It's halfway through spring break and I actually went hiking through Muir Woods in California. I knew that a Norwegian Wood (a Norwegian Spruce Tree, to be exact) would have no place nor would it have any reason to grow here but the air, smell, and overall tranquility I felt reminded me of the sanitorium Naoko was at and it just fit what I had in my imagination. This inspired me to watch Norwegian Wood online and honestly, it was interesting to see the characters and the notable scenes, but that's all it felt like. Watching scenes.
In almost an anthological sequence, Murakami's Norwegian Wood novel comes to life with little narration and little effort to transition between scenes or locations. Having read the novel, these switches make sense as they seem to highlight the important interactions between characters in each chapter. Perhaps this movie benefits those who have read the book prior, thus only need to watch in order to put a visual to the words?
In class, we were going through the slides of Japan concerning certain points where Watanabe, Midori, and Naoko frequent and the question, "Does this help? Having photos to go with the novel? or would you prefer to leave it to your imagination?" was posed. At the time, I thought it was best to leave it to the imagination and after watching, I honestly wished I had kept it that way. Almost none of the scenes in NW matched what I had seen in class and the sanitorium did not look as nice as I had envisioned it to have looked like.
I think all in all, the movie does do the novel justice, but only as if to serve as a visual cue for certain events in the book. It lacks a certain cohesiveness that keeps other story based movies together and easily trackable. It kept me watching, no doubt about that, but I felt like I had to make the connections for them in order to tell myself, "Oh this is about here in the novel... oh they missed that part but I know how they got to this scene..." etc.
Last blog post I was hoping that the movie would answer my burning question of what the ending meant... it did not QAQ but I think it gave me a possible interpretation -- when Midori asks Watanabe where he is, I was thinking literally where he was, but Watanabe thinks in more of a philosophical sense. He says everyday he grows farther from the dead as Kizuki is stuck at 17 and Naoko at 21. My interpretation is that Watanabe is confused as to where he is because if he was younger than 17, he would know he still had Kizuki and Naoko; if he's between 17 and 21, he would know he still had Naoko; but now that he has neither, he's alone and unsure of what to do/where to go.
I hope he ended up with Midori in the end... any lady in this day and age would be confused with his answer and probably assume he was making a really mean joke.
- Alexander Wen
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