La Ballade de l'impossible

Quand j’y repense en écrivant cette critique, je ne sais pas vraiment si c’est le livre ou le film que j’évalue. Le modèle littéraire est pour moi l’un des romans les plus brillants que j’ai jamais lus. Je rejoins ceux qui reprochent au film de ne pas avoir pu retranscrire à l’écran l’ambiance du livre. Les films japonais sont fort distants, nettement plus que les livres, par exemple. Je lis volontiers du Murakami, du Kawabatu ou du Kaneharo, mais j’ai du mal avec la façon dont les films sont faits. Je reste malgré tout admiratif face à l’audace de porter au grand écran un livre culte. J’aurais pu émettre des réserves par dizaines, notamment pour Naoko qui nous tape sur les nerfs ou encore pour le peu d’espace laissé à Midori et ses délires dont le livre est pourtant parsemé, mais je m’en tiendrai au fait que les points positifs l’emportent. Parce qu’avant de se permettre de critiquer, il nous faudrait d’abord sortir un film basé sur un succès mondial de littérature. (15/02/2011)

The book is better; the movie, come to think of it, fails to capture the whole atmosphere. Not that it's downright disappointing, but it's not what I wanted to see. It's a bit calculated and literally has a "feel good" ending. Those who haven't read it may have trouble navigating at times. The images alternate, but it doesn't feel like it's conveying anything. When someone died, it didn't even move me, I just stared blankly at the screen. It lacks the soul that the book has, which Trần Anh Hùng simply failed to bring to the screen. You can't even get a sense of all the bleakness and loneliness and uncertainty you feel while reading it. If I hadn't read it, this would have been an empty film for me. Too bad, I was really looking forward to it. (28/01/2011)

Anh Hung Tran obviously thinks that the way to film movies, especially adaptations of books founded on characters and melancholia, is to leave the characters to sit/walk/copulate (really only for the thickest-skinned viewers, five minutes of macro detail of a motionless face yelps in the end), then he lets them recite a randomly chosen sentence from the book and then willy-nilly graft on the “artiest" elements possible (e.g. soul torn asunder = shots of waves crashing onto rocks, never-ending shots of waves breaking onto rocks) and he repeats this over and over until he fills the entire one hundred and thirty minutes of the movie. I suffered in the movie theatre as I never have before. For the duration of projection, I was trying to think of who I most hate, so I could send him a copy. I found the answer very soon - Anh Hung Tran. (28/01/2011)