The novel Is relatively long, and for people who have read it, you cannot satisfy everybody. However, from seeing this movie, what I felt the director did was took a pair of scissors, snipped bits from the book and did a movie from that, without any connection made between the snippets. Somehow the sex scenes was a larger snippet than the others, impressed?
Watching this movie was like watching a hell of a long trailer, and the characters were reduced to the three basic denominators, Naoko, Toru and Midori. Everybody else is just blank background. The sad thing is in the final scene, Reiko could be substituted with a mushroom and you would not see the difference. You don't see, or know, for non-novel readers, what the emotional sickness has done to her appearance, and not knowing of her story, she is another background, like the sofa and the curtains.
I am not sure who made this decision, anh hung tran or whoever else. The story is shattered into bits and pieces, but emphasis was put in all the wrong places. Scenes of Toru's life are just insignificant intersections to his next sex scene. The story is not only about a spaced out kid growing up, but about the particular era he was living in, how people around him had plans of their own in that era, and how it seems he, as such an ordinary person that he is, has to make a living, even though he had to think of Naoko constantly. Even if the director don't have this part of the story in mind, could he have at the very very basic level, make a comprehensive piece of story, for the non-novel readers? Why spend some 5 minutes on Kizuki's suicide, when the details were not mentioned in the book, and spoils the audiences' imagination, and certainly the shock, of his death? You could've spent that time on showing something else that is more crucial to the character development, considering how little there are already.
On an end note, the scenes are beautiful, and almost every 20 minutes of the film the audiences are treated with a beautiful scene. But that doesn't save the movie as a whole, it is not just an ornamental vase to be looked at. So many characters are sacrificed for showing 10 minutes of splashing waves (probably all filmed in one afternoon, which doesn't explain or show how long Toru has actually been living his wasted life in solitude?)
If there is a 5 hour version, for hell of it show the 5 hour version, instead of this shattered piece of thing. I feel the movie is meant for those who have read the novel as the audience has to fill in most of the gaps, so what about those who haven't read the novel? The movie gives the novel a bad name...
Watching this movie was like watching a hell of a long trailer, and the characters were reduced to the three basic denominators, Naoko, Toru and Midori. Everybody else is just blank background. The sad thing is in the final scene, Reiko could be substituted with a mushroom and you would not see the difference. You don't see, or know, for non-novel readers, what the emotional sickness has done to her appearance, and not knowing of her story, she is another background, like the sofa and the curtains.
I am not sure who made this decision, anh hung tran or whoever else. The story is shattered into bits and pieces, but emphasis was put in all the wrong places. Scenes of Toru's life are just insignificant intersections to his next sex scene. The story is not only about a spaced out kid growing up, but about the particular era he was living in, how people around him had plans of their own in that era, and how it seems he, as such an ordinary person that he is, has to make a living, even though he had to think of Naoko constantly. Even if the director don't have this part of the story in mind, could he have at the very very basic level, make a comprehensive piece of story, for the non-novel readers? Why spend some 5 minutes on Kizuki's suicide, when the details were not mentioned in the book, and spoils the audiences' imagination, and certainly the shock, of his death? You could've spent that time on showing something else that is more crucial to the character development, considering how little there are already.
On an end note, the scenes are beautiful, and almost every 20 minutes of the film the audiences are treated with a beautiful scene. But that doesn't save the movie as a whole, it is not just an ornamental vase to be looked at. So many characters are sacrificed for showing 10 minutes of splashing waves (probably all filmed in one afternoon, which doesn't explain or show how long Toru has actually been living his wasted life in solitude?)
If there is a 5 hour version, for hell of it show the 5 hour version, instead of this shattered piece of thing. I feel the movie is meant for those who have read the novel as the audience has to fill in most of the gaps, so what about those who haven't read the novel? The movie gives the novel a bad name...