I was definitely at least entertained by the film adaptation of Norwegian Wood and thought it did alright given how much it was supposed to cover, but I certainly had some gripes with it. I thought the cinematography and music score were pretty good and the acting was decent as well. I thought the actor portraying Watanabe did a good job of conveying that detached ‘good listener’ type character. My main problem with the film was its pacing, which seems inevitable given how much plot and content it tries to cover in just over 2 hours. There were a lot of crucial parts of the plot that were skimmed over, and I know that if I hadn’t read the book in advance, I probably would’ve been pretty confused. I thought this was an issue particularly at the beginning of the movie since we’re not given much context on who Kizuki and Naoko are in relation to Watanabe. Another instance where plot was quickly skimmed over was with Reiko’s character. Her backstory is pretty much left completely unexplained, and her relation to Naoko is mostly left up to inference. The book explains a lot of things up front that can only be understood in the film from inference or from prior knowledge. While this difference may be unavoidable given the difference in expository capabilities of films and prose, it made it feel like the movie had a lot of room for improvement in terms of pacing, character development, and plot progression. In some ways, the film felt like a highlight reel of the book, focusing on moments of dialogue and more iconic or memorable scenes in the story, while excluding a lot of the subtle elements of the narrative that build up to these scenes and make them really impactful.
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