Japanese Film Poster. |
It took several years of negotiations between Vietnamese/French director Tran Anh Hung and Haruki Murakami author of the novel adapted for Trans latest screen offering Norwegian Wood (2010). The reason these negotiations were so protracted was that two of his novels had been previously adapted and it has been reported that he was not happy with them; especially the 1980 film Hear the Wind Sing. The other movie was Tony Takitani (2005) (see link below), which I feel is similar in tone to Norwegian Wood.
The script for this nostalgic story of loss and sexuality was firstly written in French than translated into English for the directors dealings with Murakami who provided extra dialogue especially for the film and then finally into Japanese for the cast, a language that Tran does not speak!
The movie is beautiful to look at, lovingly filmed by Mark Lee Ping-Bing who did the same for In The Mood For Love (2000), wonderful colours and visual detail. The musical score is by Jonny Greenwood a member of the English alternative rock band Radiohead who also did the score for There Will Be Blood (2007). My only criticism is that the film can be a little measured at times but I think a second viewing would probably help with a better understanding of a quite deep and meaningful story.
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