The wonderful thing about inspiration is that, it sometimes finds you when you’re not looking.
Wong Kar-Wai
Wong emerged into cinema in the 1980s, from the creative yeast of the Hong Kong film industry, which produced over two hundred films a year. He never attended film school. He began his career as a screenwriter in action films, which would bring Hong Kong cinema into international focus following the release of John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow” in 1986.
His fluid approach to the genre is a result of his great interest in cinema from a young age. Wong spent time in cinemas with his mother, stating that he didn’t distinguish between art films and commercials; “We just loved watching movies”…
Today, Wong is primarily recognized as an art film director. However, his films transition between various genres, from melodrama to martial arts. Traces of his past in the Hong Kong film industry can especially be seen in his early films that play on gangster cinema tropes, such as “As Tears Go By” (1988) and “Days of Being Wild” (1990).
Days of Being Wild (1990)
Wong’s fourth film, “Chunking Express” (1994), brought him to the attention of Western audiences.
Set in the famous Chunking Mansions, a seventeen-story crowded residential and commercial complex in Kowloon, the film introduces moviegoers to Wong’s universe of romantics obsessed with the possibilities of what could be. One of the characters says, “Every day we pass by many people. People we may never meet or people who could become close friends.” This dance of chance and fate in a global metropolis forms the basis of the film’s frantic style.
Shot without a script, using an improvisational method, the film exemplifies the dazzling camerawork of Wong’s longtime Australian cinematographer, Christopher Doyle. Together with production designer and editor William Chang, this collaboration gives Wong’s films a seamless visual style with slow motion, colored lens filters, and extreme wide angles, infusing a relentless vitality into his melancholic works.
Collaboration is a significant feature of Wong’s work. He uses a recurring cast of stars from Chinese cinema, such as Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and Leslie Cheung, who have appeared in seven of his films. Under Wong’s careful direction, they deliver career-defining performances.
Chunking Express (1994)
The Poetry of Everyday Life
What has earned Wong such a devoted following worldwide is his relentless return to the poetry of everyday life and the theme of heartbreak.
Whether it’s the tortured romance between two men stranded in Buenos Aires in “Happy Together” (1997) or the unfulfilled love affair in “In The Mood For Love” and its sequel, “2046” (2004), Wong’s cinematography is an extended meditation on the trials of the heart.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
His films emphasize character, mood, and detail over plot. As he describes it: Cinema can be the citric smell of a peeled orange, the touch of warm skin with a silk stocking; or just a dark space bathed in anticipation…
Through the power of longing, Wong shows how everyday objects and places are imbued with extraordinary meanings.
His interest in intimate details - the light from an ostensibly kitsch lamp, the expiration date on a can of pineapple, the way smoke curls upwards from a cigarette - gives his films a lyricism and a unique capacity to reflect the relentless flow of time.
Happy Together (1997)
By capturing the fleeting and ephemeral, Wong’s films serve as a powerful form of cultural memory. This is evident in the nostalgic setting of “In the Mood For Love”, set in the 1960s, where he fed the entire crew popular Shanghai dishes from 1960s Hong Kong and meticulously supervised the design of the iconic “cheongsam” dresses worn by Maggie Cheung.
In the Mood for Love - Su Li-zhen Chan
For Wong, cinema is a way to reflect history in its most intimate details. An object might seem trivial. However, in his films, objects can create a flood of desire. The cinema of Wong Kar-Wai continues to captivate humanity with the resonance of chance encounters and doomed loves…
He remembers the years like looking through a dusty windowpane. The past is something he can see but not touch. Everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.
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