I couldn’t think of a better person to score Norwegian Wood than Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood. His compositions often have the same melancholic yet stirring mood that defines Murakami’s writing. His work on this film is no exception – it is understated and quietly heartbreaking. The score does not overpower the scenes but instead seeps into them seamlessly, infusing them with an unspoken sadness.
Then there’s the interesting connection (at least to me) between Norwegian Wood’s soundtrack and Radiohead’s Present Tense. Greenwood’s Mata Ai Ni Kuru Kara Ne and Iiko Dakara Damattete share nearly the exact same chord progression as Present Tense (and both are even in the same key that Radiohead plays live). In my estimation, given that early versions of Present Tense probably existed long before it was released on A Moon Shaped Pool in 2016, it’s very possible that Greenwood wrote the progression first, used it for the film, and later repurposed it for Radiohead. I thought this was pretty neat.
While the score does a lot of heavy lifting, I found that the film itself struggles. It’s visually stunning, of course. But the pacing is strange and some characters, especially Midori and Reiko become sort of lifeless and flat. To me, one of the most well-executed and powerful aspects of the novel is how it portrays Watanabe’s emotional state – not just his profound grief that strips him of his sense of purpose but also the contradictions within him. In the novel, Watanabe is both reflective and impulsive, emotionally numb at times yet deeply affected by others at other times. The novel brilliantly puts the reader inside Watanabe's head, thus allowing them to experience how grief affects his whole perception of the world. The film, unfortunately, struggles with that. To be fair, this was exactly what I expected from a film adaptation of a Murakami novel – I feel like it is very difficult to translate his introspective narration to the screen.
Irina
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