Kite Runner Book/Movie Contrast
By: Hannah Beck
Translating a book into a movie can be very hard to do. With books you have chapters and pages on emotions and sentimental feelings to express, but in movies you have a time frame. When you try to make intense emotion come across in a movie, especially one along the lines of Kite Runner, it could turn into a 4 hour long movie. I feel as though the maker of the film Kite Runner did a really weak portrayal of what the author had originally wrote. Due to bad cast and lack of important details. In the book, the characters had distinguishable traits which may have hinted towards certain facts of the characters. The casting for this movie altered some of the important traits which took away from your true understanding of the characters. In the book, the narrator states that Hassan is a descendent of Mongol heritage which was an idea of his status in society. As a Hazara, a young actor who played Hassan, blended in with the rest of the actors to me, as he did look like a Mongol. Another obvious flaw in Hassan’s character was the fact he did not have a harelip, which represented the fact that he was a Hazara and had no money for it to be taken care of. Although the movie makers probably could have easily added one, I believe they chose not to because they felt it was more important to establish and bring out other characters traits in the book, like Baba. Baba’s character in the book came across as a strong, intelligent and intimidating guy. His character was definitely represented in this quote in the book “ At parties, when all six-five-foot of him thundered into the room, attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning in the sun.” (Page 14). Baba’s character definitely portrayed that in the movie but he did not portray the same intimidation as the character in the book. He seemed more relaxed and easy going to me in the movie. I imagined him as a bigger more rough-around-the-edges type. Instead the character that...