Dai Sijie's poignant tale of two (educated) Chinese boys from the city banished to a rural village re-education is one of my favorite books from the past 5 years. It is a love story, a criticism of the Cultural revolution but it is mostly a story of the power of fiction, the yearning for it once it is taken away and how your life is enriched (or changed) with the literary experience.
This past Friday, we happened to come across a dvd sale at Blockbuster and saw the movie version of the same book. What excited me was the fact that the author Dai Sijie was the director of the movie as well. This combination is so rare that we ended up purchasing the movie (although we could have rented it for free).
80% of the movie follows the book very closely. And the imagery is hauntingly beautiful which adds to the experience, especially since, not having been to rural China, it is hard to imagine what the scenery looks like and life is like. However, the narrative tends to wander and the books message seems to get lost somewhere in the shuffle. In addition, the movie has an added flashback of the two boys as adults, which further dilutes the message.
All in all, despite the fact that the author=director, Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress suffers from the same fate that most adaptations do.
So my advice is, read the book.
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