As far as I can tell the movie has been very true to the book. Of course there a few scenes here and there that has been cut too much for my taste, but when you make a book into a film it is unavoidable. There are also a lot of mistakes with the characters in the movie that makes it a bit difficult to immediately understand which characters they are. What I mean by that is that a lot of the characteristics from the book have been dropped in the movie. Examples of this are Hassan’s harelip, Assef's blonde hair and Ali being crippled.
In English class we have made a double entry journal about the kite runner. I will now compare what I wrote about self realization to the movie.
In my double entry journal I wrote about the moment when Hassan is leaving the house and Amir is watching him from the window. I used the quote "I was sorry, but I didn't cry and I didn’t chase the car." that can be found on page 94 in the book. I used it because I thought it was a good example of self realization. In the book Amir compared Hassan leaving to a Hindi movie, which was something Hassan and Amir enjoyed watching. In a Hindi movie Amir would have run after Hassan and cried and said he was sorry, but in real life he just stood there. I was moved to tears by this in the book, but in the movie I just didn't feel it.
In the movie this scene only takes a few seconds. You can see Amir looking out of the window, the car leaving and that's it. I believe that this was an important turning point that got way to little attention in the movie. I can understand that it is difficult to use the Hindi movie comparison in a film since we can't hear what Amir is thinking, but still it was disappointing. If I had only seen the movie and not read the book, I would not have marked this scene as an important moment of self realization.
A very interesting comment about this particular incident in the movie. It makes you wonder if they could have done it any different in the movie. I see what you mean. Because that particular moment is a very important part of the lives of so many. And it is very well described in the book as you point out. Well written Eline, I enjoyed reading your post.
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