Norwegian Wood

Tran Anh Hung

The story: Tokyo college student Toru Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) encounters a dead friend’s former girlfriend Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) in the city and the two strike up a tentative relationship. At the same time, he is also drawn to Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), a free-spirited girl who is the opposite of Naoko in temperament. Then tragedy strikes again. Based on Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s 1987 novel of the same name.

This was never going to be an easy book to adapt for the big screen.

Haruki Murakami’s breakthrough novel was a deeply intimate portrayal of youthful melancholy, uncertainty and desire and how they all dissolve into one another.

Toru Watanabe is figuring out his identity and exploring his sexuality in a rite of passage that most young adults go through.

But for him, the shadow of his best friend’s unexplained suicide looms over everything.

In the book, we are privy to his thoughts and events are seen from his point of view. In the film, he comes across as more of a cipher.

In one scene, what is attributed to Toru in the book is said by Naoko in the film when she muses that it would be better if people went back and forth between 18 and 19 instead of growing older.

He merely reacts to what she says and we lose that little bit of insight into what makes him tick.

This idea of a passive Toru is reinforced by him constantly saying “Of course” in conversation. Co-scriptwriter and director Tran Anh Hung also portrays him walking through campus, almost oblivious to the student protests erupting around him in the tumult of the late 1960s.

It could be argued that the film-maker intends the passivity as Toru’s way of coping, but it also makes it more difficult to feel for the character.

The film also feels more intensely oppressive. Little touches of humour that leaven the mood in the book, such as the comic episodes involving Toru’s roommate whom he nicknames “Storm Trooper”, have been excised.

What keeps the movie watchable are the performances. Kenichi Matsuyama, best known as the detective L in the Death Note adaptations, imbues the character of Toru with a degree of vulnerability despite his passivity.

Rinko Kikuchi seems to have an affinity for emotionally volatile roles. Feral in Babel (2006), she is touchingly fragile here.

Model-actress Kiko Mizuhara’s sunny charm is the perfect counterpoint to Kikuchi’s darker allure.

The protagonists unfold their drama amid beautifully framed outdoor vistas, a signature of Tran’s also seen in The Scent Of Green Papaya (1993) and Cyclo (1995). In a powerful scene set in a desolate spot with thunderous crashing waves in the background, Matsuyama telegraphs raw and overwhelming grief as Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s sweeping score builds to a climax.

By the end, we care enough that Toru seems to be taking a step in the direction of life and healing, even if he is not completely out of the woods.

(ST)