Original author | [Malay] Zhang Jiande
excerpt | Xu Yuedong
![Original author | [Malay] Zhang Jiande excerpt | Xu Yuedong's](https://cdn-dd.lujuba.top/img/loading.gif)
" Wong Kar-wai 's movie world", written by [Malay] Zhang Jiande, translated by Su Tao, Peking University Press, March 2021.
The filming of " Chongqing Forest " brought Wong Kar-wai back to his youth
" A Fei Zhengshi " box office failure was tantamount to a disaster for Yingzhijie Production Co., Ltd., and Wong Kar-wai suffered a great setback and eventually lost the opportunity to film the second episode of "A Fei Zhengshi". Although Wong Kar-wai's films have not achieved commercial success, the reputation and connections he has established are already quite impressive. Not only has he gained the title of a well-deserved new director, but he has also gained a certain kind of spiritual tenacity (although his shyness and peace can be seen from the films he directed), he has the ability to quickly cheer up from the setbacks of "The Legend of Ah Fei" that failed to do his best (or at most half completed).
Wong Kar-wai’s partner in the movie chess company Liu Zhenwei is a top-notch commercial director, good at shooting fast-paced comedy and action films, especially after directing the successful " Gambling Saint " (1990, starring Stephen Chow ), Liu Zhenwei’s position in the Hong Kong film industry was far superior to Wong Kar-wai. It was with the support and help of Liu Zhenwei that Wong Kar-wai left Ying Zhijie and founded his own production company, Zetung Film Co., Ltd. He then started preparing for the next film and adapted a novel again. This time it was a classic martial arts novel - " Legend of the Condor Heroes " by Jin Yong . In 1992, when the wave of new martial arts films reached its peak, Wong Kar-wai began filming the film titled "East Evil and West Poison".
Wang Kar-wai was unable to focus on the creation of "East Evil and West Poison". During the filming process, he had to coordinate the conflicting periods of big stars, and also participated in the creation of a film directed by his partner Liu Zhenwei - "East Earning and West Poison" (Wang Kar-wai co-written by name). Another film in Wong Kar-wai also delayed the early completion of "East Evil and West Poison", which is "Chongqing Forest". The legendary thing is that Wong Kar-wai took advantage of the gap between editing "East Evil and West Poison" and made the film in less than two months. Wong Kar-wai compared "Chongqing Forest" to a low-cost film shot by a student who just graduated from the film academy: using the simplest equipment, using only natural light, in documentary-like conditions. The budget for the film is HK$15 million. Wong Kar-wai emphasized that after working hard for two hugely costly films, filming "Chongqing Forest" seems to bring him back to his youth.
is different from the previous "The Legend of Ah Fei" and the subsequent "East Evil and West Poison". "Chongqing Forest" is not a period drama, nor is it a different from "Mong Kok Carmen". It is not a conventional structure, neither a contemporary gangster film nor a contemporary romance film. In terms of genre content, the significance of "Chongqing Forest" is even more important: it marks the increasing confidence in Wong Kar-wai's creation of various changes in genres, which he has been striving for from the beginning. The film tells two independent stories, although Wong Kar-wai inserts several supporting roles that appear in both stories.
Wang Kar-wai is one of the most influential Chinese directors in the world. The main characters in the film are two policemen (Kanishi Takeshi and Tony Leung), a mysterious woman wearing a golden wig (Hiang-shi Lin), and two obedient women (Fast Wong's fast food store clerk and Cheung Zhou's stewardess ). These characters outlined in different genres: police and gangster films, black detective mystery films (some passages from the first story starring Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lam), comedy and romance films (some passages from the second story starring Tony Leung and Faye Wong).Wong Kar-wai prefers to call both stories "single love stories". Those who live in this city have a common characteristic, that is, they cannot convey their feelings to suitable objects:
Tony Leung confides his heart at a piece of soap, Faye Wong slips into Tony Leung's apartment and moves things around to satisfy his feelings. Takeshi Kaneshiro faces a can of canned pineapple. They project their feelings onto something else. Only Brigitte Lin’s character has no feelings. She keeps moving, and it is more important for her to survive. She is like a wild beast in the forest of Chongqing like a man in a no-man's land. The "Chongqing Forest" in the title of
refers to a building located in Tsim Sha Tsui (the main filming location of the first story), which is full of small businesses and criminal activities, and is spread all over the cheap hotels known to travelers and backpackers. I will describe the other meanings of the English title "Chungking Express" in detail below, but it also serves to separate the film into two paragraphs: "Chungking" refers to the first story with Chongqing Building as the main background, "Express" refers to the second story centered on "Midnight Express". "Midnight Express" is a famous fast food restaurant located in Lan Kwai Fong, Central, and can be reached from Tsim Sha Tsui by ferry through Victoria Harbor.
Wong Kar-wai's classic monologue reflects the dialogue style of Murakami Haruki novel
Wong Kar-wai's primary inspiration for filming "Chongqing Forest" came from a short story by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami entitled "Meeting 100% Perfect Girl on a wonderful April spring morning." This novel shows the feeling of elusiveness. The first sentence of the opening is: "A wonderful April morning, on a narrow roadside in the Harajuku Fashion District, Tokyo, I passed by a 100% perfect girl." Similarly, "Chongqing Forest" also began with an encounter, which also became the theme of the first story: After a typical police and gangster chase in Chongqing Building, the policeman played by Takeshi Kaneshiro He Zhiwu passed by the blonde woman played by Brigitte Lin.
Wang Kar-wai once again used the theme of time he developed in "A Fei's True Story". He cut the camera to a clock. When the time becomes 9:00 pm, the date shown above is Friday, April 28. "In 57 hours, I will fall in love with this woman." Takeshi Kaneshiro murmured in the form of a first-person monologue (now this has become Wong Kar-wai's label), but this may also be a continuation of the first-person narrative in Murakami Haruki's novel. Therefore, Haruki Murakami's influence on Wong Kar-wai is reflected in two aspects: First, Wong Kar-wai's monologue reflects the dialogue style of Haruki Murakami's novels; secondly, the narrative is a retelling of memory.
He Zhiwu finally met the blonde woman in a bar, but they didn't realize they had met before. They started talking (the woman was rather reluctant) and finally came to the hotel room. But the change in this encounter was unexpected: she fell asleep in bed, while he was eating chef salads and French fries while watching Cantonese operas broadcast on midnight TV.
Wong Kar-wai developed a set of themes about illusory characters' relationships, just like "Meeting 100% Perfect Girl on a wonderful April morning", which is fleeting. The characters' lives only have slight contact, but they will never penetrate each other (maybe they can't even talk about contact, they just pass by each other).
In "Chongqing Forest", He Zhiwu met a blonde woman in a bar.
Like Haruki Murakami, Wong Kar-wai injects magical elements into daily life, but with a sense of fatality. Like Murakami, he likes to call pop culture symbols to suggest the role played by memory. The woman played by Brigitte Lin wears wigs and sunglasses, which consciously emphasizes her image as a movie idol. Lin became famous in the film industry in the 1970s. At that time, Wong Kar-wai was only in his teens and might have just been in high school. Early in his career, Brigitte Lin often played a sweet girl who was about to enter adulthood.In "Chongqing Forest", Brigitte Lin's screen image reminds people of another character from Haruki Murakami's novel "Miss Ipanema in 1963/1982".
"The Gril from Ipanema" ('The Gril from Ipanema'), a song that was popular in the 1960s, first reminded the protagonist of the high school corridor, and then to remind him of a comprehensive salad including "lettuce, tomato, cucumber, green pepper, asparagus, onions cut into circles, and pink Thousand Islands salad dressing". These reminded him of a girl he once knew, "she was sealed in her impression and quietly floating in the sea of time."
There are many salads in "Chongqing Forest", which bears a function of Wong Kar-wai's memory and is related to Brigitte Lin's idol presence (in the second paragraph, it is associated with Faye Wong. Her presence is also idol-like, but there is no sense of mystery because she is much younger than Brigitte Lin or Wong Kar-wai). But salad is also a symbol of hunger - hunger arising from the desire for love. This theme seems to be a reenactment of "The Legend of Ah Fei": Here, it is more like a love that has been lost than a love that cannot be rewarded.
Another clue that links "Chongqing Forest" with "The Legend of A Fei" is the bilateral structure. Unfortunately, Wong Kar-wai failed to make the second episode of "The Legend of Ah Fei", but "Chongqing Forest" perfectly presents the bilateral paintings of two love stories. In this sense, with its own achievements, this film can be regarded as the fruitful result of Wong Kar-wai's experiment, which is exactly what he failed to complete in "The Legend of Ah Fei". During the filming of "Chongqing Forest", Wong Kar-wai once said that he wanted to "try to shoot two intersecting stories in one film" and make the development of the narrative "similar to a road film."
Therefore, accordingly, "Chongqing Forest" can also be described as an experimental road film, which is proven by the style of the film (relying on documentary techniques, such as handheld photography, natural light, in-lens effects) and incoherent narratives, creating a sense of disorientation for the viewer. This loss caused by Wong Kar-wai's films comes from the discussion of Noël Burch in Theory of Film Practice (first French edition in 1969), which predicts that the storyline (découpage) "no longer has any meaning to the real creators in terms of the limitations of decomposing narrative into scenes...it will no longer remain in the experimental and purely theoretical stage, but will gain independence in actual film practice", and at this time it will "form the essence of future films."
Handheld photography in "Chongqing Forest".
"Chongqing Forest" reflects this practical film practice. The film's form of independence is organically used by the director to show what Birch said, "the consistent relationship between the space-time expression of a film and its narrative content and formal structure (formal structure determines narrative structure, and vice versa).".
The arrangement of time and space coupling in "Chongqing Forest" has become a model of postmodern film practice
In the following, I will try to prove how "Chongqing Forest" became a model of postmodern film practice through Wong Kar-wai's arrangement of time and space coupling. We may start with the title of the movie, "Chungking" is space, and "Express" is time. "Chungking Express" is a homogenized metaphor that connects two incompatible concepts together. The space in the film is the inner world symbolized by the claustrophobic environment of the Chongqing Building, while time is a close-abstract external world represented by clocks, but it is achieved through expiration dates on cans and fake boarding passes painted on napkins.
Wong Kar-wai's space is not eternal. Rather, it responds to a certain philosophical and psychological expression of the nature of time. "durée" proposed by Henri Bergson is the best definition of this. On one level, "suspended" refers to the passage and continuation of time; on another level, it refers to the time related to cognition and memory. "Suspended" is the time of living, that is, human experience in various arrangements.There is an inner or human "spread" that gradually evolves into external space, and then it becomes a container of memory. Judging from this film, "suspended" is like a tango dancing with abstract movement (time) and space. Space itself can only gain integrity by being inhabited by humans. The Chongqing Building is the virtual dimension of memory, and its space is a vivid (and therefore human and psychological) entity filled with time.
As mentioned earlier, the English title "Chungking Express" also represents Tsim Sha Tsui and Central - a collection of spatial geography, where time and memory pass through - the two places where Wong Kar-wai has always wanted to make the movie. In Central, in addition to the "Midnight Express" location, Wong Kar-wai also focuses on the area where escalators are installed from Gelin Street to Zhongban Mountain. Chongqing Building is a microcosm of Tsim Sha Tsui. Wong Kar-wai grew up in Tsim Sha Tsui and is very familiar with it: "This place is mixed with Chinese and foreign countries, with the most prominent characteristics of Hong Kong society." The Chongqing Building represents the diverse cultural orientation of Hong Kong and can be called a global village full of exotic voices and languages. In Wong Kar-wai's eyes, this is a true symbol of Hong Kong. The concept of "suspended" is presented in the reality of multicultural human experience (embodied in the spatial dimension of Chongqing Building).
"spread" is also reflected in the video's audio track. Wong's hearing of foreign music expanded to his choice of pop songs: "California Dreamin" by The Mamas and the Papas, "What a Difference a Day Makes" by Dinah Washington, "What a Difference a Day Makes" by Dennis Brown, "Things in Life" with a reggae beat, and so on. Equally important are several Bollywood-style audio tracks, as well as Cantonese opera films broadcast on late-night TV programs. These eclectic sound tracks work as a time category that overrides space.
The use of these songs achieves the following purpose: torn apart our feelings about Tsim Sha Tsui or "Midnight Express" in space. When we hear "California Dream" and "A Day Farewell" and Dennis Brown's lyrics of "Things in Life" ("Every day has different circumstances, and it's all unpredictable"), we first feel a little confused, and then we settle down to recognize the space associated with a particular song ("California Dream" and "Midnight Express", "Things in Life" and "Bottoms Up" bar filming locations, etc.).
Time and space seem to be opposite to each other, but in fact, those songs, the foreign languages that are filled with Chongqing Buildings, and the geographical environment of the shooting location (Tsim Sha Tsui and Central) work together on a purely formal level, which is like a text, allowing irrelevant individuals to form an inseparable whole. The English title "Chungking Express" intends to confuse the space, creating the illusion that Tsim Sha Tsui and Central are a separate and complete city. The film’s popularity around the world suggests the fact that viewers who have never been to Hong Kong can reasonably regard the film’s manipulation of time and space as an integral element of Wong Kar-Wai’s postmodern style. However, the international distribution of the video is slightly different from the Hong Kong version.
"Chongqing Forest" is Wong Kar-wai's first international release film. The film fascinated Quentin Tarantino (Quentin Tarantino), whose company "Rolling Thunder" bought out the international distribution rights. The international version is longer and contains more scenes, such as the passage of Brigitte Lin in the Chongqing Building in a drug deal with a group of Indians, accompanied by soundtracks of typical Bollywood songs, and conversational clips that are most likely from a Bollywood movie. Soon, after Brigitte Lin was betrayed, there was another extended scene: she kidnapped a little girl and forced the latter's father to ask the whereabouts of the potential drug dealers. The international version also reordered or adjusted several scenes of the Hong Kong version. The international version of the
video is more abstract to the performance of Hong Kong space. For foreign audiences, Chongqing Building, Tsim Sha Tsui and Central may be just a short distance away.Tsim Sha Tsui and Central are separated by Victoria Harbor, and for old Hong Kongers, the distance between the two is self-evident. There is a scene in the Hong Kong version where He Zhiwu runs to the small ferry of the sky and crosses the sea. At the same time, we hear his monologue about the 30 cans of pineapple that he bought that will expire on May 1 (“If she doesn’t come back, our love will expire”). The international version of the deletion of this scene (this monologue was moved to the scene where He Zhiwu bought pineapples in a convenience store), strengthening the illusion that the space in the film is a complete block: "Chongqing Forest" is a solid geographical coordinates. However, the “spread” nature indicated by these songs on a psychological level drives the audience to watch and think in other ways.
He Zhiwu's pineapple can in "Chongqing Forest". The best expression of "suspended" - the spatial articulations determined by psychological pulsation and memory - is the moment when the encounter theme is summoned in the opening paragraph of the second story: when He Zhiwu ordered food at the "Midnight Express", he collided with Faye Wong's character (apparently another "100% perfect girl"), and the audio track is He Zhiwu's description: "When I was closest to her, the distance between us was only 0.01 cm. I knew nothing about her. Six hours later, she liked another man." When "The California Dream" suddenly rang, the picture faded out, and then faded into the patrolman played by Tony Leung signed the on-duty list. He walked straight towards the camera, took off his hat and ordered a chef's salad. The camera cut to Faye Wong, who was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt. "California Dream" is played loudly and in real time. This scene takes place in real time, with the rhythm of the song without switching. The conversation between the two is as follows:
Faye Wong: Take it away or eat it here?
Tony Leung: Take it away. New? I haven't seen you before.
(Farewell nodded, and her body swung left and right to the rhythm of the music.)
Tony Leung: Do you like listening to such noisy music?
Faye Wong: Yes, it’s good to be a little noisy. Don't think about so many things.
Tony Leung: Do you don’t like thinking about things?
(Farewell Wong shook her head with the rhythm of the music.)
Tony Leung: Then what do you like?
Fai Wong: I don’t know. I'll tell you again when I remember it.
Close-up of the cut to Tony Leung’s side face:
Faye Wong: Where are you?
cut to a close-up of Tony Leung’s hand and signaled her to get closer. Jump to the close-up of their side faces and enter the painting from the left and right sides respectively. He whispered, "Chef's salad." Cut to the middle scene (like the previous shot), Faye Wong called out in disappointment, and then Tony Leung walked away with the chef's salad. After this live shot scene, the camera still stopped at Faye Wong, shaking with the music. The flow of music and images was suddenly interrupted by jumping and now we see Faye Wong wearing a lime green short-sleeved top and wearing an apron. The off-picture music is still "California Dream", but time has obviously changed, and the space has also turned into a close-up view of Faye Wong. She danced to the music behind the counter, swaying up and down with her hands holding tomato sauce. She walked into the kitchen after the boss came out. The boss turned off the tape recorder, cut the camera to Tony Leung who was walking forward, and he ordered another chef's salad.
The changes in Faye Wong's clothing are matching time. In the pilot scene, she wears a black T-shirt; in the subsequent scene, she wears a lime green top. In a series of "Midnight Express" rivalries between Tony Leung and Faye Wong, there are at least two changes in time indicated by changes in dress. Here, Wong Kar-wai really achieved the concept of Haruki Murakami's concept of the role played by encounter-like characters and memory in space and time. Perhaps the only film director who can do this is Wong Kar-wai. A white T-shirt with a black heart pattern, and a spotted white T-shirt indicate the other two changes in time.
In the same scene where Faye Wong was wearing a white T-shirt with a black heart pattern, like the introductory shot at the beginning of the paragraph, Tony Leung walked straight to the camera and took off her hat directly - this repetition was slightly different from before because of Faye Wong's dress and the takeaway Tony Leung ordered: This time Tony Leung ordered fish and chips instead of a chef's salad (he followed the boss' advice and gave his girlfriend who originally liked the chef's salad more choices). This scene repeats the essence of the encounter between Tony Leung and Faye Wong. This was taken from Faye Wong's subjective perspective. In fact, the entire sequence of shots not only marks the passage of time through Faye Wong's clothing, but also completely watches from her perspective. When Tony Leung walked straight to the camera, his handsome face lit up, and the viewer was placed in Faye Wong's position: our hearts were excited with her, we fantasized about what she dreamed of, and we were just like her, anxious and curious about Tony Leung's order of fish and chips.
Stills from "Chongqing Forest".
The space coupling of this scene describes Faye Wong's panic: she is wiping a glass wall, and through it, we can see the blurry shadow of Tony Leung standing next to the counter, she carefully wiped the glass (or Tony Leung's shadow). The lens switches, focus on Tony Leung, and shoot him from behind the glass wall. Cut it to Faye Wong again, she was still wiping the glass, but this time she was in front of the kitchen passage and wore a spotted white T-shirt; we started from Faye Wong's perspective and looked at Tony Leung through the passage, although Faye Wong was actually facing the camera - this repetitive action that happened in an unbalanced space is full of vitality, and the continuous repetition of Faye Wong when scrubbing and cleaning further strengthens the imbalance of the space. At different times, space has also changed. "The heart is the organ of repetition of love," said Jill Deleuze. The repetitions that occur in this paragraph can be distinguished from other dimensions of psychology and differences. We now know that Tony Leung was abandoned by his girlfriend. He said, "Since there are so many choices in the night, let alone her boyfriend. What kind of chef salad should I change to fish and chips?" Faye Wong seemed busy cleaning, but she eavesdropped on the conversation between the two. Tony Leung looked a little sad, and he only ordered a cup of coffee.
When Tony Leung was drinking coffee, Wong Kar-wai cut the camera to the scene where a plane took off in the night. Outside the picture is Tony Leung's voice: "There must be a stewardess on each plane that you want to 'soak'. At this time last year, I successfully 'soaked' one at a height of 25,000 feet." In Tony Leung's flashback shot, we are in his apartment: he is lying on the bed in the foreground, fiddling with a toy plane, while the stewardess (played by Cheung Cheung) in a bra and skirt stands at the kitchen door and sips a can of beer; the music outside the picture is "A Day Farewell" sung by Dinah Washington. The space has also changed. Tony Leung touched Cheung with the toy plane in his hand. In the unconscious love foreplay, he followed the couple with a handheld camera, from one space in the apartment to another, swaying from left to right at an inclined angle, and then from right to left, imitating the temptation that occurred at an altitude of 25,000 feet. When Tony Leung forced Cheung to the corner and gave a passionate kiss, the camera hints at a space in the back view: the escalator in the middle of the mountain was vaguely visible through the window, and was slightly higher than the bed in the apartment. At the end of this flashback scene, Tony Leung and Carina Zhou were lying on the bed, and he controlled the toy plane to "slide" on Carina Zhou's naked back.
The sequence of shots I discussed above is one of the most outstanding models for the use of film techniques in contemporary movies, because Wong Kar-wai perfectly grasps the "continuity": the coupling of time and space, while presenting the symbolic meaning and unique nuances related to encounters and changes in the relationship between characters. Wong Kar-wai may have taken inspiration from Haruki Murakami's works, but he cannot underestimate his skill in re-sucking various possible sources of influence into his unique desserts that combine time and memory. In addition, Wong Kar-wai once again showed how excellent he is a director who is good at directing actors. The performances of the four starring actors are exemplary, just rightly showing the characters' sadness and eccentricity.Brigitte Lin gave a "blank face" performance that only she can do; Tony Leung's performance is unforgettable. Even if he wears a sweatshirt and boxer shorts, he is as handsome as he wears a uniform (he was awarded the Best Actor Award in the 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards for his role, which is well deserved).
The broken images in "Chongqing Forest" are like the style of Cubist artists
We need to mention again the contribution of Wong Kar-wai team (art director Zhang Shuping, who serves as editing director in this film, probably because Tan Jiaming is busy editing "East Evil and West Poison" and photography director Du Kefeng). In fact, Wong Kar-wai hired two photography directors during the filming of "Chongqing Forest": Liu Weiqiang was responsible for shooting the first story, while Du Kefeng was the mastermind of the second story. It is actually Liu Weiqiang who sets the overall tone of the film. For example, Wong Kar-wai regained the colors of "Carmen, Mong Kok" (also photographed by Liu Weiqiang). He mainly used blue when shooting the interior of the Chongqing Building, and gold and black when shooting nightclubs. However, the key here is movement and speed. The achievement of this effect depends entirely on Liu Weiqiang's unforgettable hand-held photography, which Du Kefeng followed in the second story. Liu Weiqiang and Du Kefeng minimized the color and focused on light and movement. The energy they released in the film was exactly what the futuristic artists called the goal of art in their 1910 manifesto. Art critic Herbert Read also explained this goal:
1910's Manifesto is a theoretical document. It begins by announcing a growing demand for truth, which can no longer be satisfied with the form and color as previously understood: everything is moving and running, rapidly changing, and this movement of all things is what the artist must strive to express. Space no longer exists, or simply as an atmosphere, in which objects move and intersperse each other.
Futuristic artists try to move the still canvas. In a sense, Du Kefeng and Liu Weiqiang return to the static canvas, as if they have brought the film back to its origins, lowering the "motion-image" to what Deleuze calls "privileged instants" or "snapshots" to reimagine the sense of motion. Low-speed shutter-speed photography and "stealing and printing" create the reproduction of objects in motion or a series of frozen static lenses (the flashing slow motion effect is excellently used in "Mong Kok Carmen". In retrospect, Wong Kar-wai's signature effect is really the masterpiece of the photographer Liu Weiqiang). This technique distorts the movement, creating an illusory sense of speed, but also paradoxically has the effect of dynamic acceleration.
In fact, as soon as "Chongqing Forest" begins, it enters the motion image of an imaginary speed with a fake blonde (Britain Lin). Speed and movement form the tone of the Chongqing Building paragraph. In this scene, Brigitte Lin pieced together a group of Indians to transport drugs for her. These scenes meet the requirements of rapidly advancing narratives and are handled very clearly. Liu Weiqiang, like a Cubist painter, shattered the surface of his image, thus strengthening the idea that many things happen at the same time. For example, like Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" (1912), Brigitte Lin's character has multiple body parts. She organized a drug transport gang in panic, but was betrayed and was determined to take revenge. The "motion and light destroy the materiality of objects" claimed by Cubist artists is excellently displayed in Liu Weiqiang's creation.
The body movements, touches, and separations in Wong Kar-wai's movies, rather than "interweaving each other". By becoming interested in another woman, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung’s characters recovered from their love breakups. However, it is still difficult to draw conclusions whether this interest will develop further in the examples of Tony Leung and Faye Wong (the ending of the film - Faye Wong watched Tony Leung renovate the "Midnight Express" - even if he was as ambiguous as Wong Kar-wai's other films, he seemed to have more hope); while Takeshi Kaneshiro's example is obviously not the case (at least it gives people the impression that this is).
The two protagonists encounter each other in the same frame in "Chongqing Forest".
In this film, what Wong Kar-wai wants to express seems to be that love is short-lived. This is also the theme of Wong Kar-wai's predecessor "The Legend of Ah Fei", but its expression in "Chongqing Forest" is easier: the two policemen in the film's reaction to rejection, from some pathological development to indifferentness, from frustration to shrugging, and smiled. Takeshi Kaneshiro "falls in love with a woman again after 57 hours"; Tony Leung saw his ex-girlfriend sitting on someone else's motorcycle, smiled and wished her happiness. Faye Wong’s character reinforces this relaxed atmosphere with her dancing and ridiculously quirky behavior, supplemented by the loudly played "California Dream" and Faye Wong’s own singing "Dreams" [covered from the Cranberries' "Dreams"], which themselves require swaying their bodies, nodding their heads, and slapping their feet. When Faye Wong dances lightly and fantasizes about California, we also want to join her.
Finally, calling the English title of this video may help us understand how "Chongqing Forest" (10 years since the time of writing) and Wong Kar-wai himself have withstood the test of time. Wong Kar-wai performed "continuousness" brilliantly - the rapid flash of time, the dynamic movement, the passage and continuation of time, and the time without end. Although Takeshi Kaneshiro used a bunch of expiring pineapple cans to end his relationship with May, and the validity date on the canned sardines in Brigitte Lin's hand is the deadline for her to make up for the mistake, the time here is not limited, rather material and sensible, because Wong Kar-wai concreted the time: canned pineapple, soap, wet torn rags, shirts, plush stuffed toys, toy planes. Like Proust's "Little Madelena", these carriers of time send the protagonist to memory of the past. Or, they are the same as the skull in Haruki Murakami's science fiction novel "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung speak to these objects carrying time memories, similar to the "Dream Reader" in Haruki Murakami's novels talking to the skull (and so it is also the time when "reading" continues).
Stills from "Chongqing Forest".
In "Chongqing Forest", time is subject to change and is closely related to human life: by May 1, Takeshi Kaneshiro will be one year older; on the same day, Brigitte Lin may die. This is time. In "Midnight Express", time will also pass, which is reflected in the changes in Faye Wong's T-shirt. Here, time is something worn on your body. As a film that encapsulates, quantifies and materializes time, "Chongqing Forest" may also reach the critical point of expiration one day in the future. It will become the skull that the next generation of "dream readers" can read, and then the memory will emerge again. "Chongqing Forest" is a film about time. It is time and space itself, like something worn on your body (like Faye Wong's T-shirt) - all of them have been combined so far.
This article is excerpted from "Wang Kar-wai's Movie World" with the authorization of the publisher. The content has been deleted.
Original author | [Malay] Zhang Jiande
excerpt | Xu Yuedong
edited | Luo Dong
source: Beijing News
