What was immediately striking to me were the portrayals of Naoko and Midori, particularly the former. In the book proper, she is communicated entirely through the eyes of Toru; we have no particular agency of observation, no way of escaping the biases and sensitivities of this story’s boku, and so can only see Naoko for what she is to him, not for ourselves. The movie, I think, was so surprising in its casting/ directing choices surrounding Naoko merely because it was our first time seeing her as an independent body, one which permits the formation of an individual opinion. I could not help but think that “everything felt so much less awkward in the novel,” despite so little of the characters themselves changing, and I think much of it is to do with the radical shift from inner to outer—something I didn’t realize was so central to the text until I saw otherwise. As in the book, Naoko and Toru reunite, take scenic walks together, celebrate her birthday, and intimately confront one another through sex, but it is without the unmoving silences and nervous, meek deliveries filtered out of novel-Toru’s limited (and biased) sense-perception (and so, ours). Toru affords Naoko all of the grace and patience available, but the film, in its wholly different state, hands that power to us as well; we are free to consume and analyze Naoko unmediated. Her body language and gaze are on full display, and the pauses in conversation where the next move is hers, when she weakly performs her desire to be closer to Toru, when the two are sharing a moment that altogether would feel warm with a different couple (such as Toru and Midori), she relays messages of discomfort, repression—she is more observably mentally ill. The chemistry between the two struggles to burgeon, and interactions are (intentionally) left feeling forced or incorrect; something is missing.
Midori, by contrast, is sharp and active, carrying herself with a vitality that brings a certain freshness to scenes with Toru. Where Naoko is seen inhabiting nature (the Hostel), a grayer piece of familiar life in this new, other world, Midori is nature, or at least an agent of it, and is participant in the act of being alive. She’s confident and inappropriate, talking of sex with little regard for social (cultural, not essentially natural) conventions, and is ever willing to decry unfairness or maltreatment (like in her laments of the university’s political organizations); she is subject to no one’s ideology but her own. Her mind is natural, untouched by the wills of others, entirely self-sustaining, and therefore admirable. She attracts Toru quickly and is portrayed, at least to me, in a more feminine way than her original literary counterpart, her genuine unfetteredness accompanying (or maybe, rather, manifesting) an execution of lithe femininity. The cinematography also contributes another dimension to Midori’s significance—and connection to nature—in its use of color. Green permeates the film, following Toru through Tokyo, to the Hostel, and into Midori’s home, her balcony of thriving plants the backdrop of their first kiss. Where green is found, life follows, and in the urbanity of Tokyo living, it is concentrated around her.
Ryan
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