73. Rood &...

Rood is al lang het rood niet meer

(Red has ceased being the red)
Het rood van rode rozen

(The red of red roses)
De kleur van liefde van weleer

(The former color of love)
Lijkt door de haat gekozen

(Seems to have been chosen by hate)

Dat mooie rood was ooit voor mij
(That beautiful red once was mine)

Een kleur van passie en van wijn

(A color of passion and of wine)
Ik wil haar terug, die mooie tijd

(I'd like her back, that wonderful time)
Maar zij lijkt lang vervlogen

(But that time seems bygone)

En alle beelden op TV
(And all the images on tv)

Van bloed en oorlog om ons heen

(Of blood and war around us)
Werken daar ook niet echt aan mee

(Do not really help that)

Dus ik neem heel bewust het besluit

(So I consciously take the decision)
De krant leg ik weg

(I put away the paper)
En de TV gaat uit

(And the tv will be turned off)

Vandaag is rood de kleur van jouw lippen
(Today, red is the color of your lips)

Vandaag is rood wat rood hoort te zijn

(Today what is supposed to be red is red)
Vandaag is.. rood van rood wit blauw

(Today,  red is the red of red, whitem blue)
Van heel mijn hart voor jou

(Of whole my heart for you)
Schreeuw van de roodbedekte daken dat ik van je hou
(I scream of the redcovered roofs that I love you)

Vandaag is rood gewoon weer liefde tussen jou en mij

(Today, red again is just the love between you and me)

Ik loop de deur door en naar buiten waar de zon begint te schijnen

(I walk through the door and to outside where the sun starts to shine)
Laat alles achter, kijk vooruit en met mijn laatste rooie cent

(I leave everything behind, look forward and with my last cents)
Koop ik een veel te grote bos met hondervijftig rode rozen

(I buy 150 red roses)
Een voor elk jaar waarvan ik hoop dat jij nog bij me bent.

(One for every year I hope you are with me)

Vandaag is rood de kleur van jouw lippen
(Today, red is the color of your lips)

Vandaag is rood wat rood hoort te zijn

(Today what is supposed to be red is red)
Vandaag is.. rood van rood wit blauw

(Today,  red is the red of red, whitem blue)
Van heel mijn hart voor jou

(Of whole my heart for you)
Schreeuw van de roodbedekte daken dat ik van je hou
(I scream of the redcovered roofs that I love you)

Vandaag is rood gewoon weer liefde tussen jou en mij

(Today, red again is just the love between you and me)

En nu sta je hier zo voor me

(And now you stand here before me)
De rode avondzon streelt jouw gezicht

(The red setting sun caresses your face)
Je bent een wonder voor me

(You are a miracle to me)
Denk ik, terwijl een doorn mijn vinger prikt

(I think, while a thorn cuts my finger)

Rood is mijn bloed dat valt op de grond

(Red is my blood that falls on the ground)
En even lijk ik verloren

(And I seem lost for a bit)
Maar jij brengt mijn vingers naar je mond

(But you bring my fingers to your mouth)
en je kust ze

(And you kiss them)
En ik weet

(And I know)

Vandaag is rood de kleur van jouw lippen
(Today, red is the color of your lips)

Vandaag is rood wat rood hoort te zijn

(Today what is supposed to be red is red)
Vandaag is.. rood van rood wit blauw

(Today,  red is the red of red, whitem blue)
Van heel mijn hart voor jou

(Of whole my heart for you)
Schreeuw van de roodbedekte daken dat ik van je hou
(I scream of the redcovered roofs that I love you)

Vandaag is rood gewoon weer liefde tussen jou en mij

(Today, red again is just the love between you and me)

Vandaag is rood

(Today red is)

Gooi de loper uit

(Bring out the red carpet)
En drink een goed glas wijn

(And drink a good glass of wine)
Pluk de dag want het kan zo ineens de laatste zijn

(Seize the day, because it just could be your last)
Vandaag is rood gewoon weer liefde tussen jouw en mij

(Today red is simply the love between you and me)

Vandaag staat rood weer voor de liefde
(Today red again stands for the love)

Tussen jou en mij

(Between you and me)

Marco Borsato is probably the most important Dutch singer right now, whether you like hem or not. He is basically at the center of the Dutch music industry. I don't really like his music, but most of his songs are way better than this one. And to be fair, he is very much willing to give a chance to young singers, who are both better than him and who sing in a completely different style.  Rood is a more recent song of his, written in 2006. And for some reason, recently he has decided that he has to make up-tempo songs, which don't fit his style at all. Recently, his song Muziek, basically a rip-off of the already awful John Miles' song even ventured into something resembling electropop. It's his absolute low point. Although textually this may be his low point. It's completely incoherent lyrically and is a joke compared to many of the other high placed songs on this list. Obviously, songs do not need to have a (political) message to be good, but many of the songs previously discussed here are very much concerned with socal injustices. This song is (directly even!) about how much the injustices on the news really annoy Borsato because they taint his associations with the color red. The poor man just wants to love and not care about people dying and such inconveniences. This is even weirder considering in real life Borsato positions himself as a person who deeply cares about the world. He acted in a movie about child soldiers and is very much involved with War Child. Luckily this focus on the color red gave me the chance to watch a rather interesting movie.

The Movie: Three Colors: Red (Trois couleurs: Rouge) (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)

Red is the final movie in Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, which furthermore comprises of Blue and White. Each movie is named for a color of the French flag and each movie deals with a theme related to the French Revolution slogan: "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité'. I had (and still have) not seen the other two movies, before watching, but I certainly will soon now. And I'll hopefully get to see some other movies by Kieslowski, of which especially The Double Life of Veronique seems interesting. The only downside of this is that I'll have to write his first name more often. In any case I liked Red very much. I had some problems with it, but they arised from the fact that Kieslowski is so incredibly ambitious. And if that's the case I can 'forgive' a movie a lot.

In most movies we get the impression that the only (interesting) characters in the place where the movie is set in, are those characters around which the movie revolves. And that we should only care about those characters That is not a criticism, it is in fact completely logical that movies work this way. In Red Kieslowski plays with these ideas/conventions in a very interesting way, which fits the content of the movie. After all, Red is partly about how our simple decisions can have major consequences for people we do not know. And that even good/moral decisions can sometimes be hurtful to other people. This is not a very joyous idea, but this is a very hopeful film, bursting with energy. Kieslowski died at the age of 56, two years after making this movie, but even if he had lived, he announced that this would have been his final movie. Watching it, it is hard to believe that this is a movie made by someone who has plans to quit film making. Kieslowski is constantly exploring new ideas and creating interesting, original shots and scenes here.

His plot is quite simple. He follows Valentine (played by the very beautiful Irene Jacob), a model who is, at the beginning of the movie, having a rather ordinary day. She does some grocery shopping, goes to work, and bickers with her slightly obnoxious boyfriend/fiancee, who for some reason is currently in London. Kieslowski films these scenes using long takes. And the way he uses these long takes is quite interesting. Anytime Valentine is at a place, or leaves it, the camera moves to find that somewhere in the neighborhood her neighbor Auguste (who she doesn't really know very well) is doing some daily chores too. The implication of these scenes is that the movie could just as easily follow Auguste, who seems to have a just as interesting life as Helen. And that there are many interesting people in this city (Geneva) who just go on with their lives. I thought this was such an interesting idea and it was so well executed, that I found it rather unfortunate that at the end of the movie Kieslowski chose to connect Auguste and Valentine. This made the movie much more ordinary to me. What Kieslowski was doing in the first half was successfully achieving, something I have not seen any other movie even attempt. He basically was telling two stories at once, with one of these stories happening completely in the background of the picture. While the focus, at all times, remained at Valentine the movie gave us completely unrelated glimpses in the life of a completely unrelated character, who we got to know very well without letting him have hardly any dialogue. It's quite masterful.

While I didn't like that Kieslowski chose to connect Auguste and Valentine, I also did not like the way it connected them. The 'plot' of the movie really kicks in when Valentine accidentally hits a dog with her car. It turns out this is the runaway dog of a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant). When Valentine brings the dog back to the judge, she finds that he is spying on his neighbors' phone conversations. Valentine is repulsed by it, but when the judge challenges her to do anything about it, she doesn't dare to. And so they begin a long, greatly scripted, (philosophical) conversation about morals and what it means to be a good person and to do good deeds. They grow friendly, and during the course of the movie meet up a couple of more times, for several reasons. They continue their conversations in which Kieslowski deals with questions like: What is the meaning of an act of kindness? And who is to decide about what is right or wrong? This is all of course very symbolic, considering that Trintignant's character is a judge. So during these conversations we get to know more of Trintignant's personal history, and slowly we come to realize that if he was a younger man, he and Valentine would have probably become romantically involved. We also come to realize that what we see of Auguste mirrors the personal hsitory of the judge. This creates all kinds of interesting implications, but it is a touch that I found a bit too surreal and magical in a way that is a bit too cute. It actually reminded me of those way too nice American indies like Stranger than Fiction and Ruby Sparks. Kieslowski's film is way more intelligent and inventive than those, but still it annoyed me a bit. But I probably will appreciate this a lot more once I have seen the other two movies of Kieslowski's trilogy. And despite these small qualms this is absolutely a great, completely singular movie.  

72. Worn Down Piano &...

Lyrics

Each Tuesday morning, they'd all stand in line;
the auction would open promptly at nine.
The gavel came down on the auctioneer's block
and the bidding began on a grandfather's clock.

Next up for bids in the rear of the room,
a piano worn down and a bit out of tune.
Whoí•ll start the bidding?, the auctioneer cried.
No voices rang out, so just put it aside.

Shouts filled the room and the auction went on
when the cries of the crowd were stopped by a song.
Everyone turned to the rear of the room,
to that worn down piano, a bit out of tune.

Oh the days long ago when the crowds came around
to hear that piano ring out with sound,
but the crowds have all gone and the symphony's through
and the piano cries out: 'let me play once for you'.

A man with a torn coat and a hole in one shoe
sat playing the song that nobody knew.
The music rang out and that song filled the room
from that worn down piano, a bit out of tune.

Then from the crowd a man shouted a bid
One thousand dollars for that piano I'll give.
Two thousand, Three thousand, and the bidding went on
as the man in the torn coat kept playing that song.

The bidding grew tense each bid more and more
í”till the five thousand figure rang out from the floor,
the man in the torn coat just sat there and stared
playing that song as if no-one were there.

Oh the days long ago when the crowds came around
to hear that piano ring out with sound,
but the crowds have all gone and the symphony's through
and the piano cries out: let me play once for you.

The man in the torn coat played as if to say
I too want you, piano but I've nothing to pay.
I'd give all I own if you could be mine,
but all I can bid is this bottle of wine.

The sound of the gavel rang out through the air,
the auctioneer cried: Top that bid if you dare.
Just give him the piano, maestro play on.
but where has the man, in the torn coat gone?

It's a quarter past five and the bidding is done,
everything's sold and now leave one by one.
The auction is over and left in that room
is that worn down piano, still a bit out of tune.

Oh the days long ago when the crowds came around
to hear that piano ring out with sound,
but the crowds have all gone and the symphony's through
and the piano cries out: let me once play for you.


I like this song. It's basically a, slightly silly, tribute to piano music that shows John Miles how to write a song in praise of music. I didn't think very hard about what movie to link this song to. I simply chose to watch a famous movie involving a piano I had not seen yet. 

The Movie:  The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

The Piano often feels like Jane Campion's response to Out of Africa. Obviously Campion probably didn't care about criticizing Out of Africa when making this movie, but while I was watching it I couldn't help but think how this movie basically does everything right that Pollack's movie did wrong. But before writing about that the performances by Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel have to be mentioned. They both seem to relish the fact that they get to play characters quite unlike any they are usually asked to play and fully commit to their. Especially Holly Hunter's Ada McGrath is the kind of character that seems to have no real reference point in American film. She is a mute (but not deaf), though we never really learn why and it is implicated that she is mute by choice. And her muteness is never presented as a handicap. She communicates through written notes, sign language which her daughter (Anna Paquin) translates, and her piano. Apart from her muteness Ada is presented as a relatively normal woman. Holly Hunter presents her without ever resorting to showy acting and creates enormous sympathy for her character. She won an Oscar for this performance and it could not have been more deserved. Anna Paquin won one too, but while she gives a good performance, I didn't find it anything special. Interestingly she beat, among others, Holly Hunter who was also nominated for her (much more showy, but also pretty good) supporting role in The Firm. 

The Piano won one more Oscar, for Jane Campion's screenplay. It would have won the whole thing probably, if it wasn't for Schindler's List. It would have been highly deserving. The plot is not highly original, but it is told with great invention. In the 1850's Ada is sent to New Zealand for an arranged marriage with a colonialist landowner, named Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill). It's clear from the start that this is not going to be successful and soon Ada starts an affair with George Baines (Keitel). When Allisdair finds out, things go wrong.

Campion tells this relatively generic story in a very interesting way. She is helped by the great, darkened cinematography and the weird (coastal) landscape of New Zealand, which create an eerie, otherworldly mood. There are some utterly fantastic shots when Ada arrives on the beach and has to leave her piano there. The sight of a sole piano on this otherwise enormous, abandoned beach is quite astonishing and disorienting. That piano eventually finds its way to the canny trader George, who proposes to give the piano to Ada if she will let him watch her play. Anytime she plays, she'll get a piano key in return. For every time she lies next to him, she'll get for keys, and if she'll 'lie with him naked', she'll get five keys, etc. Obviously Ada hates this arrangement and hates George too, but the piano means so much to her she goes through with it. At this point I sort of expected how the movie would proceed, but it does a rather surprising thing. One day George stops the arrangement, claiming it makes Ada a whore and him wretched, and gives her the piano back, while declaring his love for her. We realize that George is basically a decent guy and a shy romantic. Eventually Ada realizes this too and only now does she start to love George and have an affair with him. Campion's feminist message is quite clear here and it's laid out in an original and smart way. The affair is only acceptable once Ada has freely chosen for it and has consented to it. That's in a nutshell the main point Campion is making throughout this movie, for example in the depiction of the failing marriage between Ada and Allisdair. 

While Alisdair claims George to be a silly 'oaf' who cannot read, it is actually he, who is the oaf. George, though he really cannot read, is the one who understands both Ada and New Zealand. Allisdair is a dumb colonialist, who doesn't understand why Ada doesn't love him. In order to find out what to change he asks stupid, wrong questions to the elderly ladies there. He also doesn't understand the Maori and is flabbergasted to learn that they wouldn't want to sell him their land. He wonders why they would want it, and why it is considered their land in the first place. He behaves like a stereotypical British colonialist, who believes the British have some sort of natural right to rule over New-Zealand. Had this movie been made with the mindset of Out of Africa (or of many other Hollywood pictures) it would have sort of agreed with him, in regard with both his views on Ada as his views on New-Zealand. The Piano quite unambiguously presents him as a doofus. This is contrasted with George who not only tries to understand Ada, but also the Maori's. He tries to adapt to their ways and to live together with them, to speak their language. The other European colonialists therefore see him as a wild, unstable, weirdo. Again, this is completely different to how in Out of Africa Karen's relationship with the Africans was presented. There, it were the Africans who were forced to learn the ways of the European colonialists. 

After all this praise, it is fair to note that I absolutely hated the final scenes of the movie. Using cheap, terribly cliched sentimentality, complete with an on-the-nose musical score, they aim for profundity and never get there. Besides that, they are really unfair to the character of Ada. Luckily the filmmakers did not do, what I for a second feared they would, but they put a dent in what was otherwise a really good movie. 

71. A Forest &...

Lyrics

Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
If you can
Come closer and see
See into the dark
Just follow your eyes
Just follow your eyes

I hear her voice
Calling my name
The sound is deep
In the dark
I hear her voice
And start to run
Into the trees
Into the trees

Into the trees
Suddenly I stop
But I know it's too late
I'm lost in a forest
All alone
The girl was never there
It's always the same
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again and again

I am not very familiar with the music of The Cure. Until relatively shortly I thought they were a band writing exclusively heavy metal songs. That's obviously not the case and I quite like this song about getting lost in the forest. It also gave me the chance to discuss a horror movie here, a genre that I overlook, both on this blog and in my film viewings.

The Movie: The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez, 1999)

I watched this movie in stereotypically perfect circumstances. I was home alone during a dark, stormy night. And yet, nothing! Not once did this movie really frighten me and that night I slept calmly through the morning! Joking aside, I actually liked the movie more than I expected, but am quite surprised that it has gotten so popular. This is basically an experimental movie that's not very interested in frightening you. I was not surprised to find that Myrick and Sanchez were film students as this basically feels like a project for a class in which they were asked to cinematically explore some film and media theories. It does succeed as that. 

As I said I liked this movie more than I thought, but it is important to note that my expectations were not very high. I am probably one of the last people my age who haven't seen it and that is partly due to the fact that I don't really seek out horror movies. There is not a really rational reason for this, as I've actually liked a lot the relatively few horror pictures I have seen. But I was also predisposed against this movie, because of its stupid marketing campaign. I think even in 1999/2000 I had heard about how this is some real footage of some real kids who went out in the Maryland woods and never got back. I obviously did not believe this and found it a really dumb way to market the movie. The fact that many people were fooled I found even more stupid and flabbergasting. Besides that, if you as a an audience member do believe that this is really some found footage, it is kind of sick to go to the movie anyway. Besides that the simple fact that it was a found footage movie (that had spawned and popularized the found footage genre) annoyed me. In my entry about Bloody Sunday I wrote about my dislike of Paul Greengrass' aesthetic, so you can imagine my dislike of the found footage aesthetic,  which is basically the extreme version of Greengrass' aesthetic. I believe it gives horrid filmmakers an 'artistic' license to remain horrid filmmakers and to not give a shit about a point of view, coherence, story, smart shots, and dialogue. Besides that it is simply stupid to pretend something is found footage when both you and your audience knows you're lying. I genuinely don't see the point of something like Cloverfield. Lastly most of these found footage movies don't even manage to use its aesthetic in a consistent way and at certain points randomly throw in shots and scenes that completely ignore the premise of the found footage. 

The Blair Witch Project actually has valid reasons for using both the aesthetic of found footage and for marketing itself in the way I disliked. This is partly a movie about the creation and power of myths and legends. Or about the power of narratives in general. The three main characters (director Heather, cameraman Josh and sound man Mike) here go into the woods to film a documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch. The nearby townspeople all know about the legend and while many of them are skeptical they are also not very willing to risk their chances going alone in the woods. They have never seen the witch, but heard the stories about. Obviously our documentary crew soon gets lost in the woods and they cannot get out. It is to this movie's great credit that nothing supernatural ever occurs to the characters. In fact, until they lose Josh, nothing that happens to the characters would frighten them under ordinary circumstances. What they see and hear is only terrifying due to their knowledge of the Blair witch myth. Through the marketing campaign the movie creates the same myth/narrative for its (gullible) audience and that is how it frightens them. Once Mike and Heather lose Josh and are sent bloody chopped off fingers the danger gets is no longer myth, but reality. I did find that a bit disappointing. I would have liked the movie much more if it continued until the end with scaring the main characters through mere suggestion. 

Lastly The Blair Witch Project uses the found footage aesthetic to raise questions about what it means to film and to be filmed. Whomever has the camera here has the power. The dynamic of the characters depends on who has the camera and who is filmed. And we learn their characters through what they do when they film and when they are being filmed. Myrick and Sanchez also discuss here the idea of the camera as a filter of reality, a question they probably had (either directly or indirectly) to deal with in every other class while doing film studies. Does seeing reality through the camera make them more comfortable and less afraid of the Blair witch? These ideas would have been much harder to discuss with a conventional filming technique. The handheld camera (and what is being done with it) is vital for what The Blair Witch Project aims to do. And the same can be said for the marketing.  

70. De Vlieger &...

Lyrics

M'n zoon was gisteren jarig, hij werd acht jaar oud m'n schat

(Yesterday it was my dear son's eighth birthday).
Hij vroeg aan mij een vlieger, en die heeft hij ook gehad

(He asked me for a kite and that is what he got)
Naar z'n bal, z'n fiets, z'n treinen, nee daar keek hij niet naar om

(His ball, his bike, his trains, no he didn't care about those things)
Want z'n vlieger was hem alles, alleen wist ik niet waarom

(Because his kite meant everything to him, I just didn't know why)

En toen de andere morgen, zei hij;vader ga je mee;

(And so the next morning he said: Father will you join me)
De wind die is nu gunstig, dus ik neem m'n vlieger mee

(The wind is good now, so I'll take my kite)
In z'n ene hand een vlieger, in de andere een brief

(In one hand a kite, in the other a letter)
Ik kon hem niet begrijpen, maar toen zei m'n zoontje lief

(I couldn't understand him, but then my sweet son said)
Ik heb hier een brief voor m'n moeder

(I have here a letter for my mother)
Die hoog in de hemel is

(Who is high up in heaven)
Deze brief bindt ik vast aan m'n vlieger

(I will attach this letter to my kite)
Tot zij hem ontvangt, zij die ik mis

(And she will receive it, she, the one I miss)
En als zij dan leest hoeveel ik van haar hou

(And she then will read how much I love her)
Dat ik niet kan wennen aan die andere vrouw

(And that I can't get used to that other woman)
Ik heb hier een brief voor m'n moeder

(I have here a letter for my mother)
Die hoog in de hemel is

(Who is high up in heaven)

Ik heb hier een brief voor m'n moeder

(I have here a letter for my mother)
Die hoog, hoog in de hemel is

(Who is high, high up in heaven)
Deze brief bindt ik vast aan m'n vlieger

(I'll attach this letter to my kite)
Tot zij hem ontvangt, zij, zij die ik mis

(And she will receive it, she, the one I miss)

Ik heb hier een brief voor m'n moeder

(I have here a letter for my mother)
Die hoog in de hemel is

(Who is high up in heaven)
Deze brief bindt ik vast aan m'n vlieger

(I will attach this letter to my kite)
Tot zij hem ontvangt, zij die ik mis

(And she will receive it, she, the one I miss)
En als zij dan leest hoeveel ik van haar hou

(And she then will read how much I love her)
Dat ik niet kan wennen aan die andere vrouw

(And that I can't get used to that other woman)
Ik heb hier een brief voor m'n moeder

(I have here a letter for my mother)
Die hoog in de hemel is

(Who is high up in heaven)

This is Dutch folk by the most famous of all Dutch folk singers, Andre Hazes. I can't stand his songs, which are mostly sentimental laments often played in old-fashioned Dutch pubs. Still, it is undeniable that he is a gifted lyricist. Here the build-up to the sad reveal of why the boy would want a kite is quite exceptional. And if one is susceptible to Hazes' songs I can imagine that this revelation will come as a gutpunch. The movie I linked this song to involves kites. It also involves a boy living with his father after the death of his mother in childbirth, but that's a coincidence. I didn't know that before seeing the movie.

The Movie: The Kite Runner (Marc Forster, 2007)

I am not really a fan of Marc Forster. Finding Neverland managed to make Dustin Hoffman, Kate Winslet and Johnny Depp dull actors. Which is quite an achievment. Quantum of Solace may be the worst Bond movie ever made. Stranger Than Fiction was ok, but could have been a lot better. The rest of his movies I haven't seen yet, but I obviously don't have much hope for the horribly received World War Z and Machine Gun Preacher. In any case I found The Kite Runner a far better movie than all the other Forster movies I've seen. Still it didn't make me wanna seek out other Forster movies, but it did raise my interest in author Khalid Hosseini, the author on whose book this movie was based. The main reason why this movie works is because it has a deeply engaging and engrossing story. Perhaps this is not surprising. Hosseini, of which I rather shamefully haven't read a book yet, is considered one of the greatest modern writers. And the screenplay, adapted from the book, is written by David Benioff. He also wrote the screenplay for Spike Lee's 25th Hour, one of my favorite movies. 

So I credited Benioff and Hosseini for my enjoyment of this movie, but it is worth asking how fair that is. Forster doesn't show much directorial flair here and really does direct the movie in the most simplistic way possible. But that's not always a bad thing. By doing this he puts the focus solely on the story, which doesn't need any embellishment to hold our interest. That doesn't mean that some cinematic flair could have hurt, as for example Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis showed in that very same year. But at least Forster didn't end up making something like Denis Villenueve's Incendies. That was a movie I thought was extremely stupid, yet enjoyable. But after seeing The Kite Runner you truly realize how badly misguided Villeneuve was in making that movie.

I obviously won't summarize the story here, so I'll shortly focus on some other stuff. I very much liked the portrayal of Baba, the father of Amir (the main character of the story and partly based on Hosseini himself). Baba is portrayed as a honorable intellectual of great integrity who cares deeply for his servants. They are Hazarra, an ethnic minority in Afghanistan. We see them suffering from racism a lot. Of course Baba abhors this racism and discrimantion and is unquestionably a good man. Yet the movie subtly raises the question what it means for Baba to treat the Hazarra well and to not discriminate them. And what does it mean to be (seen as) an enlightened good man? Sure Baba accepts and treats the Hazarra well. His servant is a friend he has known for forty years and their sons are best friends too. But Baba always sees his servants above all as his servants. And he does not think about challenging the status quo. That's most obvious when we compare the scenes of the birthday celebrations of his own son and the son of his Hazarra servant. Baba doesn't necessarily explictly discriminate the Hazarra, but one could argue that he is just as complicit in upholding the latent racism against the Hazarra that shapes Afghan society as we see it in the movie. The movie does (wisely) never make clear whether Baba is aware of this or not, and as I said earlier he is unquestionably a decent, honorable good man. Through this subtly complex portrayal of Baba the movie raises globally relevant questions about how we treat, see and (re)present minorities.

Lastly some other notes. The movie could be (and has probably been) criticized for neglecting to say that the Americans were just as much to blame for the rise of the Taliban as the Sovjets. That's fair, but this is not a political story. It is a personal one, told subjectively. And Amir has very good reasons to hate the Sovjets more than the Americans and to lay the blame for the misery of his nation solely at the feet of the Sovjets. It may not be true in the historical context, but this is a story about how Amir sees the world. 

Lastly I have played with a kite about 4 or 5 times in my life. I found it incredibly dull, but I wasn't aware kiting was an exciting game to be played with other kiters. I thought you just stood and watched the kite as it floated aimlessly in the air  I obviously used kites in a wrong way. It is also notable that in these kiting scenes Forster really does show some visual flair.