Okay, let's get the ball running (mixed metaphor!) with Norwegian Wood.
Norwegian Wood (2010)
Written and directed byTran Anh Hung
Based on the novel of the same name by Haruki Murakami
I have to admit I have a problem wherein I purchase books more than I read them. Blame it on a need to feel like I had an extensive library that reflected my tastes as a wannabe aesthete that I could show off, or the fact that I have always and will always be a hoarder, or the fact that I buy things to fill an emotional vacuum in my life. All of the above are applicable. The reason I bring this up is because even though I have an extensive array of writing by Haruki Murakami, a lot of which I have read mind you, I have never read Norwegian Wood. This is partly due to the suicide themes that run through the novel. Suicide of a friend is something that has affected me, and it would be remiss of me not to preface a review of this film without admitting as much. It probably goes a little towards explaining why I never got around to reading the source material of this film, even at the height of my hunger for Murakami’s fiction of which I can count my 19 year-old self as a fan. There is an anxiety and a pensive sadness that creeps up on me if I linger on material addressing the subject of suicide, wherein personal and subjective melancholy becomes inseparable from the fiction I’m exposed to.
In spite of this, the pedigree behind the film adaptation of Norwegian Wood was enough to make me confront this deeply seeded aversion to this thematic material. French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung has impressed me with the two films of his I have seen. The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) and Cyclo (1995) are wildly impressive works of minimalist film-making. Minimal in the sense of conventional narrative devices such as plot and dialogue that is. Both films have a stunning attention to visual and aural canvasses, and Tran Anh Hung utilizes langorous pacing and editing to convey a particularly tactile atmosphere. The silences in his films are essential to the construction of this affect on the viewer. Through nothing more than careful attention to insect chirps and the way natural sunlight falls, and modulating the way in which his characters sparsely and lyrically deliver their dialogue, he succinctly conveys the humid atmosphere of the rural Saigon setting in The Scent of Green Papaya. The same applies to the way Ho Chi Minh City is redacted through the sounds of constant traffic and existing neon and fluorescent light sources in Cyclo.
Given these auteur-stamped sensibilities, my familiarity with the conflation of deadpan humour, whimsy and emotion in Murakami’s prose, the casting of Rinko Kikuchi (whose assured command of the mute character in Alejandro Gonzelez-Inarritu’s Babel (2006) indicated that she would be more than capable of meshing with the minimalist sensibilities of Anh Hung), cinematographer Ping Bin Lee (whose lensing of In The Mood For Love has to be one of the most evocative visual portrayals of emotive repression and sublimated desire I have ever seen) and composer Johnny Greenwood, the film certainly had a lot of ingredients that indicated potential. I love the combination of ennui and heartbreak, and if it’s wrapped in preppy 60’s threads, all the better to gaze upon in my opinion.
The film opens with a quick succession of scenes and voice-over narration that establishes the close bond between high school friends Toru Watanabe (Ken’ichi Matsumaya, who looks like the Japanese equivalent of Keir Gilchrist, who plays Marshall in The United States of Tara) and Kizuki (Kengo Kora), and Kizuki’s girlfriend and lifelong soul mate Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi - Academy Award nom nom nom-inee). Kizuki’s suicide at the tender age of 17, which is frankly depicted in the film with an excruciating efficiency, forms a melancholy specter over the actions of the rest of the film. Toru moves afterwards to study drama (including Greek Tragedy – my sides!) at university in Tokyo amidst a backdrop of student protests, where he reads a lot and becomes drawn to the womanizing Nagasawa (Tetsuji Tamayama), who has a girlfriend, Hatsumi (Eriko Hatsune) that is fully aware of his exploits and inexplicitly tolerates this without resorting Lorena Bobbitt style revenge. Naoko and Toru reunite in Tokyo and consummate a developing romantic relationship on her 20th birthday (Turning 20 in Japan is considered a passage into adulthood so check out them thematic layers.) She is clearly still distraught by the unexpected passing of Kizuki, and is admitted to a mountain retreat to come to terms with her severe depression in solitude. Reiko (Reika Kirishima), an older patient of this retreat, provides guidance for Naoko and chaperones Watanabe’s visits to her. Meanwhile, back in Tokyo, Toru befriends charismatic classmate Midori (Kiko Mizuhara) and suffers from a clear case of guilty attraction, which although reciprocated is complicated by both of their current relationships. The film closely follows Toru’s relationships with both Naoko and Midori over the course of two-ish years, and the tragedy that ensues from this hot mess of entanglements.
Did I mention that death and repression seem to be two recurrent themes? In other words it’s a perfect date movie.
Tran Anh Hung’s typical attention to visual and aural details is used particularly well in establishing the many threads of the story. The first half of the film is largely expository, paced briskly yet with a measured consideration of mis-en-scene and atmosphere. The result is a film that looks and sounds stunningly beautiful, and feels authentic to conveying the tumult of emotions bubbling under the surfaces of the films gracefully attractive protagonists. Paramount to this is the way in which sexuality and sensuality is portrayed in a tactile way. The sex scenes are very good at being intimate and discomfiting. Talk about Norwegian WOOD, right?
The camera work does at times move unnecessarily, briskly following characters as they pace backwards and forwards trying to inarticulately express their FEELINGS. Johnny Greenwood’s score whilst luscious and stirring, occasionally feels overwrought, and Rinko Kikuchi’s performance seems to descend into histrionics in order to convey Naoko’s despair, which is at seeming odds with the nuanced restraint of Ken’Ichi Matsumaya’s performance as Toru and Anh-Hung’s general approach to the material. In fact, his use of slow motion and the montaged approach to connecting scenes and disparate passages at times seems a little too evocative of a turgid music video, and by the time the conflict for Toru between these two women is firmly established the rhythm guiding the exposition of these characters seems to halt entirely. Scenes linger, and the narrative seems to project a pensive-aggression.
Still, in light of this, the film remains beguiling, if not for nothing else other than it’s technical elements. Landscapes and seasons are breathtakingly framed and pulsate with Bing Pin Lee’s stunning cinematography (despite a few glitches with the digital projection system of the cinema during scenes featuring windswept hair).
Yen Khe Luguern’s costume design brilliantly evokes the 1960’s setting without relying on garish period-detailing accoutrements, instead focusing on perfectly fitted outfits in soft hues that balance both the delicate and complex emotional textures of the characters with their social and economic considerations.
Dressed like an anachronistic American Apparel catalogue, the clothing seems at once contemporary, period and tailored (excuse the pun) to each individual character. Note the way that Nagasawa refuses to take off his outerwear during a particularly tense dinner scene, as if he were already planning an escape from his girlfriend Hatsumi before they even sat to eat.
This scene, in which Toru is coerced into sharing details of an exchange of sexual partners with Nagasawa to Hatsumi, is one of the best in the film. And one in which spare and considered dialogue is pinned on careful observation of actor’s non-verbal reactions, which are wisely privileged. Through Eriko Hatsune’s portrayal of Hatsumi, we witness the fracturing of her poise and collected façade, her jaw clenches with unease as Toru clandestinely tries to explain his reasons for following Nagasawa’s womanizing ways, adroitly demonstrating his emotional insecurity and immaturity. The scene works in the context of the narrative to expand upon the catastrophic consequences which repression and denial potentially hide.
Hatsune nails the scene outright, and the apparent subtext revealed here is the incongruity between Western cultural concepts of free love anchored to the 1960’s setting, which the characters attempt to embrace; and a very Japanese notion of emotional repression and ‘saving face’.
The film is a success in it’s own right, conveying a sense of nostalgia, romance and melancholy and knowingly understanding how these three facets of human experience are oft intertwined. But I feel as if the abandonment of narrative propulsion over-saturates the film in atmospherics and it becomes aimless. The film seems more plot-driven than the previous works I’ve seen of the Anh Hung, and perhaps unnecessarily so given the focus placed on atmospherics and mood to communicate an emotional state. It’s just that when the two elements are intertwined the result is jarring, making the latter seem unmotivated and meandering, leering focus towards holes in the consistency of the main narrative. The film does seem overly long because of this, which is a shame because of the discernible pulse there is coursing through the meticulously detailed surface. Okay, I've been restrained so far, so I might as well just say it - more like BOREwegian Wood, right?
If the film had abandoned the linear focus of it’s narrative a bit more freely, and concentrated on how moods and emotions transfer from one recollection of Toru to another, the film may have maintained a dream-like focus that imparted a more profound heartbreak on this viewer. Instead, I left with a slightly unsatisfied and not nearly sustained enough swoon.
3.5/5
MVP: Eriko Hatsune
