The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Ashes of Time

Hong Kong, 1994
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

 Ashes of Time was a difficult production. The shoot took place in the middle of the scorching desert, and went way over budget and over schedule. Even after its initial release in 1994, the movie's journey was not complete - over a decade later Wong Kar-wai discovered that the original negatives of the film were in terrible shape, and desperately needed saving. In the process of restoration, he re-scored and re-edited the film, releasing it in 2008 as Ashes of Time Redux. The Redux version is, as far as I'm aware, the only available way to see the film in the United States, so I cannot compare the two versions.

In either version, the general response to Ashes of Time has deemed it beautiful but incoherent. I don't agree (with the latter part, at least), but it's an understandable response to an aggressively unusual film, and one whose context might be lost on western viewers. Ashes of Time is based on the fantasy novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes, which Wong has compared to The Lord of the Rings in terms of its popularity and influence in China, but is largely unknown elsewhere. It is not a direct adaptation of the book, but a sort of origin story. Wong wanted to explore how the characters became the legendary figures they are at the start of the book. Ashes of Time belongs to the wuxia genre, mythic stories of swordsmen and the chivalric codes they live by. However, Ashes of Time is not a straightforward wuxia adventure, but a deconstruction of the genre, less a tale of battle and honor than a classically Wong meditation on memory and loss.

 

Ashes of Time is similar to Wong's earlier film Days of Being Wild in structure. Both center around one man played by Leslie Cheung who meets other people and becomes involved in their stories. Like Yuddy in Days of Being Wild, Ou-yang Feng in Ashes of Time is cool and cynical on the surface, but trapped in his own feelings of heartbreak and rejection. Ou-yang Feng is a lone swordsman in the desert wilderness, who makes a living by hiring assassins for people with grudges. The traveling swordsmen he meets are formidable killers with supernatural skills, but are every bit as miserable and haunted by their pasts as Ou-yang.

Ashes of Time is all about memory, and the impermanence of things. Nearly all the characters live in regret, either running away from or wallowing in memories of lost love (the sole exception, Jacky Cheung's character, is the only one who finds happiness by the end). The film takes place over the course of a year, as time slips away through the passing of the seasons. Visual motifs express the temporary nature of the world - Ashes of Time constantly returns to images of shifting sand, billowing water, the movement of shadow and light.

Needless to say, if you're looking for a thrilling adventure you should probably look elsewhere. There are fight scenes in Ashes of Time - good ones too, though filmed in a way that renders them nearly abstract - but action is not the focus here. The characters' battles with others do not matter so much as their even more embattled and conflicted inner selves - the film opens with a Buddhist proverb, "The flag is still. The wind is calm. It is the heart of man that is in turmoil." This inner turmoil is made incarnate in one character, Mu-rong Yang (Brigitte Lin), a woman who claims to have a twin brother Mu-rong Yin that she wants dead, yet they are actually the same person. In the film's most ecstatically gorgeous sequence, Yin / Yang magically walks across the surface of a lake and battles her own reflection, because she has found no more difficult opponent elsewhere. Her sword thrusts are so powerful that the surface of the lake erupts into geysers of water with each strike.

Even by Wong Kar-wai's stylish standards, Ashes of Time is a gorgeous film. Daunting landscapes and close-ups of faces are filmed with equal beauty and detail. The colors have a hallucinogenic vibrancy, and the dreamy images are edited together like a kaleidoscopic collage. It's a beautiful enigma, a film where it is a pleasure to get lost in its rich textures and moods.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Chungking Express

Hong Kong, 1994
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

During the making of his wuxia epic Ashes of Time, a difficult production that went way over schedule and budget, Wong Kar-wai took a three month break to direct another movie, just to re-energize his creativity. The result is Chungking Express, which was completed and released before Ashes of Time. The movie was a hit, and for many western audiences their introduction to Wong Kar-wai. Quentin Tarantino was a huge fan and proponent, and helped to bring the film to the States. It's clear why Tarantino is such a fan; like his Pulp Fiction released the same year, Chungking Express is a kinetic blast of moviemaking innovation for its own sake, giddy with the possibilities of what movies can do. The quick, on-the-fly production shows in the film's spontaneous, experimental energy and in its unusual structure. Chungking Express is split in two parts, each a separate short story unfolding in the same hectic Hong Kong neighborhood.

The first story centers around the freshly heartbroken Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and a female drug dealer (Brigitte Lin) who always wears sunglasses and a blonde wig. Cop 223, when he's not chasing down criminals, wallows in amusing self-pity and expresses his heartbreak in odd ways - calling up every girl he's ever known, collecting pineapples because they were his ex-girlfriend's favorite fruit. Meanwhile, a drug deal goes sour for the mysterious dealer and she must go on the run. A few chase scenes, shootouts, and a very innocuous kidnapping occur, but the details of the double-crossing and criminal underworld don't matter, Wong is just having fun splashing punchy pulp fiction cliches across the screen. Cop 223 and the Woman with No Name eventually meet in a bar late at night, knowing nothing about each other. You expect that they will hook up, and there will be a dramatic reveal about lovers on the opposite sides of the law - but what actually happens is far simpler and sweeter than that.

The second story is the longer of the two, and is a straightforward romantic comedy without the crime thriller flourishes of the first. Cop 663 (Tony Leung) has also recently been dumped, and now morosely sleepwalks through life. While on duty he often drops by a food stand where Faye (Faye Wong) works, a mischievous scamp who takes a liking to him. After his ex-girlfriend drops off her keys at the stand, Faye starts breaking into Cop 663's apartment while he's not there, cleaning it, restocking his pantry and replacing his old and broken-down belongings. Cop 663 is so oblivious that he initially doesn't notice.

The vision of mid-90s Hong Kong in Chungking Express pops off the screen. It's a world of neon lights, bustling markets, Chinese and British and Indians rubbing shoulders, cramped apartments and 24/7 chopsocky food stands. It's bewildering and loud and seedy, but overflowing with life, and filmed so beautifully by Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Despite the mass of humanity in this crazy metropolis, all the characters are quite lonely. Perhaps because of the overwhelming zoo surrounding them, they create their own private worlds to cope, out of whatever flotsam they can cling to. Cop 223 obsessively collects tins of pineapple that expire on May 1st, his birthday and the one-month anniversary of his breakup. Faye loudly blasts the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin" on the radio at her tedious job, creating a protective bubble of sound so she doesn't have to think. Cop 663 talks to the inanimate objects in his apartment to cheer himself up. Wong views his characters' self-created little worlds with fond amusement.

Both stories in Chungking Express are about the miraculous connections that can happen in such a sprawling, chaotic place, when the paths of isolated people somehow intersect. Sometimes these connections are brief ones - Cop 223 and the Woman with No Name remain strangers, but now with a treasured memory about a moment of shared kindness and relief from loneliness. And in the second story, we hope that Cop 663 and Faye will find their way to romance, despite the (often self imposed) obstacles in their way. Watching these oddballs circle closer and closer to each other is great fun, and leads to one of the great romantic endings in the movies. The final scene of Chungking Express puts a big blissful grin on my face every time.

This is easily Wong Kar-wai's cheeriest film, not just because of the sweet stories and likable performers, but because of Wong's giddy style. Chungking Express is as mid-90s in its MTV aesthetic as it is possible to get - it's dated, but in a nostalgic and charming way rather than an embarrassing one. There's even a Cantonese cover of the Cranberries' "Dreams" on the soundtrack (sung by star Faye Wong, who is a popular pop artist in Hong Kong). The synthesis of cool editing tricks, lovely camerawork, and catchy pop songs make Chungking Express addictive to watch. It's the kind of idiosyncratic movie that not everyone will enjoy, but those who do will love it with a cultish fervor. 

The Films of Wong Kar-Wai: Days of Being Wild

Hong Kong, 1990
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai 

 Wong Kar-Wai is arguably the most popular, internationally acclaimed and influential Hong Kong director of all-time. He is known for his distinctive style, driven by music and color, and for his films' consistent themes of romantic yearning and memory. Wong's debut film was the 1988 gangster melodrama As Tears Go By, starring Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau. It's an entertaining, well-crafted movie, with hints of the stylistic verve and melancholy romanticism that would become Wong's trademarks, but on the whole is mostly typical of its genre. His second film, Days of Being Wild, is the first to fully display Wong's unique personality as an artist.

Set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, which vividly comes to life through small details - bright red Coca-Cola coolers, form-fitting print dresses and bob hairstyles, Western cafes, lounge and latin music. Days of Being Wild immediately draws you into an immersive sense of time and place. You can almost feel the humidity radiating off the screen, the oppressive heaviness of tropical nights. In this languid and lush atmosphere, a romantic roundelay unfolds among an ensemble of Hong Kong's most iconic actors. At the center of it all is Yuddy, played by the late Leslie Cheung, a troubled, detached young man. He was adopted by a high-class escort (Rebecca Pan), who refuses to tell him who his biological mother is. Yuddy is a womanizer, seducing the quiet Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) and showgirl Mimi (Carina Lau), before dumping both when they become too attached for his liking. And during their worst times of heartbreak both women are pined for by other men - policeman Tide (Andy Lau) becomes friends with Su Lizhen, and Mimi is pursued by Zeb (Jacky Cheung), a friend of Yuddy who is jealous of his influence over women.

On paper, the web of relationships in Days of Being Wild sounds like a tangled soap opera; however, Wong structures his film like a series of interwoven stories. The story of one relationship flows into another story, each one like free-standing but connected movements in a symphony, always circling back to Yuddy. Leslie Cheung's performance as Yuddy feels iconic. He's often been called the James Dean of Hong Kong because of his good looks and his troubled-but-cool persona - in fact, Days of Being Wild's title was taken from the Cantonese title of Dean's Rebel Without a Cause. But unlike Dean's handsome misfit in Rebel, Yuddy is not a heroic character but a tragically misguided and destructive one. He is both protective of and cruel to his adopted mother, a manipulative woman who is hardly perfect, but cares for him in her own flawed way. He enjoys the thrill of seducing women but has no interest in them beyond that. Twice in the film his narration tells the story of a bird: "I've heard there is a kind of bird with no legs. All it can do is fly and fly. When it gets tired, it sleeps on the wind. This bird can only land once in its whole life. That's the moment it dies." Clearly he pictures himself as the bird - a vagabond and free spirit, coolly detached from everyone and everything. Late in the film he tells the story to Andy Lau's character, who mocks Yuddy's tragically romantic self-mythologizing. "You think you're some kind of bird?" Yuddy may be a loner but for all his posturing he's really just an angry kid who feels rejected by the world. He envisions a separate life where he was not given up by his family in the Philippines, one where he truly belongs somewhere. Yuddy's 'cool and charismatic' act is magnetic enough that it's clear why people are drawn to him, yet it's the silent moments where Leslie Cheung shows his vulnerability that make him engaging.

What connects all the characters in Days of Being Wild is their search for belonging. Yuddy wants to find his biological mother in the Philippines, his mother wants a man to support her, Su Lizhen and Mimi want Yuddy and Zeb wants to be him, Tide wants Su Lizhen and becomes a sailor just to wander and find his place. Several of the characters have relocated from somewhere else, like the Philippines or Macau. Days of Being Wild captures the dislocation that many must have felt in Hong Kong in this era, where so many people had to relocate after the huge upheavals of World War II and the Chinese Civil War. A sense of yearning hangs over Days of Being Wild as thickly as the tropical humidity.

Wong Kar-Wai takes all his characters' dissatisfaction and melancholy and tells it with the wistful, bittersweet romanticism of a good pop song about heartbreak. The smooth camerawork, intimate close-ups and gorgeous soundtrack give Days of Being Wild a hypnotic quality. Considering that it's only Wong Kar-Wai's second film, Days of Being Wild is remarkably confident, a beautifully crafted gem and early example of his brilliance as a filmmaker.