Norwegian Wood - ノルウェイの森

This film is an adaptation of Haruki Murakami's most famous novel. The director is French/Thai, but the cast and most of the crew are Japanese. The film is in Japanese, but the titles and credits are bilingual, so it's very obviously going to get international release (which makes sense given Murakami's stature throughout the world).

When Murakami wrote the novel, it was his attempt at writing something more normal and less "magical" or "surreal" than most of his other work. He wanted to see if he could write a realistic romantic novel. He succeeded, and the fame that followed his success drove him to flee Japan for Europe -- he couldn't stand the scrutiny and didn't want to be on variety shows and become a TV celebrity. The book was originally published in two volumes (which is common with Japanese novels), and they sported different colored covers - the first half in red and the second half in green. This follows the themes and semiotics of the book, especially since the main female character in the second half of the novel is named "Midori," which means "green." Fans of the novel took to wearing sweaters the color of the volume they preferred.

The book and film are both titled "Norway's Forest" if you translate them literally, which is a mistranslation of the "wood" in the title of the song. The song talks about the furnishings (shelves, table maybe - not chairs) in a girl's apartment - all made of "Norwegian wood." The song's title was mistranslated on the Japanese edition of the album, and so it stuck. The song holds a huge significance to the story, as the first chapter mentions it, and it appears at three other times in the story. Two scenes in the novel also recreate elements of the song with great contrast, and the line "I set a fire" is developed into two distinct metaphors at odds with one another. It's masterful and subtle, and could be easily missed if you're not reading carefully and giving Murakami credit for his craftsmanship.

Which is what happens in the film, sadly. It's a gorgeous film, from a photographic perspective. Lush but dark. Tempestuous. It captures the internal struggles of Naoko, the female lead in the red volume. And the director is definitely a red-sweater fan, because Midori gets short shrift. She's here, but her story is sacrificed to give Naoko's tale much more focus. Rather than having the two characters function like the yin and yang they are in the novel, Midori becomes a more subtle foil. Another female character nearly gets as much treatment, though in the novel she's a much more minor character.

The film is stark at times, and the director makes some choices that shocked me, a bit. The cast he's assembled are very good - the lead, Watanabe, is played by the actor who starred in Detroit Metal City and who played "L" in the Deathnote movies. He's been a rising star for quite some time, and he does an excellent job, here. Naoko is played by Rinko Kikuchi, who is best known as the deaf Japanese girl in Babel. She's also in the Japanese adaptation of Sideways, playing the Sandra Oh part. Contrasting that role with her performance here gives a really good sense of her range. Very impressive. The other two main actresses are good... but I felt they were miscast. Midori wasn't right at all, and Reiko was too pretty, and too refined. The portrayal of Reiko also undermines a scene near the end of the film, which becomes far more melodramatic than it was in the novel, and undermines its funciton as a catharsis for the whole story.

If I had to sum up what I saw in the film, it's that the director uses the wrong lense (figuratively) for his take on the novel. The novel is about 1967-1971 (or so) as seen through the filter of the early 1980's. Unfortunately, the setting gets pushed back to be almost purely color, whereas the novel is an exploration of the motives and regrets inherent in Japan's conflicted version of the Summer of Love and student uprisings. We're outside all of that, in the film, escaping from it. The novel, instead, is a rejection of it, and an admission that it is inescapable.

It's worth watching. The cinematography, as I said, was breathtaking at times. The scenes of Japanese countryside and coastlines are beautiful and sometimes surprising. The performances are better than competent... and even impressive at times. But if you're a Murakami fan, this is going to be an oddly surreal experience, as you know what's going to happen, but the characters, pacing, and thematic impact are all shifted to other purposes. If you've never read Murakami, and you like long, slow-moving films with French sensibilities, or maybe if you're a Terrence Malick fan, I'd recommend the movie.