I recently saw this movie which is a good adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’. Norwegian Wood was the first novel of Murakami that I had read, and after having read his four other novels, I realize that this was the most lucid and synchronous . The density and postmodern touch that we find in his other novels is missing in this novel, but still it was a delicious treat to gulp and this really had made me switch into the mystical world of Murakami. This novel made Murakami a sort of a rock star in Japan which eventually made him to leave the country for some years.
The title of the novel has been taken from a Beatles song. The song in a way perfectly portrays the dilemma surrounding the characters..”I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me”. The novel is about the quandary of love and the madness surrounding it. Being the most elusive thing, it seems so close in a moment and then in another moment, it is the farthest. It seems to be like entering heaven (or rather here is where heaven gets defined) bewitched by its incipient enthralling emotional trance without any anticipation of the vicious vortex inside it , which cripples one of any understanding of life. And once you are sucked into that whirlpool ,nobody knows what type of a new person one becomes when emerging out of it.
The major difference between the movie and novel is the starting, the novel starts from the recollection of Toru’s experiences of the 1960’s whereas the movie is just about this period.
This novel is a lucid portrayal of the puzzles surrounding love or in a sense the tragedy of love. The story is about Toru Watanabe, who falls in love with his late best friend’s(Kizuki) girlfriend Naoko. The relation starts from consolation to love, but complication arises. The novel is sort of a metaphor for the complications and illogical-ness of love.
Toru falls in love with Naoko, but she is still strongly attached to Kizuki. In one corner of her rational mind she wants to forget Kizuki and get on with Toru, but she and Toru both realise slowly and painfully that love is not rational. The novel shows the illogicality's that surrounds in falling in love and hence the pain that it infuses. The novel when I had first read was addictive, whereas the movie somewhat slowly absorbs you into it. In the movie the portrayal of pain is heightened by the music, mainly by the twanging of violins.
The photography of the movie is exquisite and visually striking as it is done by the ace photographer Ping Bin Lee (who also did Wong Kar Wai’s ‘In the mood for love’).
The title of the novel has been taken from a Beatles song. The song in a way perfectly portrays the dilemma surrounding the characters..”I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me”. The novel is about the quandary of love and the madness surrounding it. Being the most elusive thing, it seems so close in a moment and then in another moment, it is the farthest. It seems to be like entering heaven (or rather here is where heaven gets defined) bewitched by its incipient enthralling emotional trance without any anticipation of the vicious vortex inside it , which cripples one of any understanding of life. And once you are sucked into that whirlpool ,nobody knows what type of a new person one becomes when emerging out of it.
The major difference between the movie and novel is the starting, the novel starts from the recollection of Toru’s experiences of the 1960’s whereas the movie is just about this period.
This novel is a lucid portrayal of the puzzles surrounding love or in a sense the tragedy of love. The story is about Toru Watanabe, who falls in love with his late best friend’s(Kizuki) girlfriend Naoko. The relation starts from consolation to love, but complication arises. The novel is sort of a metaphor for the complications and illogical-ness of love.
Toru falls in love with Naoko, but she is still strongly attached to Kizuki. In one corner of her rational mind she wants to forget Kizuki and get on with Toru, but she and Toru both realise slowly and painfully that love is not rational. The novel shows the illogicality's that surrounds in falling in love and hence the pain that it infuses. The novel when I had first read was addictive, whereas the movie somewhat slowly absorbs you into it. In the movie the portrayal of pain is heightened by the music, mainly by the twanging of violins.
The photography of the movie is exquisite and visually striking as it is done by the ace photographer Ping Bin Lee (who also did Wong Kar Wai’s ‘In the mood for love’).
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