I must preface and say that this blog post will be a rant, a rant about a singular sequence in the film adaptation of Norwegian Wood. Said sequence being Kizuki's suicide.
In the book, Kizuki's suicide is tragic as it is enigmatic. His death impacts the lives of both Toru and Naoko in their established connections to one another, but also because of the sheer abruptness of his suicide. He doesn't inform anyone of it prior to his commitment, choosing to inform no family member nor Naoko or Toru. The most anyone gets out of Kizuki's intentions is when Toru spends time playing pool with Kizuki a day before his suicide. Kizuki responds with "I didn't want to lose today"(p. 24) when Toru notices his stoic drive to win during their games of pool. This suggests Kizuki's desire to spend his last day "winning" rather than going out on a sullen note, but not exactly why he want to "go out" in the first place. All we find out regarding Kizuki's suicide is that he died by self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning in his family's car parked in the garage. No suicide note, no further investigation, nothing. Toru and the reader are left to ponder many factors regarding his death. The length of time, the degree of suffrage Kizuki endured, whether there where attempts to stop the suicide; none of the questions that a reader may pose are ever answered. The same can't be said about the film.
In the film, Kizuki's entire suicide routine is showed. We see him get into the car, release carbon monoxide into the car, and suffer a bit until his death. This sequence answers just about every question one may have regarding his death, leaving little to be pondered. That is until the end. There is a brief moment where the camera lingers on Kizuki flinging to the backseat of the car, seemingly attempting to escape, or no, accept his fate? It's hard to tell what he's doing, and that's what makes those brief seconds within the film so great. We only hear the carbon monoxide permeating throughout the car and Kizuki's grunts of suffrage, all morbidly striking choices. This is however ruined once his noises cease as the camera pans over to Kizuki in the backseat, confirming his death, blue-balling the audience from getting to place the final jigsaw in the puzzle themselves. I honestly eye-rolled in this decision.
In film, the concept of "off-screen space" can be a powerful tool at the disposal of the filmmaker. Off-screen space allows the creative to create a more engaging scene by using sound or other background elements to imply movement or action taking place behind a scene. Although the audience can't see what's going on out of frame, they can infer or deduce based on the scene's off-screen attributions. This allows the film's audience to be actively engaged as they are then required to use their imaginations to understand and deduce the narrative for themselves. Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident, Cannes 2025's Palme d'Or winner, received it's acclaim partially do to a brilliant ending that had utilized off-screen space to manifest a chilling finale. I can't help that if the film was going to alleviate some of the mystery behind Kizuki's suicide, it would have benefited simply from having it all take place in a static shot, obscuring some of the moment-to-moment action within his suicide. With this change, some audience members may think he had suffered with little effect to his body while others may begin to suspect that perhaps he had suffered a violent and hellish death due to the effects of the poisoning, Albeit morbid thoughts, Kizuki's death can continue to feel enigmatic while attempting to show some of it to the audience. You get to have your cake and eat it too!
Overall, I noticed this issue consistently throughout the film. It attempts to be straightforward and to the point when Murakami as a writer is anything but straightforward. It paints Naoko and Toru's death as a tragic love-story while failing to consider the other otherworldly and dream-like elements of the film, leaving nothing up to the imagination. The audience isn't dumb, they can think for themselves!
- DK
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