It was only just the other day that something about his thriller I Come With The Rain surfaced and Tran Anh Hung's Japanese language adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood is now making news with the announcement of his three leads... this is big, big news!
Kenichi Matsuyama has been chosen to play the lead as the college student Toru Watanabe, while Rinko Kikuchi plays his emotionally troubled lover Naoko. The story's heroine, a lively young woman named Midori, will be played by ViVi fashion model Kiko Mizuhara in her very first acting role. "Norwegian Wood" follows Toru's relationships with these two very different women, as well as his dealing with the death of a friend. Tokyograph
Kenichi is arguably one of the great young actors of his generation and Rinko has already made a name for herself internationally with Babel and Brothers Bloom and she is cute as a bug's ear. So while this is excellent news the rub is that Norwegian Wood isn't scheduled for release until Fall of 2010.
Now to find me a English translation of the book!
ACHK!
People have always talked about Murakami as being unfilmable, and while I tend to agree, but there is something in the ethereality of much of his work that teases the imagination in a way I think the right kind of filmmaker could respond well to.
But Norwegian Wood? It’s his most bare, realistic and probably most introspective work... I just can’t see it working on film. Not in any way.
And then on top of that they choose hot young stars with big names, and a girl from a gyaru fashion mag... errrk. It was his most commercially successful novel, so it looks like the studios and jimusho want to throw some faces around. I’ll pay that the two leads have more than proven they can act, and Tran is as good a fit for the material as anyone I can imagine, but still... I just can’t see anything positive this change in medium would bring to the story...
Damn.
I think Tony Takitani proves that his books can make for compelling films. I personally want to see Dance, Dance, Dace And Wild Sheep Chase as a pair.
Norwegian Wood is probably the book that would be most easily adaptable for film, and the least interesting. Seeing how it's one of the best selling books of ALL TIME in Japan. I'm suprised it hasn't been churned out as a cheap, melodrama by a Japanese studio yet. I think it's his most depressing book, it's the similar to everything else only the surreal aspects of his other work is defined as mental illness, and characters who disappear into parrerel universes are really just commiting suicide.
And I just read on IMDB that Wim Wenders is adapting the other great Murakami's (Ryu) In the Miso Soup? Any word on how far along that is or what's going on with Coin Locker Babies?
here is the site for the wind up bird chronicles um production I guess is a better word than play
http://www.windupbc.com/home.html
Thank you for the link, it looks fascinating. I'd love to see it live.