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.