White Oleander

White Oleander: Book vs. Movie

Like with most books that are made into movies, this was definitely a disappointment. I have always found that books can tell much better stories than what you see on screen, this was no different.

The movie easily cut out very important parts of the story. The beginning of the book is so important because you really get the feel for the weird mother-daughter relationship between Astrid and her Mother. In the movie you only get to see a small portion of how Astrid's Mother treats her. Also, in the movie they do not tell the whole story about Astrid's Mother and the man that she murdered. I could go on and on listing the many things that we left out that are so important to the story.

The actors in the movie were incredibly in sync with the characters portray ed in the book. They made the perfect matches of the innocent Astrid who has to grow up so quickly. Her Mother who is so beautiful, strong willed, and has such a whimsical, unreal sense to her. When I think of the characters in the book I can definitely picture the actors in the movie.

The hardships that Astrid came upon were in to way reflected as they should have been in the movie. There are so many events and people that influenced Astrid to do the things and make the decisions that she did and they were completely left out of the movie. It is kind of hard to understand why Astrid resents her Mother they way she does if you do not know the whole story of the hardships that her Mother put her through by being selfish and not thinking of what would happen to Astrid if she got caught the way she did.

In conclusion, the movie was not all that great to begin with and compared to the book it only seems worse. Although the actors did a great job it cannot make up for the fact that the story was butchered by the movie.