Norwegian Wood

The unknowing weed takes its time to sing but sing it does in director Anh Dung Tran’s film Norwegian Wood, his first since “Vertical Ray of the Sun” in 2000. Based on the best-selling 1987 novel of Haruki Murikami (which I haven’t read), the film...

Yet, when Norwegian Wood gets it right, when Hung taps into the emotional nuances of his character and of their situations, when all facets from cinematography to editing to music (Johnny Greenwood’s score flirts with being bombastic yet in the end...

In college we begin to will ourselves into our adult skin, however ill-fitting. Writers adore this subject, this time of exquisite romantic suffering. In his 1987 novel "Norwegian Wood" — the "Love Story" of Japan, a little higher up the quality scale...

For a sex movie, “Norwegian Wood” is about as dry as a pocketful of sand. Even for a film set in a land that considers paper folding an exciting activity, this is dull stuff.

Thanks to Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung and the bold, attuned cinematography of Lee Bing-pin (a longtime collaborator of Hou Hsiao-hsien), Haruki Murakami receives his first largely successful film adaptation with Norwegian Wood.

An elegant, immaculately shot meditation on survival and loss, Tran Anh Hung’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood is a beauteous, lukewarm bore. Frequent Hou Hsiao-hsien cinematographer Lee Ping Bin, who also shot In The Mood For Lov

In Haruki Murakami's acclaimed, thought-to-be-unfilmable 1987 novel "Norwegian Wood," the bittersweet memories of narrator-protagonist Toru Watanabe's post-adolescent college years in late-1960s Japan come flooding back to him when he hears...

With his intuitive penchant for lingering, privileged sensations, Tran Anh Hung would seem to be an inspired choice to film Haruki Murakami's languid-erotic 1987 bestseller Norwegian Wood, where the eponymous Beatles anthem can have the effect of...

For a story packed with big, indelible events - suicide and sexual awakening, terminal illness and first love - "Norwegian Wood" is a restrained portrait of liminal moments, a coming-of-age tale that feels more like a moody ghost story than a neatly...

Oof. Okay, so I’m just going to get right out with it: Norwegian Wood is not a great movie. That is admittedly coming from someone who has never read the novel of the same name by Haruki Murakami, upon which the film is based.

Haruki Murakami’s novel ‘Norwegian Wood’ finds respect in the hands of director Tran Anh Hung
Haruki Murakami’s breakthrough 1987 novel “Norwegian Wood” is at once so gorgeously detailed and emotionally transcendent as to seem simultaneously cinematic and utterly unfilmable.

“Norwegian Wood” is dark poetry, a tragic love story that combats the inherent cruelty of the tale with lush images of nature and location. It’s a troubling narrative perfectly packaged, unfurling a dramatic sweep of personal loss with ...

“Norwegian Wood” is a film that shimmers with production values. Anh Hung Tran’s direction is all the more amazing considering he is Vietnamese and does not speak Japanese, the language in which the film is shot.

Norwegian Wood, is his least typical. Flashing that Beatle song for a title, it’s much more conventional, transparent and accessible, which may explain its huge reception in Japan when first published back in 1987.

Norwegian Wood is Japanese cult author Haruki Murakami’s most popular novel – but it’s also long, slow and introspective.

Just don't watch it if you're 19 with a tendency to under-distance yourself from films. People used to talk about how heavy metal made kids commit suicide, but the fact is that it's probably mournful romantic tragedy and "my world is empty without you"...

Those were the best years of our lives. Every once in a while when the weather gets melancholic, we would reminiscence those years when loss and sexuality meant a whole lot more. Every once in a while when we hear a morose tune on the radio...

Toyko, 1968. Students are in revolt as pupil Toru (Kenichi Matsuyama) watches his life unravel: his friend Kizuki (Kengo Kora) commits suicide, he falls for Kizuki’s ex Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi), before the emotional torment lands her in a sanatorium.

Tokyo, 1968. students are in revolt, as pupil Toru (Matsuyama) watches his life unravel: his friend Kizuki (Kora) commits suicide, he falls for Kizuki’s ex, Naoko (Kikuchi), before the emotional torment lands her in a sanatorium. Based on Haruki Murakam

DESPITE its title, this is a Japanese language film with subtitles – but don’t let that put you off, especially as it’s adapted from a haunting, all-time bestselling 1987 novel inspired by a Beatles song and is scored by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwoo

"I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me?" So begins the eponymous Beatles song, which echoes literally and thematically through this delicately offbeat Japanese drama by Vietnamese filmmaker Tran.

Vietnamese-French writer-director Tran Anh Hung's compelling new film is based on a 1987 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.