The Films Chungking Express, Happy Together and In the Mood for Love - Movie Review Example

Film Review By criticizing the filmic representation in Hong Kong movies, this paper will tackle the notion that HongKong cinema is more than martial arts and action. Its aim is to bring to attention the cosmopolitan side of Hong Kong cinema instead of the conventional view of what Hong Kong films are all about, martial arts and action. Hong Kong films also have element of love, fantasy, journey and self-discovery. Character in some of their films also seem to harbor a big dream: a "Hong Kong dream," a "California dream," and a "New York dream." With the passage of time, characters in these films seem to create new identities for themselves: be a different person, go to a new place, enter a relationship or feel nostalgic for the past. This article will discuss ways in which these characters change, pursue dreams, cherish old relationships, or search for new identities in selected films by Wong Kar-wai. The movies include Chungking Express (1994), Happy Together (1997) and In the Mood for Love (2000). Fetishist of romance is the best method of describing Wong Kar-wai (Fu 59). All through his whole career, over 40 years, Wong has manifested his compulsive preoccupation with minutiae and details over and over again; the little fleeting moments plus impressions, which develop a mood. However, amongst the swirling, delirious and enveloping moods, the director also details a hard edge of love affairs - the reckless, self-defeating trust by one or either party that love is a competition, which can be lost or won or simply a game. Therefore, his actors preemptively hurt, rebuff or leave each other because of the dread of future rejection (Fu 59). They deem the object of their affection as an opponent, plus the composition of the romance assumes the elements of a war, with fights lost and won eventually and methods failing or succeeding. During this time, Hong Kong films were being produced with a martial arts theme in them, all about fighting, but having left mainland China just at the age of 5, Wong had a different perspective of what movies were meant to portray to the audience. Wong knew that people also needed to see actors wanting to be different persons, go to a new place, enter a relationship or feel nostalgic for the past. Chungking Express (1994) Only a few directors can capture the fading idealism of Wongs breathless, vintage eroticism. Chungking Express is about Takeshi Kaneshiro, a police officer who assumes a profoundly philosophical perception of a chaotic breakup that lands him, Brigitte Lin, a mystifying bewigged female with criminal links (Fu 60). The connection between the two is not clear. Believing in esoteric sense of chance, Kaneshiro chases her leading the both of them into an intertwined situation nearly as if taken to a different universe, where their normal concepts of unjust and just turned secondary to their companionship. Also in the film, a story that superficially connects to the previous one, concerns Faye Wong, a chirpy shop attendant, who becomes attracted to Tong Leung, another police officer. She made it her sole task to crash into his professed destiny, invading his residence and offering a much cleaner living surrounding (Gold 915). More playful compared to the elliptical start, this segment relates to the thesis as it finds one exterior force attempting to restructure someones likely future and it develops into the two individuals arriving at a destination that none had foreseen, as if stranded at the boarder of the world, wistfully happy about being together. Chungking Express is a stunning success, bursting with lust and color, different from a story of unruly lovers as a map of the shared expedition of broken and mended souls. Someone does not just watch Chungking Express and say that they have watched a movie, but it is something that gives you a whole feel of the moment, comparable to a song that filters through your mind when you really have a feel of what the artist is singing even when you are listening to it for the first time. Happy Together (1997) In Wongs movies, there are tales of love, but love, on the other hand, is the heaviest burden of them all that leaves open wounds and permanent scars even if they heal. Happy Together works like peoples memories, providing quick moments and glimpses at a relationship, which people know cannot function, but is, however, compelling to view for its rare, visceral honesty (Gold 916). Anyone, straight or bisexual or fully gay, who has been with someone to who they felt an intense link, but where left sad, frustrated and lost can see the struggles in the characters of these film, one who was fully gay and the other bisexual. Being a homosexual can be compared to living the "California Dream," where the first ever gay movement was formed in the entire world. This also relates to the thesis as we can see the characters trying to live the California Dream by being homosexuals. You can wonder who someone is not amazed by watching the command of tone, mood, atmosphere and style in this movie and how these elements unite to form an entirely lively, warts-and-all, movie. Wong is a sensualist who tunes a viewer to the images, sounds and smells of a scene and somehow developing a source of interiorized feeling from all these secondary details (Gold 916). The intrinsic irony in the title furthermore adds to the exciting atmosphere and heft. Happy Together puts a viewer through the wringer, displaying every individual embarrassing moment, but they end in a sense hope after the characters realize that they have damaged everything that matters to them, which has left them lonely so they decided to rectify their ways. Eventually, the characters end up happy due to this realization. In the Mood for Love (2000) Watching In the Mood of Love, which is like the pinnacle of his directing career thus far and also a contemporary masterpiece, is mood-altering. No other sensualist director can so fast bound the viewers into his spell but as Wong’s movies are alive and breathing, they can change a viewer’s perception immediately, as well (Gold 917). You look at the beautiful gliding camera and the manner in which it interacts with the music, the amount of time granted to taking a scene in just one hallway or the period between two likely lovers, who are shy to take a romantic step they want, one would feel different, transformed what is being acted. It is a memorable, totally amazing film. The details of the movie are lush, ideal and unbelievably evocative; critics claim that this is like the most romantic movie ever about characters who fail to accomplish their love (Gold 61). Following a news reporter who shifts into a house in the same residence as Su Li Zhen, the movie tells the longing tale, chance encounters, as well as missed chances between Zhen and Leung as they become aware that both of their spouses are having extramarital affairs. In spite of this, the two never stoop to their partners level and rather form a platonic friendship that has its own depressing realities, as well as heartbreak. This was the last movie on which Wong would collaborate with DP Christopher Doyle in coming up with a blockbuster (Gold 916). In this film, we could see the characters try create new identities for themselves: be a different person, go to a new place, enter a relationship or feel nostalgic for the past after their spouses caused them pain. Even thought in the last two films discussed these love affairs worked, in this film, it was a strong friendship bond that was formed among the two characters. Part 2 People (Gold 914 and Fu 67) have argued the Comrades: Almost a Love Story is one of the best romantic stories ever to be told from a Chinese film, but I tend to disagree with that. These comments do not apply in any sense and, in fact, what people praise in the film are what lead to my dislike of the film. The characters act as if love is not everything to them, which all their subtle body language towards each other shows that love really matters to them. It took them a while to realize that love matters and that they need to form a relationship together because this is what they needed to be happy. Lai was overly quiet and not supportive to Cheung, it was like he despised him in the first place before falling in love with him. However, this is not the issue; the issue is that it is needless to deny that you have feelings for someone else as the two characters did and then after so much damage is when you decide to settle. The two even seemed mature and not ready for love. In love, you should also focus on making you partner happy but these two characters only focused in making themselves happy. It was a selfish relationship only to say. Maybe what the directors would have done to make the movie amazing is that he would have made the characters seem less self-centered and focus on making their partners, other than themselves, happy. Works Cited Fu, Poshek. Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: the Politics of Chinese Cinemas. Stanford University Press, 2003. Gold, Thomas B. "Go with your feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwan popular culture in Greater China." The China Quarterly 136 (2009): 907-925. Read More