Wong Kar-wai

by Silver Wai-ming Lee

  MC&HN: You express time by changing the costumes and accessories, notably those of Maggie Cheung. How did you develop this idea?

  WKW: I want to show the changes through not having changes. The film tries to repeat all the things: the music is repeating all the time, and the way we see certain space like the office, the clock, the corridors—they’re always the same. We are trying to show the changes through minor things such as the clothes of Maggie or the relationship. Unfortunately, for a non-local audience, they would not know some details about the food. Because in the Shanghainese community, specific food is consumed in certain seasons. So actually the food is telling you it is May or March or June. The amah keeps on asking Maggie to stay and eat with them. She is making wonton which is made with certain vegetables. But we don’t put [these details] in the subtitles because that would be too much. Those vegetables are only available in June and July so that means we know the characters are now in June and July 1962.

  MC&HN: You have a filming method to show a permanent change in a scene. What were cut out and added?

  WKW: When we started the project, we called it A Story about Food, and it had three stories. And so the extra story we see in In the Mood for Love is actually only thirty minutes. It only takes place in the restaurants, in the noodle shop, in the staircase after they buy noodles pretending to have an affair. After I started this part, the main reason for me to make that project is I like this story, so I forgot about the other two stories which weren’t made. I just expanded the whole thing. So the most difficult part is: we started a quick lunch, but it became a big feast at the end. We started from 1962 until 1972—ten years. The reason why we wanted to end in ’72 is because Hong Kong in the 1970s looked totally different—the people, the behaviors: how they dressed, how they looked, how they ate, and how they lived were extremely different from 1962. But at the end I decided to stop in 1966 because that would be an epic; there would be too much. It’d involve too many skills. We tried one or two scenes in 1972. But I think we need a lot to put in that part, so I don’t think it is financially or physically feasible. So we stopped in 1966, which was a very interesting moment in Hong Kong history because of the Cultural Revolution in China. We had riots in Hong Kong, so a lot of people moved away from Hong Kong [to overseas]. It was the beginning of all this [second wave] immigration that happened afterward.

  MC&HN: What are the two other stories?

  WKW: There are two other stories: one is about a fast food shop owner and his customers; the other one is about a kidnapper and the person being kidnapped.

  MC&HN: Is the ending scene in Angkor Wat part of the project, or was it added later?

  WKW: We looked for a place to end the film because we think the last scene should provide something like a distance from the incidents. We can look at the whole thing from a distance to provide another dimension. So we looked for all these things in Thailand because we were shooting in Bangkok. We were trying to find some temples. Our production manager said, “Okay, why don’t you shoot it in Angkor Wat because we have good connections in Cambodia,” and I said, “Why not?” Years ago I saw a documentary on Angkor Wat, and I’m impressed by the place. It’s like a museum of jealousy, passion, love, so I think we should end the story there. Because of that, we had to find a reason for Tony to be here and to be in Angkor Wat. We went through all these news reels, and around that time the big event was Charles De Gaulle visiting Cambodia. So we went through this documentary which I like because it is not only about the events, but it also has an effect like waking up somebody. The whole thing is like a fiction; it’s like a dream, but there’s a certain element which is true, which is factual.

  MC&HN: Aren’t the architecture and the arts also giving the sentiment and the permanence of things like this love that remains, like some old monuments?

  WKW: It is like the remains of these things, and we can see all these rocks. We see there’re thousands of stories like this over the years, and these form a history.

  MC&HN: What is the legend that you talk about, the one that tells the rocks a secret?

  WKW: It’s a legend from an old book. I will use this legend in 2046 and In the Mood for Love at the same time. We are trying to explore how people keep their secrets in different ways.

  MG&HN: At the end Tony Leung looks at a child and he smiles. This is quite mysterious. Is this a scene you added during the filming?

  WKW: That’s in the script. I’d like to have some ambiguity. That’s perhaps his son, … the age matches; but that proves nothing. One never knows.

  MC&HN: Like in all your films, the visual aspect is great. The work on the colors, the movement, the accessories, is very elaborate. Do you think the present Hong Kong cinema has a better quality, or do you think you are a rare case?

  WKW: I think overall in Asia the film quality has improved a lot, and the quality is very close to western films. But I think there’s no filmmaker like the old filmmakers, like Ozu or Kurosawa; they could create details that are extremely beautiful, extremely precise. Overall we are better, but there’s no exceptionally good [filmmaker]. There’re so many films made in Hong Kong and in Asia about Shanghainese in recent years, but we Shanghainese don’t like them because we think they are not accurate. This is my intention, to make something that is accurate. I want to show people what these Shanghainese communities were really like. So we know all these details by heart; we didn’t have to do a lot of research.

  MC&HN: Is Maggie Cheung very different from herself in other films, or in real life?

  WKW: One of the reasons why we have Maggie in this film is because she has a certain air, a certain quality, which definitely belongs to that period. The look, the air, the moves: she’s got everything. And the Chinese title of this film is The Age of Flowers. Usually it applies to women at their best, at their prime, but I think the Chinese title of this film can in fact be applied to that period; it’s the age of flowers of Hong Kong.

  MC&HN: Two cameramen worked on the film: Christopher Doyle, who made less than one-third; and Mark Lee Ping-bing. However, there was a continuity.

  WKW: Mark Li Ping-bing is the cameraman of Hou Hsiao-Hsien [a renowned Taiwanese filmmaker]. We once worked on the project Fallen Angels because Chris [Doyle] was away as usual. And this time, Chris had only finished one part of the film, so it was a new experience to me because in the past I could be a little bit lazy because I could rely on Chris on the framing, on the lighting. I didn’t have to pay too much attention to those because I know he knows what I want. And now because I’m working with Li Ping-bing on this project, it’s not a film that looks like my previous films. I have to control all the things, and I’m more involved in the framing and the lighting. It’s a creative process which I can get more control of, and the look of the film is in more accordance with the content.

  MC&HN: Why did you film in Bangkok?

  WKW: It’s so difficult to find locations in Hong Kong that look like old Hong Kong. We shot the Singapore part in Bangkok because Singapore has the same problems. While I was shooting 2046 in Bangkok, I went around Chinatown and thought, “Wow, we should make the film here” because this is how Hong Kong looked [in the ’60s]. All the exteriors were shot in Bangkok. The office [where Maggie works] was shot in Bangkok, the newspapers [which Tony works for] was shot in Bangkok because they have the old buildings. They’ve looked the same for the past fifty years. We shot all of the interior—the apartment—in Hong Kong.

  MC&HN: In your filming method, what is the contribution of Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung?

  WKW: It is exceptional for two Hong Kong actors to spend a year on one project trying different things with us. For me, the biggest challenge for Tony and Maggie is: I told them, “This film is not going to be verbal; you are not going to express yourself through dialogue. You have to express yourself through the body, your small gestures, your glances.” With Tony, it is very hard because normally, in my previous films, Tony would be the narrator; he has a lot of inner monol
ogues. He can express himself, but this time he becomes mute. He cannot provide any inner monologues; there is no point of view. He can only express himself through his body. I think it is a big challenge, and they did a very good job.

  MC&HN: The score in the film has American artists (Nat King Cole), South Americans, like a reference to Argentina and Happy Together, and there is also some original music.

  WKW: The Latin music is a reference of that time because in the ’60s Latin American music was very popular in Hong Kong; most of the musicians in Hong Kong came from the Philippines. So the Spanish influence, or the Latin American music influence, was very strong. As a kid, when we went to a restaurant, the music was everywhere. So I want to keep that music in the film, not only as restaurant music, but also as a reference of that period. We also have some original music, which creates the tempo of the film and describes it. Like the music at the end of the film, it is a poem in itself. I would like to especially mention the one we use all the time, the waltz. It is not original music. It is music used in a Seijun Suzuki’s film called Yumeji. and I know the composer. He gave me the tape, and I listened to the music before I started shooting this film. And that music became the reference of this film because I know the film should be like a waltz. It is two people dancing together slowly. At the end, I said, “Can I use this music in the film?” because we want to show the waltz influence, and I said this is the tempo of the film.

  MC&HN: Nat King Cole, that’s a point of view of South American glamor?

  WKW: Nobody knows about Nat King Cole’s Spanish songs or Latin American songs, and also we never knew there are some hit songs [of his] coming from Latin America. People only have the American versions.

  MC&HN: When you filmed, did you put the music on the set to create an ambience?

  WKW: I had the music in my mind already, but sometimes I would play the music to the actors or to the cameramen to let them know the rhythm. So, like the track shot, they had to know the speed of the tracking; they had to know the tempo of the film.

  MC&HN: The mise en scène of this film is calmer, with fewer and shorter movements. Isn’t this a change?

  WKW: The biggest challenge is we always want to keep the audience as one of the [characters’] neighbors, so the way we see these two persons is always behind something: it makes the movement of these actors limited to a certain space, to certain environments, so it is very challenging to do. Because it’s all about suspense, and we learned from [Robert] Bresson that we can only see the close-ups; we cannot see the whole thing. There is so much imagination outside the frame.

  MC&HN: Where did you find the citation you used in the film? And why?

  WKW: The text and the captions in the film came from a novel written by a Hong Kong writer Liu Yichang. I wanted to include that in the film because I think it describes how people thought at that time. And the writers in Hong Kong at that time have never been treated as serious writers. They were educated people or journalists coming from China after ’49. They could not find a living in Hong Kong; they could only make a living by writing for the newspapers. They wrote columns, articles about food, horse racing, football games, medical advice, a lot of things. And they had to write huge volume every day. Liu Yichang was very famous at that time, and he wrote a huge number of articles. This novel is a very good documentation about life in Hong Kong in the ’60s.

  MC&HN: Similar to films that are distant, and in a very different style, one can consider your film is like a modern equivalent of Leo McCarey, like Elle et Lui (Love Affair and An Affair to Remember). What is your relation with the classic theme of secret, in the America melodramas or in the New Wave cinema, like François Truffaut’s Le Peau Douce?

  WKW: The film of McCarey is more romantic than mine. It gives a happy ending. In the process of making this film, there were so many things coming up. When we were shooting on the street in Bangkok, at the corner of the street there is actually a fire department. The streets remind me of some Italian films. It reminds me of Michelangelo Antonioni. So we were shooting something like Antonioni; it is like a homage to all these people. When we were shooting in the office [where Maggie works], we could only have one angle because that place is too small, so we had to use a lot of close-ups and that reminds me of Robert Bresson’s films.

  MC&HN: What’s your relation with the melodrama genre that was quite important in the Shanghainese cinema?

  WKW: The second generation [of Shanghainese immigrants] merged with the local people, and there was no Shanghainese or Cantonese—everybody was a Hong Kong citizen. At that period of time, in 1962, we knew whether you are a Cantonese or a Shanghainese. Sometimes we hated each other; we didn’t talk with each other—the Shanghainese mother didn’t like the daughter going out with a Cantonese boy. It was very strict. Even the way we were shooting the Shanghainese community in this film (like Rebecca Pan [who plays the landlady], she’s Shanghainese), we knew we were not in the tradition of the Shanghainese in mainland China. Even the Shanghainese now, they don’t know or understand this community. It is like the Russians after the Russian Revolution. They lived in Hong Kong; they lived in Shanghai. They were a special type of people in exile. The whole experience of this community was like a dream; it’s lost and it’s gone.

  MC&HN: In this film, you also use a lot of slow motions which are less often used in other films. Does this mean there was a problem with the pace?

  WKW: This film is not verbal. Everything is expressed through the body, through the people—how they walk, how they talk and move—and there’re some details I want to show in slow motion. I think most of the slow motion is not carrying the action, but the environments are like slow motion: in the pressroom and when Maggie hangs around during the mahjong games [in the living room]. It is all about a certain space, a certain mood, and I want to capture that in slow motion.

  MC&HN: You talked about the film production lasting for one year. Did you film, stop, edit, film, mix, film?

  WKW: We produce our films. We have to take the risks ourselves; we have no one standing behind our backs saying, “That’s okay; you have to wrap up this film.” So that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to present a film here in Cannes because we can make this film forever. We had to find a way to stop this production. We needed a deadline, so I said, “Okay, we can go to Cannes.” Then now we knew we have to stop all the things, and it’s time to say goodbye to the project.

  MC&HN: What’s the link between what you filmed and what you edited?

  WKW: We have filmed thirty times the length of the negative [of the final cut]. We have materials for more than two hours, and then we only kept ninety-two minutes. We edited it scene by scene [after the filming] because it is the way we work. At the end I just figured out the structure. And it is a process; it’s not building up things. It’s just taking things that we don’t want out of the film and keeping what’s essential and what we think is precise. I filmed in a chronological order. And during the production of In the Mood for Love, I filmed almost half of 2046 with other actresses: Faye Wong, Carina Lau. Sometimes we stopped working on In the Mood for Love because Maggie Cheung needed to go to Paris [where she lives with her French husband]. Sometimes I went with another group of actors to film in Bangkok. But I have not started editing 2046. We will resume filming in September in South Korea because an authority in Busan [in Korea] wants to finance the production of a new film.

  MC&HN: You have a French co-producer for In the Mood for Love, has there been any problem for them?

  WKW: No, I like the way that Paradis Film does its features. They understand well our way of working, and they never intervene.

  Muse of Music: Interview with Wong Kar-wai

  Tony Lan Tsu-wei / 2000

  From Blue Dreams of Film [http://4bluestones.biz/mtblog/] (Taiwan). October 2, 2004. Interview conducted in Mandarin in 2000. Reprinted by permission of the writer. Translated by Silver Wai-ming Lee from Chinese.

  Tony Lan’s note: Wong Kar-wai’s film
s are like a dazzling pearl with multiple dimensions: some of the audience are fascinated by its visual image, some like its romance and philosophy, and some are infatuated by its music and sound.

  Wong’s In the Mood for Love won the Best Actor and the Technical Grand Prize in the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, which acknowledged the actor’s performance and achievement in cinematography and art direction. But the film achieves more than these. Wong’s idea of music constitutes the dazzling dimensions of the film.

  This interview with Wong Kar-wai was conducted when he came to Taiwan to promote In the Mood for Love in 2000. This afternoon I am going to talk to Wong again about his thoughts regarding the music achievement in 2046.1 Therefore, I have reorganized some old interviews here from which you may find out more about Wong’s taste and idea about music.

  Tony Lan: Many people know that Frankie Chan is an actor as well as a director but have no idea that he is responsible for the music in Chungking Express and Ashes of Time. What is your relationship with him?

  Wong Kar-wai: When I was working as a screenwriter for Always Good Film Company, he was the boss. Actually, he is the best witness of Hong Kong film score as he is the apprentice of Wang Fuling, the master in Hong Kong music. (He composed memorable scores for many films like Love Without End [1961].) He composed scores for most films in 1970s. He was already very wealthy at that time, while Jackie Chan was still a stuntman. He bought many cars and lent them to Jackie Chan.

  Nowadays young people edit music on a computer. It is not accurate enough. Previously, you had to do the editing by controlling two sets of machines—one for forwarding and pausing at a particular frame, the other for rewinding. This brought high accuracy. But now this technique has been lost.

  Chan is good at film editing as well as film scoring. After he knows what you are shooting, he will do the music on his own and seldom communicate with others. But he has a sense in music and the scores are always suitable for the films. But his idea of the music sequence may not be the same as mine, so I would rearrange the sequence. We argued about it every time.