Norwegian Wood : Tran Anh Hung

I have a little bit aversion to watch movie based on books which I have already read, like Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust (1983) by James Ivory. I have a bit more reluctance to go for a movie based on classic which I haven't read yet, like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (2012) by Joe Wright or Hugo's Les Misérables (2012) by Tom Hooper. But I am interested at most to watch a movies adapted from books that I have zero chances to read though I keen to read & the original story is improvised during screenplay adaptation, like Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) by Edward Berger.

Murakimi's Norwegian Wood (2010) by Tran Anh Hung doesn't fit into any of these above stream, but I've watched it to have taste of Hung's works as a good representation. 

 And, as I am on the long road to be a filmmaker once in my lifetime, I think it's time for no more streams divisions on screen adaptations from books. I  have to taste every possible adaptations onwards.

Death, loss, suffering and remembrance are more or less the constant states in most human life. When you cannot put aside your remembering of loss and  start living a new. You shut down many doors and windows of your possible realities. In short,  you minimize your self. You fall short of your identity. And the sufferings pass to your next doors and wiindows. 

To transfer the aesthetics of  Murakimi's pages to the screen is a hard thing to achieve, especially internal tension of the characters. But Hung did his best to catch the beauty of the woods where Toru and Noako makes best cenematic romance scens with wide angled arial shots, the ornamented stones and caves where Toru consume best secluded life a man can lead, and outworldly snow season when a man can't resist but to come out as one's true self.

In the end, Norwegian Wood is knowing oneself at fullest form.

🎬Norwegian Wood [2010]

(ノルウェイの森, Noruwei no Mori)

Tran Anh Hung 

Japanese, Japan