Norwegian Wood (the film)

 Norwegian Wood (the film) is probably one of the weakest adaptations of a book I’ve seen in a while. I don’t entirely blame the director, since much of Murakami’s magic comes from how he uses thoughts and internal conflict to make things both cerebral and deeply emotional, which is obviously hard to translate into film. However, the actual story decisions are pretty baffling. Cutting out much of Toru’s acclimation to Tokyo and his time reconnecting with Naoko causes him to lose a great deal of the depth we enjoy in the book; this is further exacerbated by having the two’s sex scene happen 20 minutes. While I think the actual scene is handled pretty well and plays with the idea of Naoko being dead thereafter, it feels like it happens way too soon. I think the overarching issue I have with the movie is that it seems to sacrifice a good deal of Toru’s personal development in favor of his relationship with Naoko, which only serves to hurt the relationship. I think the movie gets a little better near the end as it slows the pace down significantly. This comes at the cost of cutting almost all of the scenes focusing on Midori’s father is the biggest travesty as it just ends up completely mischaracterizing Midori. Overall I wouldn’t even recommend the movie to someone who’s read the book since almost all the decisions are terrible, and I wouldn’t recommend it prior to reading since it doesn’t really give a good impression of the book.

-Nicholas