FROM JAPAN : NORWEGIAN WOOD

So, I reckon we’ve covered pretty good distance as far as representing Asian art goes, Korea, Taiwan, murder mysteries (well, sort of) and deep art films. I seriously doubt I could get away with skipping Japan in this context though. What I seem to have achieved is, however, a double whammy. Not only do I get to present you with a rather beautiful and sensitive piece of Japanese cinema but also get to talk about one of my favorite Japanese novelists, nay one of my favorite novelists ever, Haruki Murakami. It is his novel Norwegian Wood that has been adapted to the big screen for our pleasure. Now, in the q & a session later on people enquired of director Tran Anh Hung “Why this book? It’s so unlike any of his other works, and not nearly as “visual” as them?” The director’s answer was simple : It was the first Murakami he had read. He had loved the book and decided not to read any other novels by the writer until later so as not to spoil the emotions he felt and wanted to convey with the film. I think this contains a beautiful lesson, not a lot of Murakami fans like Norwegian Wood (I was sort of so-so about it), mainly because it doesn’t match the “wild” imaginings and symbolism of his other novels. The lesson is that one should try and compare as little as possible, especially when it comes to art. If you start categorizing like that, you will miss the content of the artwork in hand, and although it doesn’t seem so from your biased standing, you might actually be missing one heck of a lot. Luckily, Tran Anh Hung, invites us to stop and ponder this story for a moment, and I for one am glad I did…
Naoko, Watanabe and Kizuki are three Japanese high school students. Naoko and Kizuki are childhood sweethearts; Watanabe is Kizuki’s best friend. Their lives are the lives of all teenagers, until that is, Kizuki, for some reason incomprehensible to the others, takes his own life. Both Watanabe and Naoko are utterly destroyed. Watanabe finds solace in flight. He moves to Tokyo, starts University, cuts all ties with his former town. He lives a pretty solitary life, he has trouble making friends and connecting to people after Kizuki’s death but he keeps himself too busy to notice. Until, that is, Naoko comes to town. They meet completely coincidentally and their common pain is still so fresh in both their hearts that they first become friends, then well… More than friends. But it quickly turns out that Naoko’s scars run a lot deeper than Watanabe’s. Watanabe truly loves her and is determined to stand by her unlike Kizuki who abandoned them all… At which point an original and lively young girl, Midori comes into Watanabe’s life. What will he do? Stick to trying to make the past right, or leave the past to rest and turn his face to the future?
I’ve never fully understood the connection of the story with the Beatles Song it gets its name from. I think I can feel the connection but find it hard to describe… You remember the line in the song “I once had a girl /Or should I say, she once had me?” It’s about… Well commitment to other people in a way. Belonging. And of course, in this case, figuring out where you belong and (in Watanabe’s case) who you belong with…
“The past” eh? We all have baggage in one form or another; very few lucky ones among us have grown up in a bed of roses. But in the end, we all have our own lives to lead. I mean, we have them. The question is whether we choose to lead them or not. In this case it’s the romantic involvement between Naoko and Watanabe, but we may feel a debt, as sense of duty towards someone or something in our past, and we may end up deciding to stand by that / them rather than move on. Whether or not this is a healthy attitude is questionable; in the story, even though Naoko and Watanabe truly have feelings for each other, one may wonder how much of it is in fact based on making each other surrogates for Kizuki. I say this even though the relationship gets physical; the fact that Watanabe is actually torn between Midori and Naoko does indicate after all, that there is a bigger slice of “sense of duty” concealed in his feelings than he may care to admit. I will not go into too much detail but I will tell you the story makes it quite clear which side it is on. I leave you to make your own choice… After all, it is a very personal matter…