twistedhasem.blogg.se - The chungking express

#THE CHUNGKING EXPRESS FULL#

For a period of 15 or so years there was no other filmmaker capable of capturing the loneliness, disillusionment, melancholy and disassociation of the modern and post modern world as poignantly and poetically as Wong Kar Wai. When viewed alongside the kaleidoscopic sequences and tracking shots, excellent use of music, and those glorious neon lights it simply makes for a mesmerising experience. It conveys and visualises flawlessly the distance between the quick paced, asthmatic rhythms of the urban environment and the isolation and deep longing for love and connection experienced by the four protagonists. The most distinct visual motif should probably be the contrast between the foreground in slow motion and the background moving faster. I just wanted to post something on it, but you’ve done such a thorough and well rounded analysis of it, there really is not much to say. Words can’t describe how much I admire this film. There is a great piece on that shot here. The background is capturing Leung and Faye Wong in slow-motion. In the foreground there are the passing pedestrians on the street.

It is impossible to do it justice it in a screenshot- but at the 56-minute mark WKW achieves one of the great shots/scenes of the decade.

The scene where he comes by and asks her out (the owner of the snack bar calls him a “smooth operator”) is a movie-star moment. Leung’s achievement is on the same level. Some of the seminal moments from the film simply capture Faye Wong dancing.

Faye’s theme- “California Dreamin” by The Mamas & The Papas is used 6X, I believe WKW tells the stories about the cops, but the music (at least the two pop songs used most heavily) are tied to the women.

We were shooting in the middle of the busiest part of Hong Kong.” It was ad hoc and improvised in many situations. From DP Christopher Doyle, “We shot it fast and in a way that has a big energy to it. WKW is not exacting, he is not Kubrick or Wes Anderson- there is a great deal of improvisation here- closer to the early French New Wave auteurs. I am certainly not surprised it is not a 50/50 split with the two stories in Chungking Express.

#THE CHUNGKING EXPRESS FULL#

This is a significant film in the history of bifurcated efforts ( Full Metal Jacket is another in 1987, Waves seems like a very significant film here in 2019 as well).

Around the 40-minute mark (it is roughly 100 minutes long overall) the new story starts and we get the third and ultimately the fourth narrator.

The film has inspired a generation (probably more than one now) of filmmakers from ‘Barry Jenkins to Xavier Dolan He uses a handheld camera (with the work of two cinematographers- Christopher Doyle and Andrew Lau Wai-keung), askew angles, rapid editing, tight spaces, and this distinct, shockwave of a wow, fusion of slow and fast motion– I’ll get into that later.

This sort of drunken (or lovesick) prologue features WKW’s genius, dizzying visual style. WKW is interested in randomness (cop 223’s voice-over noting how close he physically came to both women). Both cop 223 and cop 663 (Tony Leung) are getting over their past romances when they run into (this chance is key in WKW’s world) Faye (Faye Wong) and simply the Woman in the Blonde Wig (Brigitte Lin) respectively. WKW is interested in not only love, but a certainly kind of love-a melancholic pervading mood. It begins with the voiceover of Takeshi Kaneshiro (cop 223).the film was shot in just 23 days, apparently while WKW was on break from shooting Ashes in Time (also 1994)-which is the bigger budget, A-film, epic.Unquestionably, it belongs in discussion with Goodfellas, Breaking the Waves, Pulp Fiction, Boogie Nights and a few others. It is WKW’s greatest work to date in 1994 (it would take one of the greatest films of all time, In the Mood For Love, to outdo it a few years later). Chungking Express stands as one of the finest works of cinema in the 1990s.