Blog Post #3 - Emmett

 Nahhhhh. 

Well that was disappointing. After watching the movie I just wonder why? I found that Norwegian Wood (the book) was already written like a movie. You could visualize the scenes, you felt for the characters, you were uncomfortable as things unfolded, but it all felt almost honest and real. This movie on the other hand…. First off  there was no character development. You were introduced to the characters and then it almost just felt like a video slideshow of greatest hits from the book. You never get the depth that you get in the book. The movie also cut key parts of the book, like Reiko’s story and the fire. Her story is uncomfortable but raw and helps you understand her and also what Watanabe is to people. The movie felt like it was jumping around almost, one thing to the next, no real explanations. I found myself uncomfortable watching the movie even when it maybe shouldn't have been uncomfortable, it was just awkward. 

Overall it was just disappointing to me that a book, which is so perfectly set up for a movie, could end up like this. In an ideal world this movie could feel intimate and personal, but instead it's distant and shallow. No offense to the people who made this adaptation, I’m sure they're good people, but honestly I think I could have done a better, more accurate and more appealing adaptation of Norwegian Wood.

- Emmett Glazer

Norwegian Wood Movie- Krisha

Norwegian Wood as a book is strange, sure, but an exciting read when it comes to the pacing and the odd nature of the dynamic between the three major characters and their internal struggles/emotions. In my opinion, this is why the movie adaptation is not as powerful for me. The scenes which best present those internal elements are either cut or altered. The first chapter of the book does such a good job of establishing how the story is going to feel and how Naoko and Watanabe are as people. And while it does make sense for the movie to instead start with Kizuki's relationship and death, those scenes felt protracted. Replacing the novel's opening with the high school backstory was a choice that, in my viewing, changed the mood of the story. Likewise, the first big Midori scene at her house just felt off. There was no fire, no declaration of death, the singing wasn't particularly bad. All the elements that added to the awkward romance were lost.

 

What the movie does a good job with is evocative elements of the book, like the university protests and Kizuki's death and the ending with the telephone call. It even added that scream into the ocean which was very emotional but definitely conveyed the opposite vibes of the book, where Watanabe described walking at the bottom of the ocean. I guess that makes sense given the media. It is a difficult job translating a book that is like half internal monologuing into a coherent visual narrative. It is just a shame that some of the best parts of the book for me had to be altered for the narrative to happen.

Also doesn't help when you realize Murakami's famously bad sex scenes had to be filmed by and with real people. It is one thing to read about Naoko crying while they had sex on her 20th birthday but watching that in real time was not fun.

Norwegian Wood's Movie Adaptation (Blog 3)

     While I did enjoy seeing the book in a visual sense and watching the characters interact, everything playing out more or less the same, it still felt like an empty shell of the original story, more like I was seeing scenes recreated rather than a plot unfolding. I think this partially has to do with having the movie be in the third person perspective. From reading the novel, we all know that Watanabe is not a very interesting person. He says it himself, he is completely ordinary. However, what is very enjoyable is how he sees the world and situations going on around him, explaining it to the readers. At least, that's what I grew to like about him and as an extension, Murakami's writing revolving around an awkward but attentive male protagonist. However, with a movie adaptation, we do not see into his mind or thoughts. We only see what he reveals to others through dialogue (which we know tends to be limited compared to his thoughts) and actions (which again he just allows fate to run her course in most cases). To me, this makes Watanabe seem dismissive and uncaring through the whole movie besides the yelling/crying scene and his occasional smiles towards Naoko.

    Another reason I think the story does not feel whole in the movie is because of some of the details they leave out. Of course in a movie you have to remove some of the details to allow for a movie that's under two to three hours however in a Murakami novel that uses such simple language, the slight details to a person's character is essential. For example, Midori did not read as the strong curious individual she is to me because we do not see her hard work towards the bookstore and taking care of her father. We also see her talking about masturbation once but the topic of sex or male genitalia never comes up again which I feel is essential to her character. To me she represents more than just self confidence. She represents how adulthood (caring for her father, running a store, cooking meals) and childhood (curiosity, self esteem, her temper-tantrums towards Watanabe) can mix together to create one wonderful person regardless of adversity. With Naoko, the movie did a slightly better job, however added things in that I did not enjoy like her small fight where she is hitting Watanabe and her rudeness/aloofness towards him at times once she is admitted to the sanatorium. They made Naoko seem more mentally ill when the deal with Naoko is not her illness, but in my opinion, is that she has lost her childhood by losing Kizuki who was there for every part of it and is slowly dying hence from losing her inner child.

    To end I at least want to say some nice things about the movie like how I enjoyed them adding a bit more emotion to Watanabe to show his suffering in the second half of the story. The yelling scene was hard to watch (which is a good thing because that's what they were going for I think) and the pulling out the stitches scene moved me a lot. I thought it was very symbolic of all the pain he was going through but never actively said anything. It worked extremely well for Watanabe and his character.

-Anna

Blog 3 - Norwegian Wood Movie

I wish I could say I enjoyed the movie version of Norwegian Wood as much as the book, but the two don't even come close. I feel as if the movie simply failed to capture the essence of the story, and I was especially upset with the way the medium handled a couple of what I felt were the most important scenes in the novel. This is not to say the film was bad, just that it felt detached from the book in nearly everything but the names of the characters and overarching plot. Before I delve into what I disliked about the movie, I feel it is only fair to also include the things I did enjoy. I really appreciate having watched the movie purely for the fact that it allowed me to listen and see the characters expressed in the language and setting in which the story takes place. I feel as if the western skew of my subconscious takes over when reading, and my imagination can't help but picture characters and places through the lens of an American. Having watched this movie, though, I feel almost as if I can reassess and rework the mental image I had of places and individuals mentioned in the book. 

In terms of the scenes I was particularly upset with, two stood out to me. Firstly, the scene with Midori's father in the hospital. I really disliked the fact that the directors chose not to have any verbal interaction with Midori's father, and especially disliked the lack of the cucumber scene in which to me, Toru and Midori's father create a very important bond. As I've noted in a previous blog post, I believe that scene with Midori's father is of pivotal importance to the story as a whole, as it is the point at which Toru makes up his mind that he loves and wants to be with Midori. Maybe my interpretation of the story is very different from those that wrote the script for the movie, but excluding this scene from the movie felt almost criminal. The second series of scenes I really disliked were those involving and following the death of Naoko. I felt that the scenes, the atmosphere, and especially the score really mismatched those same scenes in the book. In the novel, I pictured Toru learning of Naoko's death and succumbing to the numbness that would come to dominate his life and travels for the coming month. I did not picture a dramatic scene by crashing waves with him screaming into the emptiness; that simply didn't fit with the rest of his character. I pictured a somber yet quiet Toru trudging along a peaceful coastline with no emotions, and no hope. 

These were only a couple of the scenes I disliked, there is unfortunately a plethora of others that I feel could have been explored to greater lengths and could have better aligned with the source material. Overall, I enjoyed the book far more than the movie, but I do appreciate having consumed the story through another medium and through the script writer's interpretation, unfortunately I disagree quite a bit with that interpretation.

- Sam

Blog Post #3 - Norwegian Wood: Novel versus Movie

 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

Blog 2

Hi everyone,

Norwegian Wood was Murakami's fifth novel, and it was published nearly a decade into his career. The following year, in 1988, he would publish Dance Dance Dance- which marked the return of Boku. In subsequent novels, it would seem that Murakami exited his "Boku era", as every full-length novel after Dance Dance Dance features a named protagonist; this pattern continued until 2017's Killing Commendatore, in which the nameless narrator returned.

At any rate, Norwegian Wood seems to be Murakami's first full-length novel with a named protagonist- marking a clear shift in his literary style. 

And... To be frank, I'm not sure if I'm a fan of it. At first, I was enthralled by the story's more grounded approach, one which I thought to be wholly uncharacteristic of any Murakami I had previously read. However, as the story continued to develop, I found myself more and more distracted by the characterization of certain characters. Namely, the female cast. 

It seemed to me that these characters were written into the story solely to further Toru. They seemed one-dimensional in a way that made Norwegian Wood difficult to engage with-- especially when one main focus of the novel is Toru's relationships with these women. 

For instance-- and this may be a hyperbolic statement-- I don't believe there is a single scene in the book involving Midori where she does not mention sex in some way. In this way, I believe Midori's character is flattened, and I found myself completely disinterested in the story surrounding her and Toru. 

What I found compelling about Boku in Wild Sheep Chase was the fact that this detached, aloof protagonist was watching the world progress around him as the supporting cast moves the plot. I believe that is not the case in Norwegian Wood, in which I would argue that Toru-- not Naoko-- is the main driving force of the story.

That's not to say these issues with writing female characters were not present in Wild Sheep Chase, just that I did not find them nearly as distracting as I did when reading Norwegian Wood.

Perhaps there is a deeper meaning behind the gratuitous sex presented in Norwegian Wood that I am simply not seeing. However, to me, this novel suffers greatly due to the fact that Murakami does not write women well.

Evan Laufman

Blog Post 2

Realism always makes me cringe. It's something about the complete honesty of the characters and depictions of human actions put so clearly into words. Films like Kids (1995) and Mid90s (2018) come to mind when I think of adolescent realism. Both these films and Murakami's Norwegian Wood have themes of coming of age, sex, friendship, and trauma. The characters don't shy away from foul language or nasty images; Midori's dialogue in particular was especially vulgar and her character was just as funny as she was cringy. I loved how she pointed out Watanabe's peculiar way of talking but she was just as weird in her imagination. Her bluntness was completely different from the closed-off Naoko. Both girls were exposed to death at early ages; I wonder if the manner of death was what set the girls apart. Midori witnessed slow, unwilling death while Naoko witnessed abrupt suicide. Perhaps this is why these girls navigate life so differently. Midori understands the value of life because her family members held on so strongly to it while Naoko's sister and Kizuki couldn't find a reason to go on. Maybe taking care of her dying family members grounded Midori in realism while Naoko fell further into hopelessness.

--Viv Johnson