Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is no less insightful into the mercurial vicissitudes of the human condition, but it still finds space for Murakami the fabulist.

There are sequences of efficient dialogue that — if you close your eyes — unspool the kind of low-key, elliptical tension that Murakami seems to be able to pull off in his sleep. But ... the aggressively odd visuals ruin the illusion.

A very odd story, but the conversations... are absolutely fascinating.

Blind Willow feel[s] like elegantly animated lucid dreams full of poetic imagery: far from realistic but viscerally truthful.

Hits the right notes of strange and angsty.

Works well as a visual companion for fans of the author’s work, and as a flawed enigma for everyone else.

It wryly refuses to take itself or its world too seriously, which, like Murakami’s best fiction, makes its openly emotional scenes heartbreaking.

The visually adventurous, gleefully surreal work combines an assortment of Murakami’s writing into a wholly immersive, otherworldly odyssey of urban malaise and imminent global disaster.

Turns out animation is the ideal medium for the whimsy and melancholy of Murakami’s fables.

The mixed defeatism, gentle absurdist humor, and discreet sentimentality of Murakami’s work proves ideally translatable to this particular screen medium, in which its winsome charm never cloys.