On Norwegian Wood's film version

 In general, I found the portion of Norwegian Wood that we watched in class to be more fast-paced than I had expected. There was also less dialogue than I thought there would be, making the plot flow feel somewhat disjointed and sparse in detail. On the other hand, I thought the casting for Midori and Naoko was really well done.

The use of setting also stood out to me. Notably, the forest was used as background scenery in many more scenes than Murakami had put in the book. Specifically, Midori and Toru sit together on a bench in the woods; Naoko and Toru's walk together doesn't ever show them leaving the forest; and Toru first meets Reiko in the forest instead of inside one of Ami Hostel's buildings, as Murakami had written it. I suppose the director was attempting to make the forest a much more central motif than it originally was in order to better match the book's title. This change also could have been to create more continuity between Toru's interactions with each woman, creating a more obvious link between them for the viewer. Or maybe it's just to more intensely foreshadow Naoko's death in the forest.

However, the biggest scene change for me was that of Toru and Midori's first kiss. Rather than kissing out on the balcony as they watched a burning building, the director chose to make them kiss by a window as the rain pours down outside. I don't know whether this decision was made in order to tone down Midori's eccentricity (it was her suggestion to watch a building burn down for fun, after all) or if this was meant to add to the element of rain Murakami employs in the book (like the scene where Toru and Midori kiss on the street in the middle of a rainstorm). Murakami's rain scenes make me think of what he wrote in "Abandoning a Cat" about raindrops representing people: each drop (person) has their own story, fears, etc. but once they merge with others and form a collective, none of it matters. If this is the case here too, I think rain adds to the sense of understanding between Toru and Midori in the moment as they kiss. Both characters are able to lay down their respective worries (Midori's being her family issues and Toru's being Naoko's condition) and become one for a moment (physically through the act of kissing and emotionally through the connection they feel to one another). 

Overall, I don't dislike the movie but I feel the book has more substance to it. However, if the rest of the movie slows down a bit and digs into the character's exchanges a bit more, it could be better redeemed.

Sloane 

Norwegian Wood: Film vs Book

 Hello Class, 

The main difference that I want to highlight is the loss of Murakami's slow and subtle building of emotion and understanding in Norwegian Wood. The movie seems to lose the subtlety of Naoko's eventual departure to the sanatorium. 

To start, when Naoko is reunited with Toru in the film, she already appears to be holding on by a thread. Her actions during their walk make her seem as if she should be going to a sanatorium immediately. We lose the more melancholic and humanizing moments from the book. Like when Naoko laughs at Storm Trooper stories or when she and Toru are genuinely attempting to understand each other. Instead, the movie presents Naoko as emotionally detached, vacant, and constantly disassociating. Because of this, her instability feels obvious, removing much of the surprise from her sudden departure. 

Naoko's birthday serves as a tipping point in the book. She and Toru seem to be on good terms, meeting every Saturday and building a connection. The narration makes it seems like she is having a great time, until, she suddenly can't stop crying. While this is depicted on screen, the scene that follows is drastically different. In the novel, Toru describes the encounter as something that simply happens to both of them, emphasizing emotional distance in a reflective and quiet manner. The film, however, does not keep this atmosphere during the scene. Instead it opts for something that appears more disturbing. Naoko lies nearly motionless, like a lifeless corpse, as if her mind has shut down. This shift in tone makes her later move to the sanatorium feel more expected than sudden.

Overall, I think the movie does a fine job as an adaptation but dramatizes the book, which loses some key subtleties!

-Raul 

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 

Thoughts on Norwegian Woods movie vs book

 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

Norwegian Wood & and the blend of the real with the surreal

Relative to his other works, Norwegian Wood is framed as Murakami's most realistic book, both by his own claims and by audience opinion. Yet many elements in it make it feel just as surreal as many of his other stories. The only thing that really separates it from his more surreal works is the lack of explicit supernatural content- elements like sheep men and alternate worlds are absent from Norwegian Wood, and yet its characters and settings are far from what most would consider realistic.

My first read of Norwegian Wood was a few years ago, and at the time I had been going through Murakami's novels one after the other without much prior research. Upon finishing it, I hadn't even noticed the absence of supernatural elements — it felt essentially the same as any of his other books. Only after reflecting on it later and discussing it in class did I register that it was intended to be a realist novel.

I think the reason Norwegian Wood came across this way to me is that Murakami's style is so entrenched in surreality that even his realistic novels end up feeling strange, unusual, and ultimately surreal. What I love about this quality is not just that all of his books feel strange, but that he makes the surreal feel normal. A book like Norwegian Wood might read similarly to one of his more surreal works- but you could also say that his more surreal works read more grounded than they first appear. Whether it's Norwegian Wood or Killing Commendatore, Murakami blends realism and surrealism so seamlessly that even his realistic books occupy that feeling somewhere between the real and the abstract.

Kevin 

Memorial Slicing Style of the Movie

When watching this film, the most intense feeling was not the progression of the plot, but a sense of "slicing" and exaggerated sound. This film contains the most significant feature of the book's nostalgic genre, combining together Watanabe's memories through the language of the camera.

The scene initially has an old-fashioned and rich greenish tone. That was when Watanabe, Naoko and Kizuki were playing together. Through their smiling faces, audience could sense their vibrant youth. After Watanabe and Kizuki played billiards later, they switched to the cold and deathly silent darkness at the scene where Kizuki committed suicide. This contrast of highly saturated pictures or sound gives the audience a strong impact.

This slicing effect does not merely rely on visuals but also lies in the film's sound processing, which makes the audience feel more immersed. Background music was not usually used in the film. In many scenes, we can only hear the quiet conversations between characters or their breathing. Or the sounds of the environment itself, such as wind sound or the jazz music. For instance, when Naoko and Watanabe were taking a walk, it was always their quiet conversation or sound of stepping on something. In the scene at the Naoko Sanatorium, the sound of rain in the mountains and the rustling of fallen leaves are magnified. This extremely realistic sound design makes the audience feel as if they were in that damp forest.

It is precisely this slicing editing technique combined with the immersive sound design that makes this film more like a dream of memories about the story between them. The character traits, environment and sounds formed through Watanabe's memories.

Vivian

Setting a Tone: Thoughts on the Norwegian Wood Movie

*Discussion of suicide below relating to Kizuki in the film and book, Norweigan Wood.

Since watching the beginning of Norwegian Wood, there were a few things that stuck with me. The most prominent of which was Kizuki’s death scene. In the novel, I feel the description of his death was so extremely opaque and fuzzy. It was not drawn out nor was it detailed. Strangely, at times, it felt like a small occurrence that just so happens to loom over the entirety of the book. It sets the tone for the rest of the novel and puts Naoko squarely on the path she inevitably traverses. In the moment, however, Kizuki’s death feels so small – by design – happening offscreen, and only relayed to the readers by Toru. I think this made sense for the novel. Conveying the brevity of death, while making its victim small. I think this felt like an important choice, obscuring the physical act of the suicide and putting distance between Watanabe and his friend. It also puts immense distance between Toru and Kizuki’s motivations, which I feel is another important obstacle for Toru to overcome throughout the novel. This is a through line that extends towards Naoko as well, starting off the novel with such an intense moment though seemingly incomprehensible. 

The movie, however, takes another stance, explicitly depicting the suicide of Kizuki in what feels like the longest shot in the film thus far, explicitly showing Kizuki taping the gaps on the window while the hose hangs into the car. This scene disturbs a lot of the opacity the book gives, I feel. It highlights just how intentional the act is, and how much planning and time this act truly required. It takes time for Kizuki to commit suicide. It takes time and each moment it feels, in real time, he is making the continuous effort and choice to kill himself. I am not sure if I liked this choice as much as the way it was conveyed in the novel. It takes away from some of the themes of Norwegian Wood. I think, it feels these characters are living on the border of life and death, where at any point they can be pulled into the ether easily. The choice to explicitly depict his death definitely disturbs this a bit, but also does take away some of the romanticization, highlighting the reality of the situation.

I also wish the birthday scene was a bit more drawn out. I was excited to see the rush conversation that Naoko is described as producing in the novel. I feel like that was relevant, especially in the end, when she has a similar rush of dialogue with Reiko. The pacing was a bit fast, I think what also makes Watanabe's actions and feelings more understandable is his extreme solitude and quiet contemplation. I do think this would be difficult considering the time limitations of a movie, but I would love to see how they convey his loneliness towards the end of the story. 

 This is not to say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the movie so far. It was so beautifully shot. Each scene looked like a beautiful photograph. The sound design was amazing too. I loved the the chants of the protestors, the summer cicadas, and the sounds of the rain. I think that way, the movie captures the ambiance and setting so well. The direction was also so dynamic and interesting: the shot of Toru’s quick reflections and him running up the winding staircase after receiving Noako’s letter. The actors and actresses I also loved. I feel like they truly embodied the characters so well, especially Naoko. Overall I really loved the movie and wanted to finish watching it. Some small changes stuck out to me, but otherwise, I feel the movie is strong so far, and stands on its own as a coming of age tale. 

Isabella