Good Reads--Unbroken: Book vs Movie

        Recently, I finished reading Laura Hillenbrand's book Unbroken:  a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.  It follows Louis "Louie" Zamperini's life from childhood through the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games to World War II and his incarceration in a Japanese POW camp onto the end of his life in his nineties.  Then I watched the movie based off the book that was directed and produced by Angelina Jolie which was a relatively faithful translation of the book, but frankly, a movie generally can't compare to a book in terms of content and information.  This is one movie that would be really hard to make it more entertaining than the book.  If it were just an action movie, you could just add more explosions or funnier lines, but since this was a based on a real life story, it is more complex than what you can put into a two hour film.  It could have been a documentary to go into more aspects of Louie's life, but that wouldn't be enough Hollywood "glitz and glam."
     I really like Hillenbrand's writing.  It pulls you forward in the story with clear cut images.  She does a lot of research which she incorporates well into the book.  She did fifty-seven interviews with Louie himself before he died and with many others who knew the stories, including photos and documents that added to the interviews.  She uses imagery, even in the titles of her chapters, that point to the core of each chapter.
     The movie, although good, addressed the main parts of the book, but not in as much detail to do the book justice.  They could have added at least thirty more minutes to cover the major parts at the end of his life.  The movie didn't address the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) after the war or his religious renewal that helped him recover from the war.  In the movie it makes it seem like he was still strong and "unbroken" but in the book Hillenbrand wrote about how he "broke" after the war explaining how he dealt with alcoholism due to PTSD, how he almost destroyed his marriage and lost his money.  He went through a religious salvation by attending a Billy Graham revival encouraged by his wife who forced him to go.  He was able to release his need for revenge toward the Bird that he had pent up all of those years, and go on with more purpose for his life.  Sometimes the story isn't just about the triumph, but the story behind it that shows the work and the problems that people have to deal with.
   Even though the movie is worth seeing, the book gives more to the reader to think about.