of betrayal, but discreet in its depiction), Amir compromises not only his friendship, but himself. Silence brings with it a complicity that turns cankerous. As we left the theater, we wondered about our own silences – the many times we also have failed to speak.

Contrasting with Amir’s silence is his father, Baba’s, outspokenness. Even before the Russian invasion, Baba consistently acts out of principle, speaking out, for example, against the hypocritical mullahs. But his humanity and goodness come even more to the fore as father and son are forced to flee their homeland. In an act of couragethat some might think foolhardy, Baba stands up to a foreign soldier who is about to take a young nursing mother off their truck filled with refugees so he can rape her. In a reprise of the earlier scene, we now don’t hear silence, but Amir’s father yelling at the soldier, “Where is your decency.” Baba is willing to die because of this. Such courage provides Amir the moral compass that allows him to live as a foreigner in a new culture, a strange land – and ultimately to find his own voice, his own courage. Again, the movie invited us to ask ourselves, “What would we be willing to shout against?”

At core, however, the movie is not about ethics, but friendship and family. In the four main characters, we discover a surprising kinship that transcends race and class, extending over time to provide new possibilities and personal redemption. Hassan, the gifted kite runner, will do anything for his friend. Even when he is betrayed, he remains loyal. Years later, when Hassan’s own son is in danger, he writes Amir: “I dream that my son will grow up to be a good person, a free person. I dream someday you will return to revisit the land of our childhood. I dream that flowers will bloom in the streets again…and kites will fly in the skies.” And in friendship Amir responds. We found ourselves with those same dreams – for Hassan and Amir, and for all those who have been displaced in the world today.

The Kite Runner takes what might easily become merely a news item on the 6 o’clock news and allows our imagination to grasp its personal dimensions. There are kite runners and kite fliers throughout the world whose dreams deserve a chance to soar.

Cathy Barsotti is an instructor for Centro Hispano de Estudios Teologicos - a Latino Ministry training center in southeast Los Angeles.

Rob Johnston is Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. His books include  Useless Beauty (Baker, 2005), Finding God in the Movies (Baker, 2004, co-written with Cathy), Reel Spirituality (Baker, 2000) and Life Is Not Work/Work Is Not Life; Simple Reminders for Finding Balance in a 24/7 World (Wildcat Canyon, 2001). Their reviews can also be seen in The Covenant Companion.

Check out their book, Finding God in the Movies -- available through FAW Resources.