The Book was Better than the Movie (Claire Paul)

When watching the film adaptation of Norwegian Wood, I was struck by how much I disliked it. The movie felt very disjointed to me, as I felt that none of the scenes really began to relate to each other until Boku visited the sanatorium. It felt like the movie was jumping quickly from one plot point to the next without connecting any of them. Now this isn't a fault in of itself (especially because the film eventually makes sense), but it was made into a transgression once the film committed the #1 crime of the entertainment industry: being boring. I did not care at all about the characters on the screen or any of the things they were doing. I felt no sadness for Kizuki's death, no righteous indignation at Nagasawa's womanizing, and no relish in Midori's obnoxious behavior. It disappointed me that the characters were so underwhelming.

I think that both the disunity of the film and the characters' insipidity can be chalked up to the loss of Boku's internal narration. In the book, each plot point is connected by Boku's feelings and editorializing of the events and characters, both moving the story along and prompting the audience to endure the characters as Boku sees them. The movie simply presents each plot point as they are, with only a cursory voice-over to explain the bare minimum. Without Boku's internal thoughts, the movie loses the charm of the book.

I'm not really sure how to fix this problem. It's impossible to fill in all details of Boku's mind into the film, but I think that the movie could have done a better job of portraying the idiosyncrasies of Boku's world, like more detail into his interactions with Storm Trooper or more screen time dedicated to his conversations with Naoko and Midori.

I also might just be terribly biased; I usually believe that my interpretation of the book is always the best and most correct version of the book. As a result, the movie version usually fails to meet my expectations.