Norwegian Wood the movie and re-reading books

Twin Peaks

Yesterday, I re-watched an episode of Twin Peaks, which remains a fantastic David Lynch classic. Being somewhat low-energy, I scrolled through my Justwatch list to see if any other exciting films were available. There, I found Norwegian Wood.

Recently, I reread Haruki Murakami’s book. I still liked it very much. (I rarely reread a single book, with exceptions being Haruki Murakami, Gerrit Krol, Douglas Coupland, Derek Sivers and Seth Godin)
The movie Norwegian Wood has a very similar atmosphere to the book. The film has the typical Murakami-like alienation from the world.

“Of course.”

“Is that a catchphrase of yours?”

I found this again in “The City and Its Uncertain Walls” (in Dutch – De stad en zijn onvaste muren).

→ The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Murakami’s Norwegian Wood reread

On the plane back from Prague, I finished reading Norwegian Wood—re-reading, actually. I don’t often re-read books, but Murakami is a favorite of mine.

Watanabe is in love with Naoko. She is the girlfriend of their mutual friend, who died at a very young age. Naoko can not cope with life and commits suicide in the end, while Watanabe is torn between emotions he is not able to identify or is not even conscious of. The girl who falls in love with him must tell him he is in love with her. An old friend tells him he has to choose for himself. While perfectly capable of analyzing other people’s situations, he is unable to analyze his own issues. Let alone that he is able to come up with a choice for his own problems he is not even aware of.