Norwegian Wood
13 September 2010, late evening
My first film at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was Norwegian Wood, based on the book by Huraki Murakami. I had very high hopes going in. I loved the book. I couldn’t imagine how they would translate it into a film. I’ve been thinking about the movie all day today. A part of me really enjoyed it, while a part of me was fairly ‘meh’ about the whole thing.
The story takes place in the late 60s. It’s all about coping with loss, and love, and suicide, and a whole host of things. The film is shot really well. Some of the locations outside of Tokyo are gorgeous to boot. The costumes and set design are amazing. (The character Midori is always looking super cute.) The film score is damn good. Most important, the acting is also pretty stellar. Writing all this out, i’m not sure what I didn’t like about the film. A part of me feels like it was missing something, but i’m not quite sure what. I think it might have been a bit too abstract. I’ve read the book so it’s hard for me to gauge how unintelligible the film would be for someone who knew nothing about the story. I definitely want to watch it again. I do think it’s well worth seeing. It was a good way to start to TIFF.
Wow I didn’t know there was a movie based on this! I really liked this book, thanks for letting us know about it
by pketh on September 14 2010, 4:55 pm #