First, the Beatles song. Then the novel by Haruki Murakami. And now, a movie directed by Tran Anh Hung. All known as ‘Norwegian Wood‘.
I have just read the novel and loved every bit of it. It is rather different from Murakami’s other books, in the sense that this novel is a simple love story centred on a young man on the cusp of adulthood, and is devoid of any surrealistic plot devices that are common in Murakami’s works. No talking cats, vanishing elephants, strange sheep, etc. But like most of the male protagonists in his books, the main character here is an apathetic hero who reads widely and loves to listen to music. This is another thing that I like about Murakami’s books – the numerous references to books and music.
I am looking forward to watching the movie when it screens in Singapore. I read that it took the director 4 years to convince Murakami to turn the novel into a movie. While I doubt the movie will be as good as the book itself, I can see from the trailer that the cinematography is gorgeous. And because the story is set in the late 1960s, the movie set has a retro feel to it.
It would be interesting to see how closely the movie follows the novel and how the director interprets and fleshes out the story and emotions of the characters.