Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood

classified 15 S

Filmic 2017: The Film Scores of Jonny Greenwood

Film

Please note: This was screened in Feb 2017

Director
Tran Anh Hung
Cast
Ken'ichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi, Kiko Mizuhara
Details
128 mins, Subtitled, 2010, Japanese

In his third major film project Jonny Greenwood’s growing confidence as an expert orchestral craftsman was evident in his sombre, introspective score for Tran Anh Hung’s faithful adaptation of Haruki Murakami's best-selling novel - a treasured love story about three Tokyo students whose romantic entanglement is set against political unrest in late 1960s Japan.

Toru Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) is a 19-year-old student in Tokyo, besotted with the beautiful and introspective Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi). But their mutual passion is complicated by the tragic suicide of their best friend years before, and whilst Watanabe lives with the influence of death everywhere, Naoko, after escaping to a rural retreat, feels as if some integral part of her has been permanently lost. Wishing to stay devoted while Naoko recovers, Watanabe’s life gets further complicated when Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), a girl who is everything that Naoko is not - outgoing, vivacious, supremely self-confident - marches into his life forcing him to choose between his past and his future.

Switching between searing orchestral passages, elegiac sonatas and haunting solo guitar ballads, Greenwood’s dreamy, evocative, and distant score – which he also peppers with three original tracks from Krautrock trailblazers Can - brilliantly compliments the film’s stunning natural landscapes whilst capturing the emotional turmoil of young love.


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