Storm Trooper in Norwegian Wood Movie :(

I don’t know…I found storm trooper to be one of the most important characters in the book. In the movie, I felt that he was just used as a brief source of comic relief in the beginning, and then written out with no explanation. For me, the saddest moment in the book is when Toru finds out storm trooper has left without a word. Though storm trooper does not die, his loss seems to impact Toru like a death would, leaving something empty inside. Storm trooper seemed to animate his life, lifting him out of his general state of apathy. On Toru’s walks with Naoko, his stories of storm trooper made Naoko laugh the most. Storm trooper’s exit in the story affected his relationship with Naoko; they didn’t really have much to laugh about after he was gone. I think the dynamic between Toru, Naoko, and storm trooper is important, even though Naoko and storm trooper never meet. In this novel, there is almost always an intermediary between a two-person relationship: Toru with Naoko and Kizuki, Reiko with Toru and Naoko, Toru with Nagasawa and Hatsumi. Relationships are not bilateral, they are held together by a much larger social fabric. Storm trooper serves to show how relationships between two people cannot exist in a vacuum; people who never meet are still deeply interconnected. Toru’s loss of storm trooper undoes a part of the social web which connects him with others; this loss bleeds into his relationship with Naoko, darkening it. It really bothered me that this narrative was written out of the movie, especially in the context of Naoko and Toru’s conversations. I feel that their walks were a bit flat and one-dimensional without those moments of laughter and feelings of connectedness with an outside world beyond the two of them. In a way, storm trooper was Naoko and Toru’s tether to the real world, something in the present moment so that their relationship was not only defined by their past. I think these cuts hurt the movie overall; without storm trooper, the movie doesn’t capture Murakami’s themes surrounding social relationality, or Toru’s connection/disconnection with his dormitory's culture, as well as it could. I think I am just fixated on this one moment though, and I thought the movie was good while I was watching it. 

Juliet