Wong Kar-Wai is a true auteur. He makes his movies, completely on his terms. His films are deeply poetic and visually stunning. Larry Gross of Sight & Sound magazine says: "The first time you see Wong Kar-Wai’s movies, you feel you are watching the work of a delicious visual mannerist indifferent to narrative structure....The sheer hedonistic absorption in architectural surfaces, in light sources, in decor of every possible fabric and material, and the absence of overtly literary seriousness in the plots, make you feel trapped in the world of a super-talented hack. Then you go back and take another look, and the movies change, more drastically than any I know of. They seem richer, more intricately organized, more serious...”
Much like Leonard Cohen’s work I first experience Wong Kar-Wai in my mid-teens when I first decided to go into filmmaking. In my time at CUTV, working on my first ever production, a puppet show known as Paradites, I had met a man by the name of King, he was of Hong Kong origin, he was quite knowledge about cinema and he is the one who first introduced me to Hong Kong cinema. This was in the early and mid-1990s before the names John Woo, Jackie Chan and Jet Li were household names in the white people world. I was ravaged through all the HK films he lent me, often watching three or four films in a row. I went to film school with movies like John Woo’s The Killer and Hard Boiled burnt into my brain, highly stylized yet melodramatic at the same time. Nothing in American “action” movies had come close to these masterworks. Around that same time, the Fantasia Film Festival was launched in Montreal. The festival would feature predominantly Asian action films and Japanese anime. Finally I could prove to my chums in film school that I was not crazy, that these films belong on their own plateau. I attended many films that first festival year with King. One day he brought me a VHS copy of Chungking Express. I was expecting another action movie, however what I got was a super stylized melodrama. It blew my mind. It was incredible. It was like nothing else I’d ever seen. I re-watched the movie two more times in a row. To me, it was an almost perfect poem on screen. The camera work and aesthetics of the film were the true work of a master, I had no seen color used like that since Hitchcock or Kubrick. The truth is, in film school you learn (at least when I was there) that a good film never lets the audience be aware of the
camera, which is a theory that is thrown out the window with a lot of work from Hong Kong. John Woo stylized action cinema, Wong Kar-Wai re-stylized cinema. Wong Kar-Wai humbly describes his style: “People are always very curious about the visual effects in my works. The not so romantic truth is that lots of those effects are in reality the results of circumstantial consideration: if there is not enough space for camera maneuvering, replace the regular lens with a wide-angle lens; when candid camera shooting in the streets does not allow lighting, adjust the speed of the camera according to the amount of light available; if the continuity of different shots does not link up right for a sequence, try jump cuts; to solve the problem of color incontinuity, cover it up by developing the film in B/W… Tricks like that go on forever.” Even his use of voiceover, which had been portrayed as the anchor of a weak story, is used in such a way that it adds to the grace and beauty of his films. They lend to the story as well as the music. His work is stylized, but not empty.
The way Wong Kar-Wai tackles romance and love on screen is much like Cohen tackles it in his work. In Wong’s work, the possibility of love is as beautiful as it is problematic. Its almost like his characters want to be in love, they just happen to fall in love at an inconvenient time. He explores themes that state that people, even though in very close physical proximity, can be so far apart. His ability to isolate his characters and present them as social outsiders. His imagery of large urban centers as alienating, lonely places are really what attract me to his work. Ashita is a film about people in city. Lonely, depressed, desperate people. Can I paint the picture like Wong the auteur. Probably not. But I can hope to.
Thank you Mr. Wong.
Much like Leonard Cohen’s work I first experience Wong Kar-Wai in my mid-teens when I first decided to go into filmmaking. In my time at CUTV, working on my first ever production, a puppet show known as Paradites, I had met a man by the name of King, he was of Hong Kong origin, he was quite knowledge about cinema and he is the one who first introduced me to Hong Kong cinema. This was in the early and mid-1990s before the names John Woo, Jackie Chan and Jet Li were household names in the white people world. I was ravaged through all the HK films he lent me, often watching three or four films in a row. I went to film school with movies like John Woo’s The Killer and Hard Boiled burnt into my brain, highly stylized yet melodramatic at the same time. Nothing in American “action” movies had come close to these masterworks. Around that same time, the Fantasia Film Festival was launched in Montreal. The festival would feature predominantly Asian action films and Japanese anime. Finally I could prove to my chums in film school that I was not crazy, that these films belong on their own plateau. I attended many films that first festival year with King. One day he brought me a VHS copy of Chungking Express. I was expecting another action movie, however what I got was a super stylized melodrama. It blew my mind. It was incredible. It was like nothing else I’d ever seen. I re-watched the movie two more times in a row. To me, it was an almost perfect poem on screen. The camera work and aesthetics of the film were the true work of a master, I had no seen color used like that since Hitchcock or Kubrick. The truth is, in film school you learn (at least when I was there) that a good film never lets the audience be aware of the
camera, which is a theory that is thrown out the window with a lot of work from Hong Kong. John Woo stylized action cinema, Wong Kar-Wai re-stylized cinema. Wong Kar-Wai humbly describes his style: “People are always very curious about the visual effects in my works. The not so romantic truth is that lots of those effects are in reality the results of circumstantial consideration: if there is not enough space for camera maneuvering, replace the regular lens with a wide-angle lens; when candid camera shooting in the streets does not allow lighting, adjust the speed of the camera according to the amount of light available; if the continuity of different shots does not link up right for a sequence, try jump cuts; to solve the problem of color incontinuity, cover it up by developing the film in B/W… Tricks like that go on forever.” Even his use of voiceover, which had been portrayed as the anchor of a weak story, is used in such a way that it adds to the grace and beauty of his films. They lend to the story as well as the music. His work is stylized, but not empty.
The way Wong Kar-Wai tackles romance and love on screen is much like Cohen tackles it in his work. In Wong’s work, the possibility of love is as beautiful as it is problematic. Its almost like his characters want to be in love, they just happen to fall in love at an inconvenient time. He explores themes that state that people, even though in very close physical proximity, can be so far apart. His ability to isolate his characters and present them as social outsiders. His imagery of large urban centers as alienating, lonely places are really what attract me to his work. Ashita is a film about people in city. Lonely, depressed, desperate people. Can I paint the picture like Wong the auteur. Probably not. But I can hope to.
Thank you Mr. Wong.
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