Book vs. Movie

Everyone says “a picture is worth a thousand words” and that so much can be incorporated into a film with unlimited possibilities yet this screening did not seem to reach its potential. When I first picked up the book, I did not have high expectations yet with each turn of the page my expectations were heightened by the way the story unfolded and came together. It was just so powerful that I put those expectations on the movie. Even though I had seen the movie three years ago, it was almost as if I had amnesia because the book made me forget what actually happened in the movie and hopeful that the movie would be almost as good as the book. By the end of the first scene, I was completely disappointed in the movie’s representation of The Kite Runner. There are many things that made this movie so vastly different from the book. The lack of emotions, background story, and incorrect sequencing did not fully capture the relationships that were being paralleled.

            The first thing that caught my eye when watching the movie was the fact that the dates were different than the ones in the book. It made the movie seem out of touch than the book. Even though the movies are different than the books, I would have expected that the dates would have matched those from the book. Also, the sequencing in the movie was off. Certain events that occurred later in the book occurred earlier. As I continued watching the movie, I did not get the feeling that Amir and Hassan had done everything together and were very close but at the same time distant. To me, the lack of background information throughout the movie made it difficult to understand what was truly going on in the story or what the story was actually about. The movie made it seem that Amir and Hassan were two boys who grew up together, had a rough patch, and then never spoke again.

            There are many things I would have changed about the movie to make it a little more similar to the book. Some of the cast did not match how I pictured certain people in the book. Little details about certain characters were left off which bothered me. There was no distinction between the way Amir and Hassan looked, besides their clothing, in the movie. While reading the book, I imagined Hassan shorter than the boy who was casted in the movie. In the book, Hassan was given a cleft lip and for his birthday Baba had his cleft lip fixed that left a scar. In the movie, Hassan did not seem to have any birth defects and Baba had given Hassan a kite, which the two boys flew in the kite tournament. To me, it did not fully capture Baba’s love for Hassan as the book did. The scene where Rahim Khan asks to read Amir’s story was completely different than the book. Again, there was no concept that Amir strived to please his father, there did not seem to be any jealousy towards Hassan, and there was no comparison between the two boys. As I watched the movie, there were certain scenes where I thought should have had more emotion to allow the viewer to feel what the characters felt at that particular moment. I felt that at certain points the man who played Amir should have been narrating and giving at least some background information.

            In my opinion, the book was more enjoyable than the movie. The book was able to tug at your emotions and you were able to relate to the characters where as in the movie, it was just another story between two childhood friends who grew apart after one had left. The movie seemed as if it was a collection of clips that were pieced together and not placed correctly. It seemed boring.