Sex in Norwegian Wood (Max)

"And yet, when I went inside her, Naoko tensed with pain. Was this her first time? I asked, and she nodded. Now, it was my turn to be confused. I had assumed that Naoko had been sleeping with Kizuki all that time. I went in as far as I could and stayed that way for a long time, holding Naoko, without moving. And then, as she began to seem calmer, I allowed myself to move inside her, taking a long time to come to climax, with slow, gentle movements. Her arms tightened around me at the end, when at last she broke her silence. Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm I had ever heard." - Toru and Naoko sleep together

In the book, Toru and Naoko's sex scene is just a few paragraphs long, but there is some measure of passion and kindness within it. He touches her breasts, she fondles him, and he removes her clothes piece by piece. The movie completely ruins the sex scene. Not only is it viscerally uncomfortable to watch, but there's a jump cut from Toru and Naoko kissing to Naoko lying on the floor completely nude. Somehow, the film stretches the scene into 4 and 1/2 minutes yet wholly removes all the lead-up and passion, as if Toru and Naoko don't even know each other. If you don't believe me, Toru says he takes a "long...gentle" approach to sleeping with Naoko in the book. In the film, he asks her if it's her first time; she says it is, and he almost immediately begins thrashing around like an animal. There are no more cuts in the film, so it seems as if the ordeal from penetration to climax took 3 minutes, a far cry from the "long gentle time." 

I think the issue with the film is that the medium doesn't allow for the off-the-page imagining that Murakami's books necessitate. "Long gentle" time and "saddest sound of orgasm" are both vague descriptors that leave the reader room to imagine, visualize, and hear the sound. In the movie, the filmmakers and actors are tasked with the impossible job of actually creating the "saddest sound of orgasm," which is a much more difficult job. Maybe the best solution would've been to represent the scene as little as possible, using blank space and sound to replicate the margins and punctuations of a novel, instead of spending so much time amplifying every detail of the novel.