Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
No
Country for Old Men
(The Kite Runner, 1/28/08)
By Nicholas Nicastro
If there really is a place that is "no country for
old men," it must be Afghanistan. Although we've been at war there
two years longer than in Iraq, and Osama bin Laden lives on in the neighborhood,
Hollywood has been strangely loathe to deal with the place (Robert Redford's
Lions for Lambs is the only major attempt so far). Iranian director
Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar and Afghan Siddik Barmak's Osama
are two creditable but relatively low-budget attempts that saw limited
release here. Now we have something in the middle: Marc Forster's The
Kite Runner was made with a modest budget and an unknown cast, but
has the advantage of being based on a novel that has sold something
like five million copies.
A tale sprawling over several decades,
The Kite Runner traces the fate of two boyhood friends—Amir
(Zekeria Ebrahimi), who is the son of a rich Pashtun landowner, and
Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada), the son of a servant and a member of
the minority Hazara group. Their attachment across ethnic lines is viewed
with suspicion by some, not the least because Amir and Hassan are Kabul's
best team in competitive kite-flying (a cherished pastime in Afghanistan,
it appears). When the Soviets invade, Amir and his father flee to the
US; in time, the adult Amir (Khalid Abdalla) becomes a successful writer.
He is drawn back to Afghanistan when he receives troubling news of his
old friend Hassan and his son, who are now suffering under Taliban rule.
On the eve of starting his own family in America, Amir is forced to
don a fake beard and slip back into his devastated homeland.
The Kite Runner paints its
story in broad, sentimental strokes that betray not a trace of irony.
As such, it would be easy to dismiss it for hitting its themes a bit
too on-the-nose. But David Benioff's script, like Hosseini's novel,
is vindicated by the fact that Afghanistan's decades of war have spawned
thousands of real stories exactly like it. Hopefully, those of us for
whom the biggest problem is not having enough cup-holders for our on-road
beverages can suspend our cynicism long enough to respect those with
genuine troubles.
The film has been banned by the
current government in Afghanistan out of fear it will incite violence.
Indeed, though it wears its heart on its sleeve, Forster's film can't
be accused of sugar-coating its subject. The thwarted sexuality that
floats above the place finds its outlet in homosexual rape and pedophilia,
all of which may or may not have something to do with the eerily woman-less
world Amir and Hassan grow up in. Matters only get worse under the Taliban,
who ban music and kite-flying, and chop down every piece of living greenery
than might relieve the monotony. Yet we know now that they liked to
henna their beards and keep gilded portraits of their male lovers.
Forster's film is not entirely lacking
in visual compensations. The image of Amir's father tooling around the
boulevards of pre-invasion Kabul in his Bullitt-style black Mustang
is an eloquent reminder of how liberating American culture once seemed
to many around the world. Indeed, just how would Steve McQueen have
dealt with a pick-up truck full of Taliban thugs? Perhaps that's a concept
Hollywood needs to develop, if it will one day take the war in Afghanistan
seriously.
©2008 Nicholas Nicastro
back to Culture Blog