When reading Khaled Hosseini’s, The Kite Runner, the reader will venture on the journey of Amir’s twisted life. They will experience his guilt, his sins, his love, and his desire to be good again. Director Marc Forster brought this heart-breaking novel to the big screen in 2007, casting Khalid Abdalla as the middle aged Amir and Ali Danish Bakhtyari as Sohrab. The movie and the novel have many things in common that make this movie as enjoyable as the book, even if there are a lot of minor differences.
For starters, let’s analyze the differences between the two. The structure of the movie is slightly off compared to the book. In the novel, the first chapter is Amir discussing the phone call he received from Rahim Khan. However, in the movie, Amir picks up the phone before the flashback happens. From there we see the young Amir and young Hassan living out their lives in Kabul, Afghanistan. When Amir begins to write his own stories, Rahim Khan’s entrance into this portion of Amir’s life differs. In the movie, Rahim Khan invites himself in, whereas in the book he only enters when Baba ignores Amir’s newly found talent. Little differences like this are littered throughout the movie. Some major differences include Amir’s age when he travels to the United States and Amir’s adventure back in Afghanistan. In the novel, Amir is eighteen when he leaves with his father for the United States. While Amir is in Afghanistan, the plot is extremely skewed. In the novel, Amir goes to Afghanistan to visit the dying Rahim Khan, with the only inspiration being Rahim Khan’s words, “There is a way to be good again.” When Amir gets there, he learns of Hassan’s death and his orphan son. In the movie he does acquire this information, but the reveal is less emotional than the book. In the novel, Rahim Khan tricks Amir into going for Sohrab by saying there is an orphanage run by a couple of Americans who will surely take him in. In the movie, they jump right to the case and flat out tell Amir to adopt Sohrab, missing the element of deceit and Amir’s inner struggle. Amir’s trek to acquire Sohrab from Assef’s clutches is about the same as the novel, until Sohrab and Amir leave Assef’s office. In the novel, Amir is so badly injured that he is in the hospital for days on end, whereas in the movie he suffers from minor injuries. Also, the movie cuts out Sohrab’s fear of orphanages, which leads to Sohrab’s attempt at suicide, that being the whole reason Sohrab shuts himself away from the rest of the world once he gets to the United States with Amir. Even though the ending of the movie changes from the novel, both forms of this story share many common details. The movie did a great job of depicting Amir, as well as keeping true to the Farsi language spoken in Afghanistan. The movie depicts Amir’s last kite fight as a child perfectly, even including Hassan’s tragic punishment from Assef and his ‘friends.’ They keep true to the overall plot by sending Baba and Amir to America, where Baba soon dies of cancer and Amir marries Soraya. They include Baba’s growing pride for his son while Amir graduates and gets married. The movie stays true to Amir’s visit with Rahim Khan, and even include the important fact that Amir and Hassan are half-brothers. Even though minor details still take away from the performance, Marc Forster’s interpretation of The Kite Runner stayed accurate to the novel for most of the movie. The ending was skewed, though that could be because of run time. There are definitely elements that could have made the movie more accurate to the novel, but the movie is still as enjoyable as the novel.
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