Wong Kar-wai

by Silver Wai-ming Lee

  TL: When you made In the Mood for Love, you not only required the viewers to see that era, but you also wanted them to hear that era. You had to show the time reference of the particular era, and you had to use a suitable rhythm for the film. This concept seems to have further applied in 2046. For example, Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” and Connie Francis’s “Siboney” both express a mood of the 1960s and reflect the characters’ emotions. However, in In the Mood for Love, you adapted from music that Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi created for Seijun Suzuki’s Yumeji. In 2046, you further used Umebayashi’s soundtrack along with [the soundtrack of] Truffaut, Fassbinder, and Kieslowski. Why?

  WKW: I love watching films, and I am interested in film soundtrack. Truffaut, Fassbinder, and Kieslowski have deeply touched me. In 2046 I used their music because I feel their music is very suitable for my own films, I wanted to pay homage to those masters this way. But the most important thing is they are experts at romance; each of them used a new angle to interpret love. Would adapting their music create a new chemical effect for my films? I am hoping for that result.

  TL: In In the Mood for Love, you use Umebayashi’s waltz and tango to symbolize the interaction and power struggle between lovers. This time when Umebayashi created the theme music for 2046, what requirements did you give him so that there is an obvious difference between 2046 and In the Mood for Love?

  WKW: I asked Umebayashi to compose for me again mainly because the male protagonist [in 2046] Chow Mo-wan comes from In the Mood for Love, so there is a relation. Therefore, I asked Umebayashi to compose the main theme. I simply told him if the music in In the Mood for Love is like chamber music, then the music structure would be grander.

  Basically the music talks about a journey, but it changes according to the plot. For example, I gave him three female characters (Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Faye Wong) and asked him to compose different kinds of music. To me, these three women represent the past, the present, and the future, respectively. But I asked Umebayashi to write music with a dance feeling, something with a strong rhythm. He made many versions. I did not use the tango and cha-cha because those are too similar to In the Mood for Love, repeating the rhythm that I have already used. [In 2046], I used the rhythms of rumba and polonaise dance.

  But the final composition of Umebayashi is not only restrained for one particular character, I feel he has linked the entire theme while making changes throughout the film. At the beginning, the mood was very severe, very over the top, the feeling is very operatic. Then it became the feeling of rumba—very seductive, like the feeling of getting drunk. At the end it is the dance rhythm of polonaise: at its beginning it appears to be very light, but as it goes on the feeling becomes very sentimental, very sad.

  TL: You don’t want others to say 2046 is the sequel to In the Mood for Love, but the characters and plot in 2046 clearly make reference to In the Mood for Love and Days of Being Wild. How should the audience understand this?

  WKW: The ending of In the Mood for Love shows Tony Leung telling a secret to a tree hole in Angkor Wat. 2046 begins from this hole. The two films are certainly linked. But I suggest the audience reverse the viewing order—start with 2046. They may discover from there Tony Leung was once in love with a married woman. You may then want to know who Maggie Cheung is in the taxi. Then when you see In the Mood for Love, you can see the story of Maggie Cheung. Similarly, if you are interested in the character of Carina Lau, you may find a connection with Days of Being Wild. To me, 2046 is a final summary. Every character can be seen as a chapter. I made the three films as a 1960s trilogy, and it is now done. Perhaps I will wait for many, many years to use another new perspective to discuss this topic.

  TL: You have used a lot of close-up angles to show the relation between women and clothing, making every actress have her own style and narration. How do you categorize their qualities?

  WKW: All these come from the quality of each of the actresses. The strength of Faye Wang is her body language, which is extremely good. You can give her the simplest action to express how she feels, which is much better than twenty lines of dialogue. She acts best when she moves. That’s why when I introduce her in the film, the first scene starts with her feet. When she wears shoes, not only do you feel the beauty of the feet, but the shoes become alive. When I shot the legs of Zhang Ziyi, I asked her to be naked. That gives others a sensual feeling.

  I have this arrangement because I am very sensitive towards female beauty. I have a lot of prejudice. I believe that the sexiest part of a woman is her legs, so they have to look good on the screen. In addition, because I know each of the actresses’ quality and I understand their strengths, I amplify each of their strong points and make her attention-grabbing when she enters the scene.

  TL: A good romance film relies on the mastery of the lonely feeling. In 2046, you use 1224 and 1225 as time codes to show how during Christmas holidays, lonely hearts hope for love, yearn for warmth, want to experience some intense emotions through a lover’s embrace, but in this scene you use the sober song “The Christmas Song” to create those lonely feelings during the holidays. Is it because at a time when you feel lonely and sad, you have a desire to be in a crowd and let the strange and bigger desolation comfort your loneliness?

  WKW: Correct. The more sadness there is, the less one should isolate oneself. To be in a crowd, one will experience a sense of loss and loneliness more strongly, but that is the best cure. It is like after one cries heavily, the wound will get healed.

  NOTES

  1. In Chungking Express, the fast food shop where Faye Wong works is located close to Lan Kwai Fong. The blond played by Brigitte Lin lingers in Chungking Mansion located in Tsim Sha Tsui. In Happy Together, Tony Leung’s character Lai visited the Taipei night market en route from Argentina to Hong Kong. The Muzha Line (now part of the Wenhu Line) is the first line of the Taipei Metro, which opened in 1996. Trains run across Taipei from east to south above ground. The Liaoning Street night market is located near one of its metro stations.

  2. Yi jing 意境 is a Chinese concept of how artists create an artistic world, though not necessarily a make-believe one, through both objective observation and subjective emotions.

  3. The tightly fitted dresses that Maggie Cheung wears in In the Mood for Love were first popular in Shanghai in the 1920s. In Wong’s anthology film, The Hand, the young tailor played by Chang Chen made qipaos for Gong Li.

  4. Intersection is a novel written by Liu Yi-chang. The title comes from the term in philately, tête-bêche, which means a joined pair of stamps in which one is upside-down in relation to the other. The English translation of Intersection was published in Renditions (Nos. 29 & 30, 1988), a journal published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is available at: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rct/toc/toc_b2930.html.

  5. We use a more word-by-word translation. The North American version has the following subtitles: “He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.”

  6. The literal translation is “All the memories are humid.”

  7. An expression of “filling up the page”—Chinese writers used to write on manuscript papers preprinted with grids. One character fills in one box.

  8. CinemaScope is used to shoot widescreen movies with a ratio aspect of 2.66.

  9. The 1960s riot started with the Star Ferry protest in 1966. The public took to the streets to protest the fare increase. The British colonial government suspected communists were behind the protests, so dissidents were arrested and charged. Curfew was imposed for the city. Wong refers to the White House in Mount Davis on west Hong Kong Island. It is known for jailing pro-Beijing protestors during the 1967 Riot as they wanted to launch a cultural revolution in Hong Kong and caused casualties. It was the most serious threat to the British colonial government in Hong Kong history.

  Because of Norah Jones: My Blueberry Nights: E
xclusive Interview with Wong Kar-wai

  Hong Kong Film / 2007

  From Hong Kong Film (Hong Kong). December. Interview conducted in Cantonese in 2007. Translated by Micky Lee from Chinese.

  After Wong Kar-wai wore the dark glasses, he became a symbol of a particular style: cigarettes, tango, and Iguazu Falls [of Happy Together]; qipao, music, afternoon tea at Gold Finch restaurant [of In the Mood for Love]1 … narcissists usually like to be alone. Narcissists can hardly avoid being obsessed with objects. Smoking the same brand of cigarettes for years, insisting on something that can hardly be understood by bystanders, extensively quoting lines from Wong Kar-wai’s films, [these] have become the lifestyle practiced by certain people.

  When Wong Kar-wai was a minor scriptwriter, he understood that the audience want to watch movie stars when they watch films. His films have never been short of a heavy-weight star-studded cast. The charm of the stars will always be amplified under his camera lens. He really knows how to show the sexiness of East Asians—examples include the cha cha [dance of Leslie Cheung] and the one-minute friend in Days of Being Wild; the high contrast light and shadow of Peach Flower (played by Carina Lau) and the horse in the lake in Ashes of Time. At the time of shooting Chungking Express, the way Cop 663 talks was very popular [in Hong Kong]—boredom and grievance are one kind of disease suffered from city dwellers, but once muttering is demonstrated by Tony Leung Chiu-wai, all of a sudden the mutters become very beautiful. One should not miss the alluring body underneath the qipao and the provocative gaze in In the Mood for Love and 2046. This kind of sexiness does not require nudity; it is entirely diffused from the deepest part of the soul. All this sexiness comes from Wong Kar-wai’s precise mastery of people—not only of the characters but also of the actors. Then My Blueberry Nights was released, [despite it being a film in English] we discover that the stars only use English to express Wong-Kar wai’s dialogue. [The actors] are like the kiss between Yuddy (played by Leslie Cheung) and Su Li-zhen (played by Maggie Chueng) [in Days of Being Wild]; the careful probing between Cop 663 (played by Tony Leung) and Faye Wong [in Chungking Express]; and the way that Ho Po-wing (played by Leslie Cheung) and Lai Yiu-fai (played by Leung) smoke and stand by the bar windows [in Happy Together]…. Wong Kar-wai is born to be romantic; he is also nostalgic. He has a thorough understanding of romance, including what happens before and after a relationship. At the same time, he allows himself to drown in a romantic ambience. His mood is not affected by the characters’ loneliness or sorrow. His metaphors are too obvious; his narrative is too much of a stream of consciousness. Certainly Wong is not an excellent realist director, but no one can deny that he is an expert at creating a mood.

  Gradually, people have started to only remember Wong Kar-wai when he wears dark glasses. But perhaps this is what he wants.

  Hong Kong Film: Can you tell us the creation process of My Blueberry Nights?

  WKW: Every film has a starting point. This time the starting point is like a juggling act. I did not have this film in my plan. When I was in New York City, I had an opportunity to meet Norah Jones. I quickly felt this woman is quite fun, so I thought perhaps we should make a film together. She was in New York for two months to make a record, so I started to consider making a road movie that is about a woman wandering around. She goes everywhere as she wishes. To use the road movie genre, the story can follow the path of Norah Jones. Then I started to think: what is the reason that makes her leave a place? If we say love or something like that, it is very superficial. I feel the first image that I have about this film is the legs of a woman who stands by the road side. She ought to go ahead or something. I used another route to walk this path. Maybe it is because I want to give myself a bit more time. Drawn from this way to think [about the story], one segment after another, every segment has a story inside. Every beginning scene has a tentative structure, like a juggling act or like an orchestra. My Blueberry Nights is built upon many previous films, some from Days of Being Wild, some from In the Mood for Love. I see this film as a light suitcase that I pack for a new journey. It is like the last line in 2046, “You have to start anew.” You should carry a light suitcase rather than a big trunk to start the journey.

  HKF: The narrative follows a chronological order; all the events follow a straight timeline. This gives the audience a very straightforward concept. It is like there is no special design to create suspense.

  WKW: There is nothing much about memory in this film. There isn’t too much design [about time]. I think this is related to the impression that Norah Jones gave me. She is very straightforward. She does not have much unspoken intention. She likes what she likes, doesn’t like what she doesn’t like. When I asked her if she wanted to make a film, her question was not “Am I capable?” but “When? Do you think I am capable? If I can, then I will.” She does not have too many complications inside. It is like when I am dubbing the Chinese dialogues, I asked Dong Jie to be the voice of Norah Jones. In this dubbing process, Dong Jie was inspired by Norah Jones. Dong explained, “Well, normally a young woman like Norah Jones would wrap herself up in a cocoon.” To her surprise, she found Jones completely at ease. Norah Jones is very straightforward; perhaps at that point she had not thought too clearly [about the film]. But she will do what she feels comfortable with; she does not plot.

  HKF: Based on what you said, My Blueberry Nights is actually a tailor-made film that you designed for Norah Jones.

  WKW: Actually every film of mine is based on a person. The most difficult parts of making a film are the beginning and the ending. There are many ideas at the beginning. Where do you start? Everything can be a beginning; a story can be told from any point. But what is the reason for wanting to make a film? The starting point of My Blueberry Nights is my meeting Norah Jones. She made me wonder [if she would act]; then I began to pair her up with others. It is like 2046 comes from Tony Leung. I begin with this person; then I pair him up with others. Another example is Chungking Express, I saw Faye Wong [sings], and I started to pair her up with others.

  HKF: Do you create all other work in this way?

  WKW: Not entirely. Because there is the country Argentina, I wanted to go there to make a film. The result was Happy Together. [The reason why I wanted to make] Chungking Express was because I often went to that fast food restaurant and noticed what was going on there, so I suddenly wanted to shoot a story about that fast food place. Ashes of Time is because of Louis Cha [Jin Yong]. I feel Eastern Heretic and Western Venom are two of his best characters. Everyone says Eastern Heretic is a very carefree character, but to me, he is the most conservative and the most restrictive. Then I thought about how the two characters might have been when they were young, what kinds of encounters they may have faced that made them who they are.

  HKF: In this film you chose two stories to illustrate Norah Jones’s experience: one is related to family, the other is a father-daughter relationship. Why does her encounter relate to family relationship?

  WKW: Actually it is because I have decided the protagonist is Norah Jones. The first story takes place in New York City. I chose to re-use a site that I used for Tony Leung in In the Mood for Love. The site is a fast food restaurant. This woman has run away. Where should she go to? I was driving [in the US] when I chose the location. I thought: first, if I choose to make this film, at least I should understand what it feels like to be on the road. That’s why I asked the producer and the cinematographer to go on a road trip with me—from New York to Los Angeles on the West Coast, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Actually I originally wanted her to go farther away, tentatively Beijing. I had scouted locations in Beijing, but I heard others said this site will be demolished because of 2008 Beijing Olympics. That’s why Norah decided not to go. At the end we stopped at Los Angeles. We return to where we begin to hang around. Afterwards when we chose locations on the road, there were many choices from the East Coast to the West Coast. Eventually we chose Memphis because when we drove to Memphis at dawn we stopped
by the road and saw street cars honking, I felt this reflects the world of Tennessee. I told myself, “Why not have a segment here? I do not know if I will have another opportunity to make a film here, do I?” Because there was an opportunity to have some fun, I wrote a story about Tennessee about an alcoholic meeting a wandering woman. Then I thought he could be a police officer. From there I developed their relationship which is partly like friends, partly like father and daughter. Then I thought more [about it]; the next story has to take place on the West Coast. One has to pass through Nevada when passing the large desert. That place should also be included because it gives the feeling of a Western genre. That’s why I developed the gambler character. She and Norah Jones are like sisters, but in fact they are the two sides of one person, two possibilities [of a person]. And the element of the father, it may come from [the father-daughter relationship between Faye Wong and her father in] the previous film [2046]. In fact all the stories are chronological.

  HKF: What consideration did you have when you picked the actors, such as the character of Jude Law?

  WKW: Because you have the main female character, Norah Jones, you have to find a counterpart male character. At that time we auditioned a few, and at the end I picked Jude Law. When I met him in Los Angeles, I felt he has … first he is British. Many British live in New York City. He has an inherent quality of being [emotionally] distant. Second, he has an excellent sense of acting pace. Third, he is not a very complicated person; he is a very easy going person.