Not as Good as the Book

Today I go back to the school to get ready for this next school year. Among the conversations I'm sure I'll have over the next week before students arrive, I dread one in particular. Over the summer I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Good stuff for the most part. As the summer drew to its close, I checked the movie out as well. Not so much good stuff.

I think English teachers in general like to talk about how a movie never is as good as a book, but this time things seem different. When I watched Beowulf, and enjoyed it, I knew that my colleagues would not be such fans. "Beowulf sleeps with Grendel's mother? I don't remember that in the book." But it didn't bother me. I thought it worked well because the fire dragon always seemed like this weird thing that somebody just added to the end because they couldn't think of a way to kill off the hero. So the getting it on with the sea hag made the last chapter of the film work (though I think she should have died at some point).

With The Kite Runner, a different problem rears its boring head: the film follows the book almost perfectly. And it's dull. What makes the book interesting is Amir's own guilt over everything that he has done to his friend/servant, Hassan. But the only reason one gets to see this is the first-person narrative. The film covers every event in the book, but it's all just stuff happening. Nowhere in the movie does one get the feeling of Amir's guilt. Instead one sits through a movie that feels like forever but doesn't take enough time to make anyone care.

I dread the upcoming conversations. I'm know that everybody will agree the the movie wasn't as god as the book. But I don't know that everybody will see why. I think an English teacher curse is to love a book more without taking the time to care why.

To be continued...