The Kite Runner

Again comes from another abode of mine
Nov 24,2008
The movie I watched this weekend -The Kite Runner -all you bookworms out there - you are right,you have heard this name.This movie is the movie version of the book by the same name.Its just when you have spent so much time reading the book,watching it as a two and a half hour movie will make you feel like hurriedly browsing through the book.No doubt,the director had to omit certain sequences.Another thing I realized was -the visual upper hand of cinema or the hints,the sophistications of the camera and the deep implications of certain scenes -nothing could match the standard set by the descriptions of Khalid Hosseini.Great camera work with the sand laden mountains could not make Afghanistan as b'ful as it was in the words of author.The movie could not recreate the smell of Kabobs,which I could smell while reading the book.Soraya Jan was just another character in the movie,in words of Khalid,even her name could make you imagine her beauty.And,Khalid made sure you end up feelin' like weeping the night you read about Hassan's incidence.In the movie it comes and goes.The plight and trauma of Hassan,stretched across a few pages -the most heart rendering pages- never appeared on screen.The change of season,was swift as a moment where they show the snow melting away and the summers ushering in.So typical.This season which was so life changing for everybody in the book was simply lost in this melting snow.The irony is -the director has tried to visualize everything that is implicit in the book,and whatever is so palpable in the book, especially the emotions -are all so implicit in the movie.Now, I don't know how would one who hasn't read the book will find the movie...but for those, who loved the book,it's just a quick review of the book :).I believe Khalid is powerful enough with the words to make a movie reel in -in the back of your mind as you read the book , and that movie is much more b'ful.
Anyways , the good parts of the movie -the characters - exactly the same faces you'd have imagined-exactly the same locations,that make you feel like "deja vu"...dialogues delivered in the same way -you repeated them in your mind.
And the best part -Hassan - I don't know-who was more Hassan like -the sweet little boy in the movie or the character of Khalid - this boy evokes the same kind of admiration for Hassan -and I just wish he occupied more screen space...
The most emotional part -when a grown-up Amir thinks of boy-Hassan in retrospect -running across fields , after Amir reads the letter by Hassan which he gets after Hassan's death.