Wong Kar Wai Article

7/29/2019 Wong Kar Wai Article

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Wong Kar Wai an Auteur of Time

Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actuallyit's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things thatwe get, but not the things we wish we had. Wong Kar wai

Hong Kong is a product of relentless migration,globalisation and social change. The forces that

shaped Hong Kong's personality were huge, within

a space that was too small and self-contained.

Fierce population growth and movement dissolved

any demarcation between commerce and culture.

The impatient desires on which the colony was

founded have created a society where movement

and adaptation is all important, where fast-living

and relational-identities reflect the rapid

fluctuations of market forces. The vast majority ofthe population derives income from some form of

stock, currency or property speculation.

Appearance and attitude, obsession and commitment, keeping up with the times:

these are issues of the Hongkie identity. Consequently, living there cultivates a

loud, fluid existentialism at odds with the expectations of western critics.

Wong Kar Wai's characters' lack of roots and painful personal stories reflect thepolitical and social uncertainty faced by Hong Kong over the years, first with the1997 handover to China and what it will mean in the future (2046 is the anniversaryof the handover - mainland China has promised 50 years of capitalism). While thecharacters suffer, it is interesting to note that there are no disasters - all accepttheir fates with varying degrees of stoicism and acceptance, perhaps reflecting thedirector's own optimism about the future, his embracing of Western and Japanesepop culture and belief that Hong Kong can forge its own identity. His characterschart their existence against the disappointment and regrets of failed relationshipsand the hopeful chase for new ones - the accidental meetings that, strangelyenough, provide them with a sense of security, fate and happiness.

Though he is a much successful film maker now, he started his career as a graphicdesigner .As a graphic designer he adored the still photography of Robert Frank andHenri Cartier-Bresson who was even the main inspiration behind Satyajit Rays workand the sleek fashion work of Richard Avedon. Scorsese and the American &European new wave were a huge influence, but it was fellow director Patrick Tam

who perhaps made the greatest practical difference; Wong Kar Wai wrote Tam'sFinal Victory and in return, Tam nurtured Wong Kar Wai's directing aspirations, evensupervising the editing on Days Of Being Wild four years later. Interestingly, WongKar Wai claims that his non-linear shooting style came, not from film, but from anovel called The Buenos Aires Affair, by the Argentinian novelist Manuel Puig.

In this article well talk about three of his major creations Chunking Express,In the mood for love & 2046 .


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Chungking Express (1994 ) blends the genres of romantic comedy and film noirin two adjacent tales. The first of these follows an undercover cop known as Cop223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro), whose girlfriend May has left him. Cop 223s spiral ofmelancholy is interrupted when he spends a platonic evening with a mysteriouswoman (Brigitte Lin), who is, unbeknownst to him, a drug trafficker. The second talefollows another lovelorn cop, plainclothes officer #663 (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), who

has a habit of talking to inanimate household objects. A regular customer at theMidnight Express takeaway bar, Cop 663 fails to notice that the cashier, Faye (FayeWong), has fallen for him. He remains oblivious when she breaks into his apartmentperiodically, tidying and rearranging things. Finally he catches her in the act, andthe two agree to a date at the California Bar. However, Faye departs for the realCalifornia instead, returning one year later to issue him a so-called boarding passconsisting of a paper napkin.

Despite its grounding in the context of mainstream Hong Kong cinema, ChungkingExpress displays a variety of specifically foreign cultural references. Thepredominant tone of the film is informed by European and Japanese modernist artcinema. In particular, the breezy disregard for plot structure, the frequent musical

interludes and the emphasis on style over psychology are reminiscent of the FrenchNew Wave films of Godard and Truffaut.

The notion of time is a pervadingconcept in all of Wongs films. Hispreoccupation with capturing timeis constantly evident, his cameradoting on specific moments andintent on finding difference inrepetition

Wong effectively highlights the fact

that people (who make up part ofthe postmodern pastiche) are inclose physical proximity, but canbe so far apart, and indeed are sovery far apart, at the same time.His penchant for voiceover

monologues and written captions are also part of his signature compositions. Theisolation of his characters often gives way to voiceover monologues in which hischaracters status as outsiders is constantly reiterated. The alienating space of thecity is often the backdrop for inhabitants who struggle to mentally articulate theirown sense of place and identity within the urban landscape. This translates to avisual pastiche of deeply drenched colours and stylised camera shots. Chungking

Express adopts this rhetoric using MTV editing vocabulary and by constantlymanipulating visuals. Wong finds creativity in the astute articulation of the pauseand rewind modes, another postmodern emblem of the late 20th century.

Chunking Express is a rare film which although takes inspiration from Japanesenovelist Haruki Murakamis The Second Bakery Attack and Manuel Puigsnovel, Kiss of the Spiderwoman but is peppered with pop culture references, andfeatures ordinary folk in situations which are at once mundane and absurd. There isa great bit offilm noirflavour added to it.The absence of a cohesive plot


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emphasizes the gap between the French characters and the Hollywood fantasieswhich they are aping, and a certain comic energy is generated in this way.

Indeed, the end of the filmmakes this metaphor literal,when Faye returns from thereal California, stating that itis nothing much. Her

journey has obviouslychanged her (she is nowwearing the uniform of an air

hostess), yet the changeshave been complicated byher own interpretation ofwhat she has seen andexperienced.

In the Mood for Love (1997)sees Wong Kar-wai returning to a Hong Kongsetting, and further exploring the boundaries of regional identification. Set in the

1960s, the film follows the odd friendship which develops between two neighbourswhose spouses are engaged in an affair. Trying to understand how the affairdeveloped, Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) enact theromance of the adulterers (whose faces we never see) and begin to fall in lovethemselves. He's a journalist who dreams of publishing martial-arts novels and sheis a secretary at a shipping company. Their eventual coupling is obvious from thebeginning but the pleasure here is the way that Kar-Wai ambiguously paints such a

journey with his grand masterstrokes. Their neighbours soon suspect that the pairsplatonic relationship is anything but chaste, a social pressure which forces them topart. In the following years, they almost cross paths a number of times. Finally,Chow finds himself in Cambodia in 1966 during De Gaulles state visit. Wanderingamongst the ruined temples of Angkor Wat, Chow whispers a secret into a hole in

an old stone wall.The films basic narrative formula (a couples love is pitted againstthe institutions of society, and is thwarted) is familiar from U.S. melodrama, and itsprecedents in European theatre.

In the Mood for Love focuseson the random nature ofromance and the notion ofthe 'missed moments '.It offers certain sadness at


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the separation of Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan, but ultimately turns its back on thecharacters, finding nothing transcendentin the relationship that might fill the finalframes. This sense of dislocation is reminiscent of Antonionis filmLclisse (1962). In both films, there is the disconcerting sense that history has somehow enteredthe frame, erasing the characters. The tracking shots through the ruins are alsoreminiscent of the opening moments of Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillets Last

Year at Marienbad(1961), in which the camera drifts like a disembodiedpresence along the hallways of an opulent building.

In the Mood for Love conducts its exploration of Asian regional spaces. At the coreof this enigmatic denouement, we might suggest, is a determination to avoidframing Hong Kong identity directly.

First of all, it refers beyond Chinato

Japan. Secondly, the charactersthemselves travel physicallybeyond Hong Kong, visiting

Singapore (where Mr Chowaccepts a job) and Cambodia(where he goes to see thespectacular ruins at Angkor Wat).

The film ends with Mr Chowwandering reflectively among theruins.

Its poetic and surrealistic visualsmakes one even delve deeper into the feel of the cinema . Maybe thats the magicKar wai weaves into his cinema. The ending of the film therefore represents a kindof narrative rupture, in which the possibilities for identification (both in terms of

transglobal modernity and pan-Asian regionalism) are curtailed. Yet within thisdisruptive conclusion lies a final possibility for identification. For the politicaldisruption of colonialism is one element that these nations have in common(Cambodia and Singapore, as well as Hong Kong). The clip showing De Gaulles visitto Cambodia hints the fact that although Cambodia and Hong Kong may havedistinctly different histories, it is nonetheless true that both have been drasticallyaffected by the intervention of a European colonial power.

2046(2004) continues In the Mood for Loves examination of regional identity,while extending its articulation of modernity into the future as well as the past. Thefilms title refers to the fiftieth year of the period following the 1997 handover,during which China has promised not to alter Hong Kongs economic and political

system. Just as the 1997 handover and the mid-60s turmoil of Hong Kong generateanxiety in the earlier films, 2046 gestures towards another zone of temporaluncertainty in the future. Indeed, although the contemporary moment is notrepresented in 2046, 1997 is the fulcrum upon which rest the films forays intonostalgia and science fiction. Kar wai worked for 15 long years on this script .


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In 2046, Chows real and imaginary spatial trajectories are parallelled by temporaltrajectories. The film itself begins with two return journeys, one spatial (Chowreturning from Singapore to Hong Kong) and one temporal (Tak coming back from

2046). The intertwining of space and time continues throughout the film. Chowplays a writer who hides his own past pain by pretending to be a casual lover,though doing so is not his nature. He lives in an apartment building where a formerlover was murdered by a jealous boyfriend, 2046 being the number of theapartment she lived in, as well as the apartment belonging to his lost love from Inthe Mood for Love.The writer lives next door, in 2047. To him, it represents a placewhere memories dwell, so he writes an erotic science fiction story about it, where afuturistic dystopian megalopolis is connected by a series of trains, and thecharacters go to 2046, a place where things never change and memories stay thesame, so there is no loss or sadness, yet the character in his story is the only personwho has chosen to return from there.

Jingwen and Chow establish a platonic relationship, in which she helps him write.During this time, Chow endeavours to write a story for her about what her boyfriendis really thinking. Entitled 2047, this story involves Chow imagining himself as a

Japanese man, who falls in love with an android with delayed reactions.

The three films I have discussed all negotiate identity, to varying degrees, throughencounters with foreign cultures. In each case, transnational travel parallels thevirtual vectors of transcultural identification, so that the characters and the filmsthemselves follow trajectories of identification, trajectories that are continuallybeing diverted and interrupted. These trajectories can be plotted along two mainthematic axes: one defined by hybridity of different cultures, the other by nostalgiaof the past and in the case of2046, futurism.

In the Mood forLove and 2046show the way thatthese two vectors of identification(the hybrid and the nostalgic-futuristic) constantly interrupt eachother, turning identification back onitself. The closest Wong Kar-wai gets


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to articulate a stable Hong Kong identity is, finally, to suggest the universality ofinstability. It is an articulation of identity that produces certain optimism even as itcrushes the possibility for unified identification. This paradox informs both theromantic relationships that drive the films, and the discourse of territorial identitythat permeates them.

Wong Kar Wai is yet to win an Oscar, but that doesn't mean that he or his films

have been short-changed. He's been recognized twice as Best Director at the Hong

Kong Film Awards (once for Chunking Express and also for Days of Being Wild), he's

the first Chinese director to win a directing award at Cannes (for Happy Together) ,

and he was later chosen to work with the Cannes jury. What makes him far more

distinct even from the other directors is his uncanny ability to produce art and

commercial success at the same time. Today he is revered as one of the most

talented auteur of Modern contemporary cinema across the globe. He says For me

to make films should be like a circus, we should just go from one town to the other,

always on the road, and you stop when you think you should stop. He is still the

obstinate auteur who wears black glasses, insists on his principles and endlesslyrecreates the script while shooting and re edits them afterwards until the final

version appears.

Shashank Saurav

4th Year , ECE

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