VietNam Life Style: Norwegian Wood

Showing posts with label Norwegian Wood. Show all posts

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Culture Vulture

Director Tran Anh Hung's latest film Norwegian Wood recently premiered at Ha Noi's Megastar Cineplex, with the film to open in cinemas nationally tomorrow. Hung, an overseas Vietnamese who lives in France, spoke about the film adapted from the popular novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

How have you tried to ensure fans of the novel are not disappointed when they watch your movie?

I don't care about it. I was just interested in making a good movie. If the movie doesn't match what audiences' imagined, that's their affair, not mine. This is the first time I've made a movie from a well-known novel. I not only tried to tell the story in images, but I wanted to express my thoughts and feelings when I read the novel. I choose a way to go straight to the heart of the matter, without beginning with a character's recollection as usual.

What's more, the novel did not address the relationship between past and present or cause and effect. If I made the movie following the novel's structure, I would have had to add more details than are present. But there's already a lot of information in the original.

I began to shoot the movie in winter and delayed it in five months waiting for summer. Japanese actors are great, and the languages barrier was not a problem. We could understand each other well because of the common language of cinema.

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud's 1991 film The Lover, based on the book by Marguerite Duras, ignited a constroversy because of the many sex scenes in the film. There are also a lot of sex scenes in Norwegian Wood. But the sexuality in the novel is handled in a very pure way. How did you convey that in making this film?

The director needs to have an exact eye. While sex scenes attract interest, they need to be there for good reason. In the movie, when the protagonist has sex, it is significant and psychologically changing. So I made these scenes special. I focused on the expression on the actors' faces. When watching the movie, audiences will feel it.

Sex in a movie should relate to the theme of the movie. What is the theme of Norwegian Wood? It is that a main female character cannot make love and it leads to her death. It makes her guilty because she thought that her boyfriend's death was due to this reason. Murakami seems to overaccentuate sexuality. Sexuality is the salvation of his characters.

Did you have any trouble with Murakami, who is known to be very tough?

We didn't have any trouble with Haruki Murakami. He knows the cinema. The writer cannot intervene in the director's work. We discussed a lot and it was very good for me. It helped me to write the script. He was satisfied when he watched the movie. I think I'm lucky. Before I reached agreement with Murakami, he didn't want anybody to make a movie from his novel.

The novel focuses on characters' psychological states more than on situations. How do you sustain the interest of audiences in the movie?

The novel reminds me of my youth, with a lot of love and emotion and everything I experienced. It brings me to a special sadness about life and loss which people possible may not have had a chance to see. It is the reason why I made the movie. I believe that it will touch the hearts of audiences. If audiences reach the end of the movie and have remembered their own emotions of first love or fear of loss, I will have been successful.

The movie is being screened in Japan and I know that there have been many responses to the film in Japanese. I've been too busy to ask assistants to translate them for me. I will know in a few weeks.

I cannot guess the responses of Vietnamese audiences. I will have to wait for the answer. Obviously, I hope they will be moved after the come out of the theatre. — VNS

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Norwegian Wood to hit local cinemas

Nostalgia: A scene from Norwegian Wood, directed by Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung. The film is based on the best-selling novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. — File Photo

HA NOI — Norwegian Wood directed by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung, who resides in France, based on the best-selling novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, will reach Asian audiences later this month.

The film will first hit screens in Japan on December 11, Chinese Taiwan on December 17, Hong Kong on December 30 and Viet Nam on December 31.

The Viet Nam premiere will be shown at Ha Noi's National Cinema Centre on December 20 with the director's presence.

Hung and producer Shinji Ogawa spent four years trying to win the author's approval to allow the novel to be adapted to the big screen.

Hung, who won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival for his 1995 film Cyclo, said it was never an option to make Norwegian Wood outside Japan or in any other language.

He first wrote the screenplay in French, had it translated into English and eventually Japanese, and relied on help from his producer to communicate with the actors.

"Murakami was very open and said I could adapt it in any language I wanted and in any place in the world," Hung said in a recent interview.

"But I said I wanted to film Japanese faces, because what attracted me in the novel was that it was Japanese," he said.

Adapting a best-selling novel like Norwegian Wood for the cinema can be a tough task for any director, but making the film in a language the director doesn't speak is a challenge in its own right.

That's the challenge Hung faced in bringing the Haruki Murakami story of love and loss to the screen 23 years after the book enchanted millions of Japanese readers and raised the author's profile globally.

The film's score includes the song Norwegian Wood by The Beatles and original music written by Jonny Greenwood. It stars Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi and Kiko Mizuhara.

Norwegian Wood, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, is a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. The story's protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his days as a first year university student in Tokyo.

Through Toru's reminiscences we see him develop relationships with two very different women – the beautiful, yet emotionally troubled Naoko, and the outgoing and lively Midori.

Director Hung was born in 1962 in Viet Nam's central city of Da Nang and emigrated to France when he was 12. He has long been considered at the forefront of the wave of acclaimed overseas Vietnamese cinema for the past two decades.

His films have received international acclaim, and until recently, had all been varied meditations on life in Viet Nam.

He received his first Oscar nomination (for Best Foreign Film) for The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), which also won two top prizes at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, and a second for Cyclo (1995), featuring Hong Kong movie star Tony Leung Chiu Wai, which eventually won a top prize at the Venice International Film Festival. The Vertical Ray of the Sun, released in 2000, was the third film of what many consider his "Viet Nam trilogy".

After a sabbatical, it was officially announced that Hung was back behind the camera with the noir psychological thriller I Come with the Rain (2009), which features a star-studded international cast that includes Josh Hartnett and Elias Koteas. — VNS

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Tran presents 'Norwegian Wood' at Venice filmfest

French film director Tran Anh Hung is pictured arriving for the screening of "Norumei no mori"(Norwegian wood) at the 67th Venice Film Festival, on September 2, at Venice Lido.

Photo: AFP

The pacing, the blowing wind, the music and other atmospherics all helped create the tension in "Norwegian Wood," says Tran Anh Hung, presenting the haunting movie at the Venice film festival.

Based on a best-selling novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, the story of love, sexuality and loss -- mainly through suicide -- is set in Japan in the volatile 1960s.

"The film is rich in physical variation," the Vietnamese-born Tran told AFP, discussing scenes in which the lead character Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) paces around an apartment with the troubled Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi), and later tries to keep up with her in a green field.

Watanabe falls in love with Naoko despite her imbalance over losing her sister and boyfriend to suicide.

While promising to wait for Naoko until she overcomes the trauma at a special sanatorium, Watanabe gets deeply involved with another woman, Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), tumbling into romantic confusion.

"In the field scene the conversation is very physical, Naoko is talking about not being able to get aroused with her previous boyfriend," Tran said. "In fact it's a confession, which in church you would do sitting down."

Scenes in which blowing wind competes with the dialogue "also adds tension," Tran, 47, said of a story that in book form "has a very intimate relationship with the reader."

The film adaptation "was not just adapting a story... it was also adapting all the poetic ramifications, all the emotional ramifications that the book provokes in you," said Tran, who won the top prize Golden Lion here in 1995 for "Cyclo".

"I had to find a way to unlock this personal side," Tran said.

Even the language gap -- Tran used interpreters to direct the all-Japanese cast -- was a way to "find a different energy," he said.

And while the sexuality of the film, presented on Thursday, is replete with 1960s overtones, Tran sought to minimize visual references to the era, notably in the clothes, all neutral, even prim.

"We eliminated anything too hippy," he said.

Apart from the emblematic Beatles' song of the title, he shunned familiar tunes from the era, preferring to use "less well-known music but with strong emotional power... mostly to avoid the nostalgic side," Tran told reporters earlier.

"The story could otherwise be seen as something softer, nicer," he said. "Instead it's seen as harsher, crueler because of the music."

The many love scenes in the film are for the most part awkward, with the focus on the lovers' faces.

"I wanted to show the impact on Naoko when she made love with Watanabe. The rest could only distract from what is most important in the film," Tran said.

The Paris-based director had several exchanges with Murakami at the start of the project, but eventually, Tran recalled, the author said: "Do the film you have in mind. All that is needed is for you to make the best film possible."

"Norwegian Wood" is one of 24 films vying for the Golden Lion at the festival, which opened Wednesday and runs through September 11.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Tran presents 'Norwegian Wood' at Venice film festival