Norwegian Wood

Overview

It was always going to be an intimidating task to adapt the bestselling novel of Japan's most popular contemporary author, Haruki Murakami. Norwegian Wood is one of the most anticipated films showing this year. Directed by Tran Ahn Hung, it's the story of university student Toru Watanabe in 1960s Tokyo. Living a solitary life at university, Watanabe runs into Naoko, the beautiful and broken girlfriend of his best friend who has recently committed suicide. Falling in love with her as she goes into a dizzying downward spiral, he has to grapple with responsibility and the irrational devotion of his own heart, while Midori, the kind of girl who makes him promise to take her to a porn film, a really dirty one, to get her over the death of her father, becomes an increasingly important part of his life.

Norwegian Wood is just about my favourite novel. Part of me never wanted a film to be made, but at the same time I wanted the film to match up to the beauty of the novel in my mind. I wanted to love it. And you know what? Norwegian Wood is a spectacularly beautiful film. Some of the shots I wanted to freeze and photograph, frame them and hang them on the wall. The colours, depth of field and structure of each shot evoke perfectly everything that is beautiful in the novel.

But there are problems. A lot of the context of the book is lost in the adaptation, so some of the plot seems confusing, and a lot of the cuts between scenes are disorientating. And although the soundtrack was composed by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, the music often felt bossy and overly sentimental. The most affective scenes are the ones where there's no music at all — one in particular brought me to tears, and I never, ever, cry in films. So while it might help if you've read the book, you should definitely check out Norwegian Wood as soon as you're able.