In the Theater: Norwegian Wood

Since yesterday's theater outing wasn't the best (this does not refer to the company I was keeping at the time, but to the choice of movie) I decided to give it another go tonight. I met up with Cat at the International Film Center downtown to see the film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood.

I hate to say it, because I so wanted to love it, but this moving was Boring. Yup, that's right, with a capital b. I'm sure it didn't help that I saw this movie at my bedtime with Cat dozing off and yawning next to me, but wide awake I'm sure it would have at least got a boring with a little b. Now let me tell you why!


It started off really disjointed, showing scenes that added nothing to the story and this continued somewhat throughout the whole movie. Someone, somewhere, has an editing problem. Beware the 2+ hour movie.

You never really got to know or care for any of the characters. A lot of the characters, although important in the book, are superfluous in the movie, just thrown in here and there and you wonder why bother? Although the two relationships are the focus of the movie, you don't get to see their evolution, which is probably why it was hard to sympathize with any of them. I would have liked to have seen a difference in the scenes between the two girls to help visualize the choice he had to make. Keep the time with Naoko slow, boring, with little dialogue and the time with Midori exciting and entertaining. At first this is what I thought the intention was, but both relationships just turned dull. If I were Watanabe I would have said 'so long' to both.

There were many over the top dramatic scenes. It was so hard for me not to laugh. My favorite was when it showed Watanabe wailing into the air atop a rock, a long string of drool hanging from his mouth and flying in the wind. It went on for five minutes and that drool string never broke. Was I really supposed to be moved by that?? I did note a line I would like to scream-sob at a future boyfriend or sister or even family dog: "Your presence is painful to me!"

For all its faults, it was a really pretty movie though! The winter scenes alone would have made me want to die inside. But in addition to having to see snow and wind, we were sitting next to some sort of air vent that was blowing cold air on to us. It was what those interactive movies from 5th grade should have been. Another plus, if you could call it that, was that I coveted all their apartments filled with 60's decor and their cute clothes. But that's not enough to give this movie my approval. I hope that this movie hasn't convinced Cat to never read a Murakami book!

Finally the movie ended and I could head home to my nice, warm bed. This is when the drama finally began for the night. When I got back to my stop to catch the 1, the clock struck 12 and the subway systems underwent their transformations from a model for national transportation to out of order, out of order, out of order. Suffice it to say there was walking to different stations and many transfers. One train I got on smelled like shit, literally. I was only going up one stop so I decided to tough it out, out of sheer laziness. There were only two other people on the train who either had colds, fake noses, are suffered from extreme laziness as well, so I had a pretty unobstructed view of the benches and underneath. I looked around for the poo, but couldn't see anything. I know it was there somewhere. I hope the reason I didn't see it was not because I was sitting in it. I should check the back of my coat in the morning.

- Megan Leigh