I found many differences between the movie and the book. Most notably, the pacing is MUCH faster. The movie barely touched on the parts with Watanabe’s crazy roommate, the student protest, and Nagasawa. This is understandable, as a movie can’t drag out the story like a book can. The movie skipped the whole part about Toru’s girlfriend in Kobe, which was an interesting choice. Also, during Toru and Naoko’s first walk in the forest, when I read the book I didn’t think they were so quiet, but I realized in the movie that they barely talked at all. To be honest, I thought these two have zero chemistry (at least in the beginning) and have no idea how they got this close.
The character in the movie that matched closest with my imagination from the book is Midori. She is bubbly, speaks whatever is on her mind, and fashionable like I remembered. Reiko looks older than I imagined her to be. I imagined Reiko would be closer in age with Naoko, but maybe that is just because I didn’t read the book enough (after a search, indeed she is in her 30s and I just did not read enough). Also, I know the movie was filmed in 2010, but it feels a lot older than it actually is. Like, the film just does not feel modern, and definitely not targeted toward western audiences.
Murakami himself said that the book was written with the mindset of being “100% realistic.” However, from how the movie was directed and with the eerie music, it feels more dreamlike than realistic. I feel like this is a deliberate choice to capture the mood of the book, which I can see. The movie progressed so fast that it feels a bit surreal to be honest.
-Allen
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