For the past 20 years, Vietnamese cinema has been predominantly identified with one filmmaker: Anh Hung Tran. The three films Tran directed between 1993 and 2000 put Vietnamese cinema on the map, opening the door for other “overseas Vietnamese” filmmakers such as Tony Bui (Sundance winner “Three Seasons,” 1998) and Minh Nguyen-Vo (“The Buffalo Boy”).
Tran, who moved to France at the age of 12, achieved instant international success with his debut feature “The Scent of the Green Papayas,” the first Vietnamese film to receive an Academy Award nomination for best foreign language film in 1993. In addition to the Oscar nomination, the film received the Caméra d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the César award for best first work.
His sophomore effort, “Cyclo,” earned Tran’s greatest honor to date: Venice Film Fest’s Golden Lion award in 1995. Tran followed “Cyclo” with another hit, “Vertical Ray of the Sun,” in 2000 before hitting a snag with the underseen “I Come with the Rain,” his first English-language film, in 2008.
Last year, Tran made a comeback with his biggest project to date: an adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s 1987 best-selling novel, “Norwegian Wood.” Debuting in Venice, the film polarized critics with one group hailing it as a masterpiece and the other criticizing it for failing to capture the spirit of Murakami.
I first saw “Norwegian Wood” in December and, I must admit, it didn’t leave a profound impression on me. I loved the look and mood of the film and admired Tran’s skills. Yet I was somewhat left cold by this sad tale of doomed love and tormented youth. The film, I initially believed, was too inert, too detached to leave a heart-tugging impact similar to Kar-Wai Wong (whom Tran has often been compared to).
The second viewing was distinctly different. Freed from the irksomely fogging comparisons my brain uncontrollably insisted on drawing with Murakami’s source novel, it was easier to immerse myself deeper into Tran’s irresistibly seductive universe, becoming one with the characters and savoring the fleeting beauty of the transcending imagery.
“Norwegian Wood” is an experience to behold; a Memento Mori of young lost lives and a time-capsule to a more sympathetic time. “Green Papayas” and “Cyclo” are still regarded as Tran’s most accomplished films to date, but, to me, “Norwegian Wood” is his real crowning work.
Discarding the novel’s prologue set 30 years after the events of the story, Tran instantaneously commences his film in 1969, a time of civil unrest and idealistic political activism. Watanabe (pin-up idol Ken’ichi Matsuyama), his best friend Kizuki (Kengo Kôra) and Kizuki’s girlfriend Naoko (Oscar-nominated Rinko Kikuchi from “Babel”) are college students leading a seemingly blissful existence. Their lives are disrupted by Kizuki’s unexplained suicide on his 17th birthday, driving Watanabe into isolation and Naoko into severe depression. Unable to escape, or confront, their pain, the two find transient comfort in each other’s arms.
On Naoko’s 20th birthday, they have sex, an event that plunges Naoko further into despair and confusion. She quits college and enrolls into a sheltered mountain sanitarium. Deeply in love with Naoko, Watanabe refuses to give up on her.
A new woman, meanwhile, enters his life. Drama classmate Midori (former teen model Kiko Mizuhara) is the complete opposite of Naoko: gregarious, spontaneous and sexually adventurous. Watanabe gradually finds himself drawn to her, yet cannot let go of his hopeless love for Naoko.
“Norwegian Wood” is another manifestation of Tran’s dual personality: His previous delicate, quiet and static bucolic rhapsodies (“Green Papayas,” “Vertical Ray”) were followed by gritty, ruthless and dynamic urban crime nightmares (“Cyclo,” “Rain”). “Wood” falls under the first group, yet, in terms of both narrative and visual structure, it’s unlike anything found in his rather coherent cannon.
“Green Papayas” is a langorous coming-of-age tale about a young servant who falls in love with the son of her mistress. “Vertical Ray” recounts the daily tribulations of three sisters reuniting for their mother’s memorial. Both films contain little dialogue and have no tangible narrative.
“Cyclo” centers on a young rickshaw driver forced into crime when his cyclo is stolen while “Rain,” a highly ambitious modern take on the New Testament, revolves around a troubled detective searching for the missing son of the head of a giant pharmaceutical company. Both films boast disjointed narratives that turn the crime genre over its head.
“Norwegian Wood,” by contrast, is Tran’s first film with a clear narrative, borrowing different elements of both his worlds. The meditative ambiance of “Green Papayas” and “Vertical Ray” are complemented by the vitality of the crime films; the stoic performances of the former films are intercepted by intense dramatics featured in the latter ones. The end result is a perfect marriage between the two styles.
In each of his films, Tran obsessively focuses on the minute details of his meticulously crafted worlds: The exhaustive cooking in “Green Papaya,” the early morning rituals in “Vertical Ray,” the grotesque art creation in “Rain.” Fragments of each story’s inimitable surroundings are carefully recreated: The rich edifices of ‘50s Vietnam in “Green Papaya,” the taxing street chaos of ‘90s Saigon in “Cyclo,” and the awe- stirring grandeur of Hong Kong’s skyscrapers in “Rain.”
Memory, so it seems, is Tran’s main preoccupation. His films are replete with images, sounds, customs and moods, requiring time and space to grasp. The basic exploit of recreation is an act of defiance against the transient nature of time.
This fixation on memory is the link that binds “Norwegian Wood” to Tran’s previous work. Tran’s characters lead a flimsy existence; diminished by grand events — the collapse of aristocracy in “Green Papayas,” the callous new economic realities in “Cyclo,” and the predestined realization of a divine plot in “Rain” — they attempt to find their place in.
In “Norwegian Wood,” the inner turmoil of the characters is dwarfed by the student protests of the time. Utterly ignoring the implications of those events, Tran relegates history to a mere footnote, stripping it of any possible significance. His characters are simply too alienated to engage in the outside world.
All characters are prisoners of their past, haunted by a certain devastating loss. The often glum faces of his characters are set against incredibly beautiful vistas to which they appear to be blind; these kids are in so much pain that they fail to see the life-affirming beauty around them.
When you’re young and in love, Murakami suggests, nothing else seems to matter. Death, experienced at a young age, becomes a destructive force that leaves a grave imprint on every tiny aspect of life; a specter threatening to rob happiness.
Sex, tackled far less explicitly than the book, thus becomes a rival force against death. Contrary to Kar-Wai Wong’s films, where sex is the only time when characters shed off their masks, sex in “Norwegian Wood” is a tool employed by the characters to assert their existence, a rare devise to feel the here and now, to cease the passage of time and inevitability of death. There’s something so innocent, so naïve, in the film’s love scenes; the characters navigate through a strange, mysterious terrain in search for hope, for meaning, for solace. Pleasure, oddly enough, does not seem to be their objective.
Shot in HD by “In the Mood for Love” cinematographer Ping Bin Lee, “Norwegian Wood” marks a departure from Tran’s signature minimalism. The texture of the film is richer, more physical and more sensual than his previous films, enriched by Johnny Greenwood’s sweeping, deeply emotive string-led score.
The feelings of the characters are reflected in the landscapes, in the various color palettes, in the change of seasons. The delicate yellows of Watanabe’s encounters with Midori signify hope and tranquility; the browns of Watanabe’s interior scenes with his philandering friend Nagasawa mirror the drabness of their relationship, the bright blues of the spring meetings between Watanabe and Naoko carry an unsustainable hope while the white snow of winter marks the looming end.
The immediacy of “Norwegian Wood’s” breathtaking aesthetics cannot escape the casual viewer. The ideas, themes and elusive emotions derived from Murakami’s book with remarkable subtlety and reverence require more than multiple viewing; the emotional investment required on the part of the audience might prove daunting for some.
Follow Daily News Egypt tomorrow for an interview with Anh Hung Tran.
Kiko Mizuhara plays Midori, Watanabe’s spontaneous, outgoing drama classmate.
