Just finished reading the book and watching the movie

I honestly have no idea how it's taken me this many years to read the book, but I guess it was just never quite enough on my radar until recently, and I have to say it's easily one of my favorite books I've read recently! I've been reading a lot recently, too, and this book just hit me really freaking hard. In a way it gave me a lot of the same vibes that The Book Thief did, just in a different setting.. but equally as powerful, with many examples of both beautiful, sweet and tender moments as well as horrifying tragedy and grief. And all gorgeously written.

With that said, the movie... I'm really torn, because on the one hand, there were some things I really did appreciate so much about the movie; namely that they did do so much of it in Farsi, true to the book, and that they had native Afghans play the roles! It was really refreshing to see that, and lent a real sense of authenticity to the film. I also thought it was shot very beautifully, and it was all very true to the vibe of the book.

But even so, something was kind of... missing for me. The emotion just never quite got there. And I'm not sure if that was maybe partially because I'd imagine it's tougher to find native Afghan actors (especially kid actors) who speak the language and also have some prior acting experience. Not that any of them did a bad job by any means, and the kids were all pretty darn adorable (especially the boy who played Hassan was just precious!), but it's just all of those roles - especially Amir and Sohrab - are really not easy to play. There's such intense emotion there, and I feel like things ended up getting simplified a bit for the movie, either in terms of how the scenes were played or, in Sohrab's case, a lot of the really intense stuff being cut all together which made the ending far less gutting. The rape scene was of course still really painful to watch, but even that I think may have partly been because the way it was done in book still rang so powerfully in my head.

The other thing I think might have really helped heighten the movie a bit is if it had kept some narration for Amir. I'm not always an advocate of narration- it's not always necessary- but in this particular case, again, because the relationships in the story are so complex, I feel you don't get that deep understanding of just how much guilt Amir carries with him after what happens to Hassan. In fact, I can understand how people who have only seen the movie might have a really hard time empathizing with Amir, because all you really see is that he runs away and then is acting awful to Hassan after that. And of course that's exactly what happens in the book as well (and yes, Amir's actions are still incredibly awful to read), but in the book you understand very clearly why he's doing it. It doesn't make it right, it doesn't make it less selfish, but his guilt is so ever-present at every stage that you can come to empathize with his yearning for some form of redemption, and rooting for him when he gets the chance to do better.

There's also Amir's complicated relationship with Baba that's so well understood in the book but a bit glossed over in the movie. And you can't really have Amir, in his youth, actually explaining all of those things outright... especially in terms of the truth behind why he runs away during the rape, the only way you can really have that voiced is through narration. There are some books that are action-based enough that you can lose the narration and not lose too much (and in some cases- The Hunger Games, for instance- you can actually have something gained by showing a wider perspective on things). But in this case, the narration is so much at the heart of understanding of these characters, I feel like even if you did have totally impeccable acting, it still wouldn't fully be able to translate without the narration.

Lastly, the tension never got quite high enough... I mean in the book the stakes were genuinely incredibly high, especially when it came to Assef. Obviously the fact that he's a freaking pedophile and rapist was still very much present in the movie, so the stakes couldn't get too low, but in the book he's not just those things but also incredibly insane, capable of massacre without even batting an eye, and 100% would have killed Amir with only the help of some brass knuckles if it hadn't been for Sohrab having his slingshot on him. What is a very near death experience for Amir in the book, and a fight that takes him months to fully recover from, doesn't come across as much more than a few good punches in the face that leave him swollen for a few days in the movie. So I don't even so much care about the fact that they didn't give Assef the blond hair and blue eyes, as much as I care that he just didn't seem as dangerous as he did in the book. Or maybe dangerous isn't even the right word, because factually in the movie he still IS very dangerous.. but in the book he just outright made my stomach churn in every way, which the JOY he took in everything he did, and in the movie he just didn't leave that kind of impact on me.

So as much I REALLY wanted to love this movie as much as I loved the book... it never quite got there for me. It's very faithful and very authentic, and yet the highs don't reach quite as high and the lows don't go as low. I probably would have found it a very nice film independent of the book, but after the impact that the book had on me, I couldn't help but want a little more out of the movie.

It's still worth watching though, I think! The book was just far more affecting for me :)


Oh Bambi, I cried so hard when those hunters shot your mommy. - Kurt Hummel