When Mr. Banks sings “Let’s go fly a kite and sends it soaring up through the atmosphere” at the end of the movie “Mary Poppins,” he is abandoning his workaholic, unimaginative ways and bonding with his children Jane and Michael for perhaps the first time. But they can frolic in and out of chalk drawings and on detachable carousel horses, because they are in 1930s London. If they lived in Kabul in the 1970s, they would be trying to cut each other’s kites down in an aerial battle of wits and strings.

Such is the childhood of 11-year-old Amir and 10-year-old Hassan in David Benioff’s new movie adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s best seller, “The Kite Runner.”  Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi) flies the kite, while Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada) “runs” or retrieves the kite. Hassan’s prophetic ability to track kites and his ingenious strategy of tempting an opponent’s kite before nose-diving suddenly and clipping it, help win the competition and protect the record of Amir’s father, Baba (Homayoun Ershadi). Kabul, like anywhere, has bullies, and these particular ones target Amir, who is rich, and Hassan, who is Hazara. Hassan defends himself and the pushover Amir, who is better equipped for writing stories than dealing with violence, with a slingshot reminiscent of King David’s defeat of Goliath. But in Hosseini’s story, Goliath finally triumphs over David, as he runs Amir’s victory kite. Hassan is trapped and raped by the 15-year-old Assef (Elham Ehsas), as Amir looks on silently from afar. Driven by voyeur’s guilt, Amir later frames Hassan and falsely accuses him of stealing his new watch. Shamed in front of his employer of many years, and perhaps suspecting foul play, Hassan’s father Ali (Nabi Tanha) takes his son and leaves. Amir levels this false accusation knowing theft is the sin Baba hates most. “No matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft,” Baba has told him. “When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to her husband, his children’s right to their father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth.” Hosseini’s rape sequence is iconic, and director Marc Forster expertly crafts the scene, as he does many others in the film, in a way that ensures it will remain solidified in viewers’ minds even after they have left the theater. Indeed, the narrative not only affects the cinematic space, it also permeated the actors’ real lives. In an interview with NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, three of the children actors said they were misled about the movie and in retrospect, would not have agreed to participate. The movie’s launch was delayed until December 14, so the studio, Paramount Pictures, could move the actors to the United Arab Emirates, according to reports. It is understandable how the movie, which shows corrupt Taliban leaders taking advantage of young boys, and which pits the secular Baba against the clerics whom he calls “bearded idiots” and “self-righteous monkeys,” is controversial. But to accuse “Kite Runner” of being anti-religious is to focus on some aspects of the script while ignoring others. Even as he defiantly pours himself a whiskey, Baba explains his notion of theft-as-sin. This philosophy serves Baba well, as the narrative unfolds. Fleeing the invading Russians, who would surely target Baba the anti-Communist, father and son find themselves with several refugees in an old truck. At a checkpoint, a Russian soldier agrees to let them pass with a bribe and a half hour with a married passenger. Where others cower, including the woman’s husband, Baba stands up and asks the soldier where his shame is. Via translator, Baba insists, “War doesn’t negate decency … Tell him I’ll take a thousand of his bullets before I let this indecency take place.”  This courage pays off, and a senior Soviet soldier arrives on the scene as the soldier points his gun at Baba and allows the caravan to pass. Another misfortune finds Baba, Amir and their fellow refugees in an empty fuel tank, where Amir has trouble breathing. To pass the time and distract Amir, Baba asks him to recite the sacred poems of Rumi. Even as Baba stands at his most blasphemous moments, he readily turns to the spirit for consolation and salvation. Though Amir incorporates extreme violence in his stories, he freezes in front of the soldier and begs his father to adopt the same pacifist approach he employed during Hassan’s rape. A story Amir wrote back in Kabul serves as a microcosm for the film. “It’s about a man who finds a magic cup,” he explains to the illiterate Hassan, “and he learns that if he weeps into the cup, his tears turn to pearls. He’s very poor, you know.  And at the end of the story, he’s sitting on a mountain of pearls with a bloody knife in his hand and his dead wife in his arms.” Amir is too proud of his story to realize it violates Baba’s rule against stealing, but Hassan asks the obvious question: “Why couldn’t he just smell an onion?”  This angers Amir and perhaps marks the beginning of the decline of the friendship, but Hassan’s question looms large in the film: Why must people seek violence when alternative means are available? As Amir and Baba find new lives in America, they struggle as new émigrés to a country that is hostile to Afghani immigrants. Unfortunate circumstances grant Amir the opportunity to return to his roots, and to “be good again.”  His journey back to Kabul becomes as much about self-discovery and identity as it is about atoning for his mistreatment of Hassan. Throughout the story, the image of the kite serves as the perfect metaphor for Amir’s coming of age, from a selfish young boy to a young man, who is willing to sacrifice for what is right and whose writing nostalgically grapples with his Muslim identity. Like the ladder in Jacob’s dream as he flees his own assailant, his brother Esau, which is rooted in the earth but reaches to the heavens, kites are both bounded and free. Even as Amir and Hassan stand in the rubble of Kabul, even as viewers know to anticipate the destruction that would soon hit the once great city, kites soar up to the heavens and dance among the clouds. However tied to the earth they are, they at least provide a vision of hope and transcendence.

A Washington, D.C.-based writer, Menachem Wecker blogs on religion and art at //Iconia.canonist.com.