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Days Of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai)
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Nice review, Alex - it's great you wrote about all of the films in the trilogy. I like this one a lot - and can't quite decide which is my favorite of the three (probably In The Mood for Love, which is simply flawless).Check this one out, y'alll - it's probably not so easy to find in the local stores, but worth looking for. I would assume Netflix has it. I picked up that Wong Kar-Wei box set last summer and it's in there.
Just wondering have you seen HAPPY TOGETHER (1997)? What do you think of it? Wong Kar Wai won Best Director for this movie at the Cannes Film Festival, his first ever international recognition. This movie preceded IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000).
i saw it, but it's a little hard to remember. i remember thinking it wasn't as strong as some of the other films. the humor seemed a bit skewed...i should probably see it again before commenting further.what did you think of it, oi-ling?
I have not seen HAPPY TOGETHER but it is on my short list of "must see" films...which is actually quite long:)
‘In the Mood for Love’ flawless??? I suppose it was pretty to look at, but I found it to be monotonous. Just the same damn thing over and over again: Woman chats with neighbors, woman walks to the same place she walked to before, sometimes meets man and talks, … , man goes to work, sits by himself or exchanges a few words with another, walks to the same place he walked to before, sometimes meets woman and talks. Then the whole cycle starts over again, sometimes to make it even more monotonous, it is redone in slow motion. It is gradually revealed that they both have cheating spouses, but they aren’t willing to act out on similar impulses themselves. Their monotonous existence is aptly reflected in this monotonous film, and maybe that is an achievement in itself, but there is not much more here. Even Maggie Cheung’s clothes are the same damn dress again and again, with only the color or pattern of the fabric changed, and even that is not always the case. The follow-up to this pretty looking but sorry effort, 2046, was absurd but that one was closer to perfection, and I therefore rank it much higher than this one.In addition to the above two WKW films I've seen 'Chunkin Express', which I thought was amateurish, as well as 'Eros', which surprised me by actually being good. With that in mind, perhaps Days... might not be all that bad. I hear better things about it than I did about his others.
In the Mood for Love is a mood piece, Bibliomantic. If you're susceptible to that sort of thing, you'll love In the Mood for Love to bits. If you want substance to go with your mood, you may be less favourably impressed.2046 does have a bit more substance than In the Mood for Love, but I was severely put off by the fact that the dialogue keeps switching back and forth between Cantonese and Mandarin. There are dialogues in the film where Zhang Ziyi speaks Mandarin, which I understand, while Tony Leung answers in Cantonese, which I don't understand, again and again and again. I found that extremely jarring, but most non-Chinese-speakers don't even seem to notice they're not speaking the same language. Odd, as Mandarin and Cantonese sound very different.
I haven't seen Eros. I'll check it out...
Martine, you may be right, perhaps I wasn't in the mood. In case you are a WKW fan but haven't heard of Eros, it may be because I should have really referred to one of the three films in it, 'The Hand.' There are two more films in the feature, but they are by different directors, Soderbergh and Antonioni. WKW's short film is probably the best, and Antonioni's the worst. As is often the case, a collection of works by multiple authors results in mixed performances.
In the Mood for Love and 2046 are 2 of my favorite films (a long list, admittedly) - I really need to see Happy Together...
yeah, i'd say in the mood for love is flawless. alex and i (and many others) posted at length on the film in another thread, but in short i would say the repetition is intended. the characters are circumscribed by routine, by living in such close proximity to their neighbors (like living under surveillance), by their jobs...the glimmer of pulsating life they perceive in one another is seductive, but their society and their culture keep them hemmed in, unable to act. i like the subtle way wong kar-wai suggests the character's respective others are living a life of passion, and that that life is so far outside the routine of our principal players that we can not even perceive it (because he refuses to show us).i can relate to the loneliness and the isolation the characters have to deal with. i like how, at the end, the only way that tony leung can free himself of this torment is to move to another country, another culture, and it's there he can finallly begin to free himself of this passion he had for her that was never realized. i can relate to that on a personal level in a big way.
the dresses are beautiful and are a very specific style kar-wai says he remembers seeing his mother wear every day. even beauty, what little there is, is relageted to routine.
i also believe kar-wai is commenting on the pre-revolution days of the 60's, and the kind of conditions people lived in and the effect it had on the consciousness of his parent's generation.
I just added this to my netflix instant queue. Looking forward to watching this
I got the Wong Kar Wai set which has both Happy Together and Days of being Wild, as well as As Tears Go By. Alex, I am so happy to read your insights into Days.... I must confess it's the only WKW film I couldn't watch. My friend and I found it as boring as watching paint dry and far more annoying, but now I will rewatch it. I was very tired the night I tried it. (I'm having radiation treatments every day--very weakening)As for Happy Together, we thought it was a little known gem--even though it did win at Cannes. The emotions, the heartbreak of love have never been portrayed any better, and I can't think of their being portrayed as well as in this film. What is missing, perhaps, are the colors and framing that we're used to in the later films, but their omission doesn't take away from the film's impact at all. It still has much cinematic interest and force. In fact, it is interesting to see how varied WKW's vision can be. As you watch his films chronologically, you see his vision changing but he always lets the camera carry the story. (Does that sound silly? A lot of movies are carried along strictly by dialogue and others by twisting plots, but HKW's films tell their stories through visuals like color, framing, spacing between characters, and the like.)
I started this morning with As Tears Go By, and, surprise, it's not about connecting and love and its impossibilities. It's a gangster film. No martial arts from Hong Kong in this one. It's quite an American gangster film, with Chinese sensibilities added. Oh, there is a love story, but it's minor, although affecting. What makes it Chinese is its examination of Face. Actually, all individuals in all cultures are concerned with Face, and most of our social routines serve to protect the individual's Face; however, here the characters articulate it, as well as destroy their opponents by de-Facing them.
The emphasis on Family in this film is a feature of the American gangster film since Jimmy Cagney's day, but the twist here is the degree to which Older Brothers must teach and protect their younger siblings. It is a motivation so strong that to carry out their sibling responsibility, people are willing to suffer and to die, if necessary. The Older Brother, even if he perceives that Younger Brother is misbehaving, will still protect him to the death, and protection includes rectifying damage to Face and also physical damage.
There are none of WKW's lush greens in this film. Characters are highlighted in a screen of raging red or electric blue. Violence, as in Chunking Express is both heightened and made more palatable by the swish pans during beatings. They mke your heart race.
One final note: the gangster film as a sort of Horatio Alger story: poor boy rises to the top, the twist is that he does it by becoming a gangster. The 1930's gangster films carried this message. Jimmy Cagney was a poor boy who made good, gave his mother money, and did it with guns. The audience couldn't help but root for him. WKW adopts this theme as well. The only thing he doesn't do that American gangster films did is to show the police except in a somewhat comical role of chasing unlicensed street vendors. All the mayhem is perpetrated by the gangs themselves.
I'd be interested in what you have to say about this film--and Happy Together when you see it.
Martine wrote: "In the Mood for Love is a mood piece, Bibliomantic. If you're susceptible to that sort of thing, you'll love In the Mood for Love to bits. If you want substance to go with your mood, you may be les..."I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese (which has another politically correct name these days), but I certainly heard the difference in the film. What surprised me is that many Mandarin speakers don't understand Cantonese at all. They are as different as English and German--or at least I was told that when I studied Mandarin in grad school.
In any event, I thought WKW was showing how younger, educated speakers were using Mandarin, the upper class language, and abandoning Cantonese, just as here in New England educated speakers have lost their old r-dropping accents. When Tony Leung answers in Cantonese, he's sort of saying, "Get off it!!" I can use r-dropping the same way.
DAYS OF BEING WILD (Wong Kar-wai, 1991, Hong Kong) Yuddy is young, reckless, and wild, searching for answers to quell the anger that rages deep within him: but he’s burning the candle at both ends. Wong Kar-wai examines the subterranean depths of human despair, rejection, and angst; his beautiful superficial imagery contrasts the ugly darkness within. Yuddy’s past has tainted his essence and he embarks upon a journey of discovery that ultimately leads to self-destruction. He betrays the women in his life like his mother, who abandoned him to her prostitute sister, betrayed him. The camera’s lens is focused mainly upon Yuddy but other peripheral characters float in and out of the narrative. The film’s structure relies intrinsically on the strong cinematography and acting to convey meaning and not upon a conventional story: it meanders about like a lover’s quarrel, lazy days in bed, or the soft chatter of rain on a tin roof. DAYS OF BEING WILD is not about what happens to the characters but concerns its psychological impact upon them. The power is in making the audience feel and self-reflect upon their own relationships, longings, and desires. Wong Kar-wai also makes time stand still or a minute stretch to an eternity, this fourth dimension a ghostly adversary as their lives tick away towards some uncertain future. He films in a soft palette of greenish hues that slowly fade into murk with a heavy grain that places these characters in retrospect, as if we are watching an old memory projected upon our own consciousness. The final scene shows an unnamed character that could be Chow Mo-Wan two years before IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. Is Chow the doppelganger of this protagonist, his own past mirrored in Yuddy’s dying stare? (B)