Director Tran Anh Hung's latest film Norwegian Wood recently premiered at Ha Noi's Megastar Cineplex, with the film to open in cinemas nationally tomorrow. Hung, an overseas Vietnamese who lives in France, spoke about the film adapted from the popular novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
How have you tried to ensure fans of the novel are not disappointed when they watch your movie?
I don't care about it. I was just interested in making a good movie. If the movie doesn't match what audiences' imagined, that's their affair, not mine. This is the first time I've made a movie from a well-known novel. I not only tried to tell the story in images, but I wanted to express my thoughts and feelings when I read the novel. I choose a way to go straight to the heart of the matter, without beginning with a character's recollection as usual.
What's more, the novel did not address the relationship between past and present or cause and effect. If I made the movie following the novel's structure, I would have had to add more details than are present. But there's already a lot of information in the original.
I began to shoot the movie in winter and delayed it in five months waiting for summer. Japanese actors are great, and the languages barrier was not a problem. We could understand each other well because of the common language of cinema.
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud's 1991 film The Lover, based on the book by Marguerite Duras, ignited a constroversy because of the many sex scenes in the film. There are also a lot of sex scenes in Norwegian Wood. But the sexuality in the novel is handled in a very pure way. How did you convey that in making this film?
The director needs to have an exact eye. While sex scenes attract interest, they need to be there for good reason. In the movie, when the protagonist has sex, it is significant and psychologically changing. So I made these scenes special. I focused on the expression on the actors' faces. When watching the movie, audiences will feel it.
Sex in a movie should relate to the theme of the movie. What is the theme of Norwegian Wood? It is that a main female character cannot make love and it leads to her death. It makes her guilty because she thought that her boyfriend's death was due to this reason. Murakami seems to overaccentuate sexuality. Sexuality is the salvation of his characters.
Did you have any trouble with Murakami, who is known to be very tough?
We didn't have any trouble with Haruki Murakami. He knows the cinema. The writer cannot intervene in the director's work. We discussed a lot and it was very good for me. It helped me to write the script. He was satisfied when he watched the movie. I think I'm lucky. Before I reached agreement with Murakami, he didn't want anybody to make a movie from his novel.
The novel focuses on characters' psychological states more than on situations. How do you sustain the interest of audiences in the movie?
The novel reminds me of my youth, with a lot of love and emotion and everything I experienced. It brings me to a special sadness about life and loss which people possible may not have had a chance to see. It is the reason why I made the movie. I believe that it will touch the hearts of audiences. If audiences reach the end of the movie and have remembered their own emotions of first love or fear of loss, I will have been successful.
The movie is being screened in Japan and I know that there have been many responses to the film in Japanese. I've been too busy to ask assistants to translate them for me. I will know in a few weeks.
I cannot guess the responses of Vietnamese audiences. I will have to wait for the answer. Obviously, I hope they will be moved after the come out of the theatre. — VNS