Kite Runner

Kite Runner is incredible. Seriously, it’s an absolutely amazing story about redemption and love and fear and pain. There is some pretty heavy content in it, but I highly highly recommend it.

Both the book and the movie are excellent. It’s rare that a movie “lives up” to the book, but I think the creators of the film Kite Runner did a great job. It’s a really well made movie, and the actors perform really well. Each of them is exactly like what I pictured their character to look like from the book. And although a few scenes had to be left out, the theme of the story is still powerfully expressed.

The main theme in Kite Runner is redemption. “You have a way to be good again.” Rahim Khan tells his nephew Amir on the phone from Pakistan. Amir grew up in Afghanistan, but fled with his father to America when the Taliban took over. During his childhood, he kept a secret that ended up hurting his best friend Hassan very deeply, and himself in the process. He continues to live with that secret, but when he received the phone call from Pakistan he is given a chance to redeem himself from the lies he told and the pain he caused in his childhood by rescuing the son of Hassan.

Although Amir is never able to go back and erase what he did in the past, he is able to do good in the future. He is never able to make up to Hassan the deep hurt he caused him, but by saving his son and giving him a new life, he is able to redeem himself. I love redemption stories; they’re beautiful. Because we live in this strange world of ever-moving time, we’re never able to go back and re-do our actions. No matter how sorry we are for we did or didn’t do, what’s done is done. With the idea of redemption, however, we can make amends for the wrong we did in the past through our actions in the future. Nothing is ever final. There is always hope. And Kite Runner offers an incredible story of that possibility.

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P.S. This blog does no justice to the film. The story is much richer and more redeeming than I have presented, but it's hard to explain without giving out key points to the plot of the film. Just go. Watch it yourself.