Tuesday Book Matinee: Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

The good news is that young people in Tokyo circa 1969 all had spacious apartments.  Not just spacious but darn cool, too.  Even the dorm rooms were on the large side.  This pleases me because I was under the impression that everyone in Tokyo lived in very small, cramped apartments.  When I was in college in the 1980's, I had to share my first apartment with two other guys, but college students in late 1960's Japan all had their own apartments.  Must have been nice.

Tran Ahh Hung's 2009 film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood sticks very close to the Haruki Murakami novel.  He has removed just about all of the novel's humor, but the rest of the book is still there.  Watching Norwegian Wood this weekend, I really began to wonder if I had imagined the funny parts in the book, or maybe I just didn't get what was really going on so what seemed funny to me was actually extremely sad.  Things can get lost in translation.

The people in Tran Ahh Hung's movie are not funny. They're very depressing, actually.  While the book is about a young man and woman who are dealing with the suicide of their best friend, there were quite a few funny parts.   Maybe the filmmaker shied away from the book's funny parts because so many of them were about sex.  Turns out, if you remove all of the humor from sex, it's pretty depressing.

In my review of the novel, I mentioned a scene where the young woman Midori tells the protagonist Toru Watanabe the details of a sexual fantasy she has been having about him.  I stopped short of describing the entire dialogue because in order to deliver the scene's punch lines I would have had to use some language I don't normally use on this blog.  I was pleased to see this same scene make it into Tran Ahh Hung's adaptation, but surprised to find that he also stopped short of the scene's punch lines.  He had also given the scene to Naoko, the girl who is still trying to work through the suicide of their best friend instead of Midori the much more free-spirited girl.  What had been a very funny scene in the book, became basically a lifeless one in the movie.  The depressed girl tells a sad fantasy to an emotionless boy.

But the trailer looks very good.  Watch the trailer before you read further. Be sure to note all the cool apartments.

You'll notice in the trailer that there is a scene of  Toru Watanabe played by Kenichi Matsuyama walking along through a large protest march of flag carrying, blue helmeted young men.  The actor betrays no emotion, does not appear to react to the events around him at all. This is how he will look throughout the entire movie, emotionless.  I've long heard that actors are supposed to inhabit the moment, that being in the moment is key to a successful performance.  Mr. Matsuyama appears to be outside of everything he is involved in, as though he's really somewhere else.  

This is problem in a love story.  

But I blame the director.  

I should say that the movie does come to life when Kiko Mazuhara, the young actress who plays Midori, is on screen.  She is perfect for this part.  I wish the director had kept more of her scenes in the film.  There's about 12 minutes of footage showing Watanabe walking around Tokyo looking emotionless that could have been cut.


Read the book!