i wouldnt say that Tran Anh Hung's film rendition of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood was a great film, but it certainly is a beautiful one.

And i cna imagine the Murakami's books would not be the best suited for film anyway. I have long been a fan of his books, even though i find they need to be read seperated by some months to prevent them all from gelling into one in my brain. i discovered him when i was still living in russia, where for some reason he is epically popular. my flatmate, not normally much of a reader, was so engrossed in the Wild sheep chase that he couldnt leave his room for a whole weekend. as a result, i ended up reading most of his works in Russian. given the apparent russian love of murakami, i suppose it is not surprising i ended up watching the film in russian as well. perhaps it is available on DVD in the UK, but i havent seen it (not that i have gone out of my way looking, mind) but on my last trip to moscow, the film was all over the place, for sale in supermarkets, the metro and in my favourite bookshop. the dvd i got was certainly worth the 500 rubles i paid. the plot line is somewhat limited, and the book was more psychologically sophisticated, but the film is so visually stunning that none of that mattered. the story is set in Tokyo in the late 1960s, amidst the student unrest of the era. whilst protests are taking place all around, Watanabe is struggling to manage adult life and finds himself torn between to drastically different women. in the meantime, they all have amazing clothes, amazing hair and live in amazing flats and listen to the Beatles. the film is done in a way to highlight the beauty and draw it out in front of the viewer- stunning all around.