Elusive Norwegian Wood a Beatific Emotional Enigma
Tran Anh Hung’s beautiful if mystifying Norwegian Wood is a perplexing enigma desperately searching for a way to ground its sprawling esoteric story of heartbreak, resilience, tragedy and love in some sort of way that will resonate in on more than a superficial level. The acclaimed writer/director of such masterworks as The Scent of Green Papaya and Cyclo does what he can to bring Haruki Murakami’s acclaimed novel to life, going out of his way to make it cinematically transcendent, and while moments do indeed soar into the heavens on the whole all the nebulous bits and pieces never quite assemble themselves in a way that’s entirely satisfying.
Ken'ichi Matsu-yama and Rinko Kikuchi in Norwegian Wood
© Red Flag Releasing
During the late 1960’s, university student Toru Watanabe (Ken'ichi Matsu-yama) moves to Tokyo in hopes of escaping the escalating sadness overwhelming him since the suicide of his best friend Kizuki (Kengo Kôra). When his dead friend’s former girlfriend Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) reenters his life, finding peace becomes virtually impossible, especially after the two consummate their tragic passion for one another leading to the 20-year-old committing herself to a sanitarium.
Rudderless and lost, visiting Naoko on a regular basis even though their reunions are more destructive than helpful, things change when Toru comes into the presence of Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), a young woman with an outlook on life decidedly different than his own or anyone else whose company he regularly frequents. She is the positive antidote to his melancholic depression, the two coming together at what they see as just the right moment even if the doing so could end up spelling emotional tragedy for the both of them.
There is a lot going on here, a ton, really, Hung tackling to sprawling, esoteric narrative the best way he can, attempting to fill his 133-minute running time with as much information as possible yet at the same time trying not to overwhelm the viewer with too much emotional grandiosity. In some respects he succeeds, the intoxicating layers of Toru and Midori’s blossoming romance impossible to resist. Their story is poignant and powerful, and watching it come to its inevitable conclusion was borderline breathtaking.
But in other respects, however, Hung never quite gets a grasp on exactly what it is he’s trying to do. Kikuchi, a gifted young actress who was once an Oscar-nominee for Babel, never fully gets a grasp on Kizuki, is unable to bring her to any sort of full three-dimensional life. Her frequent scenes with Watanabe lack the urgent ephemeral passion required to give them their needed weight, making their plot strand a frustratingly incomplete one I never got a complete grasp of.
More than that, though, the filmmaker never feels entirely confident one which subplots and which tangents of Murakami’s source material he should fully explore and grapple with. Events of the time are hinted at, flirted with but never taken head-on, everything a tangential day dream of light, dark and all the colors in-between struggling mightily to take center stage.
Yet, when Norwegian Wood gets it right, when Hung taps into the emotional nuances of his character and of their situations, when all facets from cinematography to editing to music (Johnny Greenwood’s score flirts with being bombastic yet in the end feels entirely fitting to the story at hand) come into symmetry, the movie is brilliant. There are sequences and situations I found myself floating into the celluloid, became one with the motion picture itself, and as such even though the whole left me somewhat perplexed and bewildered the segments I did enjoy gave me a free-floating sort of elation I hope others take the time to experience for themselves.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
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