“UFO in Kushiro” and “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo” both come from 2000’s after the quake, whose six works each concern the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan in a distinct way. Short story collections are carefully curated, and rearranging them can be risky. Komura, the main character in the story “UFO in Kushiro,” thus also lives out the events of “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” and “The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday’s Women.” Katagiri, the lead of “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,” is his coworker, and now also takes part in “Dabchick.” Komura’s wife Kyoko is reconfigured as the protagonist of “Birthday Girl.” Rather than a simple anthology of vignettes, each inspired by a Murakami story, this narrative combines them into episodes in the lives of three interlinked characters. The screenplay is a clever act of remixing. The first feature from director Pierre Földes, Blind Willow, Sleeping Womanably captures Murakami’s combination of low-key magical realism, sexual neurosis, and loneliness. Now an animated film takes an omnibus approach, combining half a dozen of his short stories into one hazy, beguiling new tale. Despite Haruki Murakami’s global popularity, only recently have film adaptations of his work gotten real prominence, with acclaimed movies like Burning (2018) and the Oscar-winning Drive My Car (2021).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |