The lasting legacy of Wong Kar-wai

Amidst the trend of action and Kung Fu films, director Wong Kar-wai cultivated several garden patches of colourful orchids

Fallen Angels

Chungking Express

2046

Happy Together

Wong Kar-wai

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The Hong Kong film industry was called the Hollywood of the East.

Film historians talk about the glorious 1980s to the early 2000s when the Hong Kong film industry produced several international hits. These films were largely action thrillers or Kung Fu films that caught the fascination of the western world.

Amidst this trend, director Wong Kar-wai cultivated several garden patches of colourful orchids.

Ironically, it was Quentin Tarantino — who is famous for his action flicks — who helped Wong Kar Wai attain worldwide fame. He called Wong Kar-wai one of the most exciting directors of his time and supported the distribution and marketing of Chungking Express (1994). While Wong Kar-wai has made films on crime and martial arts, he is recognised for his sensitive portrayals of love, loneliness, and relationships.

This year, the 14th edition of the Bengaluru International Film Festival is screening Wong Kar-wai's films under the section 'Studying the Director'. The section contains the best of auteur's films, including Happy Together that won him the Palme d'Or as the best director at Cannes.

The Hong Kong shaped Wong Kar-wai

The city of Hong Kong has moulded Wong Kar-wai's films just like how Calcutta (now Kolkata) had an influence on Satyajit Ray. Most of his tales are woven in the small apartments and narrow alleys of Hong Kong with dense populations. It is in places like Chungking district’s bylanes rather than the central business district where corporate Hong Kong thrives. Wong Kar-wai likes to tell tales of people and places that he knows intimately.

His use of closeups, bright lights, and sometimes, saturated photography, shows the hustle and the noise of Hong Kong. The way the camera is framed for the shots showcases the loneliness of the characters in an overpopulated city. In fact, in his 'Fallen Angels', the auteur used a wide-angle lens for the majority of the film to depict the physical intimacy and the emotional distance between the characters.

Hong Kong has influenced Wong Kar-wai’s choice of music; his choice of Spanish is a consequence of the large Filipino population in Hong Kong. He attributes the usage of jazz and western popular music to the restaurants he visited with his mother as a young person.

"My films are my love letters to Hong Kong", he mentions in an interview. In The Mood for Love (2000) is an ode to the bygone Hong Kong while 2046 (2004) is a letter to the city 50 years later; when the Chinese dateline of one country two systems will be over.

Of love that was never returned

Be it policemen, waitresses, journalists, and criminals, Wong Kar-wai's characters are diverse and atypical. But what ties them together is the love that was never returned, at least in equal proportions.

"Love is a matter of timing and it's of no help if the person you love is a little early or too late," writes the protagonist in 2046.

His characters are often introverted and display fortitude. The director devises different ways to express their melancholy. In Chungking Express a policeman talks to a piece of soap in the toilet asking it not to be sad and lose weight. In Happy Together (1997), the protagonist wishes that his partner does not recover from a physical illness so that he can continue to take care of him for a longer time.

The average director uses melodrama to highlight the pain of love, Wong Kar-wai, on the other hand, uses selfless actions to highlight the grief.

The following lines from the song Only You from his movie Fallen Angels by The Flying Pickets underlines the motives of the characters in his films: 'Looking from a window above, it's like a story of love, can you hear me? Came back only yesterday, we're moving farther away, want you near me'.

Bullfighting and storytelling

Every situation in a story has different possibilities but the director has to select only one of them. Wong Kar-wai compares it to a bullfight where the matador has no idea how the bull will react to a particular move.

A creative director is someone who does not show the yokel of decision-making to the audience. He uses the elements of sound, light, and an ensemble of actors to say that this was the best option that stayed true to the character and not to your expectations.

Wong Kar-wai's films have stood the test of time. This BIFFes, don't miss the opportunity to watch his works on the big screen.