Famend Japanese writer Haruki Murakami expressed pleasure with how a number of of his quick tales have been tailored in American director Pierre Földes’ animated movie “Blind Willow, Sleeping Girl”, including he needed to see future interpretations of his work with filmmakers’ personal spin.
The Japanese language model of the 2022 movie shall be launched for the primary time in Japan on July 26. It’s the first animated adaptation of Murakami’s work.
After screening the movie Saturday at his alma mater Waseda College in Tokyo, Murakami — becoming a member of Földes at a chat session — admitted that whereas he wasn’t a fan of animated movies, he watched it twice.
The filmmaker was impressed by six of Murakami’s quick tales: “Tremendous-Frog Saves Tokyo” and “U.F.O. in Kushiro”— from “After the Quake,” assortment, written after the deadly 1995 Kobe earthquake — and ”Birthday Woman,” “Dabchick,” “The Windup Chicken and Tuesday’s Girls.”
“Blind Willow, Sleeping Girl” is ready in Tokyo within the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and the Fukushima meltdowns. It focuses on three major characters — Katagiri, a diligent however lonely and confidence-lacking banker who groups up with an enormous speaking frog to avoid wasting Tokyo from an imminent second quake, his unenthusiastic youthful colleague and his spouse Kyoko, who — depressed and glued to earthquake information on TV — leaves him. By way of recollections and desires, the three ultimately discover peace and the flexibility to begin anew.
Murakami praised the animated model of the clever inexperienced Frog, voiced by Földes, saying it matched how he imagined the character to be.
“What I wish to see just isn’t a mere movie model of what I wrote, however one thing added to it and turning into one thing new,” Murakami stated in the course of the speak.
Földes stated his method “is to be trustworthy to my interpretation of issues of my inspiration,” which clearly labored for Murakami.
The American filmmaker stated he did not have a definitive plan when he picked six tales that “I simply love.” However issues began to construct “like completely different crops rising collectively,” he informed Murakami. “Little by little all these hyperlinks appeared and that is how I mixed all of your tales into one story with different tales inside.”
The favored author’s works beforehand impressed a number of award-winning works, together with Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 “Drive My Automobile” and South Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 thriller “Burning.”
Murakami cited each movies and Földes’ animation as examples that efficiently achieved his and the administrators’ targets.
“Making a movie based mostly on quick tales would require administrators creativity so as to add personal supplies, which tends to assist the creation of an attention-grabbing product,” he stated, noting that adapting a movie from a full-length novel may require the alternative to make it in a two-hour manufacturing.
Murakami additionally stated his “Underground,” his non-fiction long-form investigative work which is predicated on interviews with individuals affected by the 1995 terrorist toxic fuel assault on the Tokyo subway system, would make an interesting movie.
“Blind Willow, Sleeping Girl” acquired a nomination for best-animated movie on the 2024 Lumieres Awards.
