Wong Kar-wai: In the Mood for Love (2000)

With Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love / 花樣年華 (2000), one is bestowed a vision of a way of life in 1962-1963 Hong Kong -- sort of like a miniature Hong Kong Mad Men. Luxuriate in excellent attire, slow-moving scenes, morsels of food, smoking and social mores played out in mostly tight spaces. It's a gorgeous film.  And it's a sort of homage in the use of color and camera to a Jean-Luc Godard film of the actual 1962-1963 time frame -- such as Godard's Le Mépris (1963). The marriage of music, camera movement and scene approaches perfection.   

In the Mood for Love focuses on the strange friendship and understated romance of Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung). We hear but never see in full Mrs. Chow or Mr. Chan -- they in turn are too busy "seeing" each other offscreen. We do see, partly for comic relief, co-workers and fellow apartment dwellers ranging from Mrs. Suen (Rebecca Pan) and Mr. Koo (Chan Man-Lei), who is often drunk, to Mr. Ho (Lai Chen), who has a wife and a girlfriend competing for his time away from work.  

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Wong Kar-Wai: Chungking Express (Take II)

Wong Kar-Wai's 重慶森林  / Chungking Express (1994) has, I can see now, the same elements as many of his later films. There's a keen sense of space and time and opportunity, missed, found or brushing lightly. Everything depends on velocity, or state of mind. Two ships pass at night, sending signals. Or, one ship signals and the other doesn't either receive or understand the messaging until time passes. It's got the stuff of Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu / In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927). It's got the subversive pizzaz of Jean-Luc Godard. It reminds of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which also came out in 1994, though without the more grotesque elements (i.e. no "bring out the gimp" here). Turns out that Tarantino helped showcase Chungking Express in a video/DVD release. Everything really is connected when it comes down to it.

A month passes; a year passes. How will people communicate down the road? What are tomorrow's possibilities, after yesterday's are finally understood?

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).
    

Wong Kar-Wai: Chungking Express (Take I)

Wong Kar-Wai's 重慶森林 / Chungking Express (1994) tells two obliquely related tales of contemporary Hong Kong. Its style is the quintessence of hip and genuine cool.

Chungking Express stars Brigitte Lynn, Valerie Chow, Takeshi Teneshiro, Faye Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and the Chungking Mansions.    

Every scene in Chungking Express has colorful and memorable imagery.

Today's Rune: Journey. 
   

Wong Kar-Wei: Days of Being Wild

Wong Kar-Wei: Days of Being Wild (1990). Retro (1960-1961). Atmosphere. People. Lonely. Lost. Pining. Wet Streets.

Wong Kar-Wei: Days of Being Wild. Interior Spaces. Smoking. She wants this, he wants that. Telephones and clocks. 

Wong Kar-Wei: Days of Being Wild. Image. Music. Groovy style. I dig. Can you?

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Wong Kar-wai: My Blueberry Nights

Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights (2007) takes us on a zen-fueled journey across the USA with Elizabeth-Lizzie-Beth (Norah Jones), from intersections with characters played by Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Frankie Faison, David Strathaim and Natalie Portman. 

In My Blueberry Nights, Norah Jones takes the pensive role while Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman enjoy the fun parts.

A lovely indie-style adventure about identity and social awareness through "the mythical American landscape" -- I liked it.  

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Código 46

There may have been something in the air or the water or the ether or the Zeitgeist just around 2003 and 2004. Whatever the case may have been, a cluster of movies came out in that time bubble and all seem to overlap in this way: they are pensive, offbeat and a little eerie and they all contain elements of beauty. Here are four for the ages:

Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003)

Michael Winterbottom's Code 46 (2003)

Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 (2004)

Each of these films has a science fiction feel -- but they are also in the here and now, the near past and the near future. They have an international, cosmopolitan edge. And they collectively remind me of something Luis Buñuel's wrote via My Last Sigh (translated by Abigail Israel; University of Minnesota Press, 2003): "You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. . . Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing. . ."   Indeed, that's a motivation for maintaining "Erik's Choice" and "Speak, Memory: Time Regained," tending to memories individual and collective -- dreams, history, imagination.

Today's Rune: Flow.

2046

One night traveling, I couldn't sleep -- and lucked across 2046, Wong Kar Wai's perfectly spacey pre-dawn film. It's beautifully shot with luxurious colors. It's "about" a writer (played by Tony Leung Chieu Wai, who has the aura of Clark Gable, complete with Rhett Butler moustache) and his memory, suffused with imagination. It's about his relationships, and about his observations, mostly set in the 1960s.

What exactly is 2046? It's a room number in the Oriental Hotel. It's also the year in which one of this writer's science fiction stories is set. And it's a train number. Sound a bit strange? It is -- but it's also cool, with lots of interaction between the writer and several pretty women (played by Maggie Cheung, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Carina Lau, and Zhang Ziyi). It reminds me a little of Philip K. Dick, of Marcel Proust, and of Last Year at Marienbad (1961), only in rich color.


I shudder to think of the real 2046. 2007 is close enough for now. Frankly, 1946 doesn't sound that long ago in the grand scheme of things.


Today’s Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Birthdays: Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Banastre Tarleton, Jules Michelet, Aubrey Beardsley, Emiliano Mercado del Toro, Count Basie, Wilt Chamberlain, Robert Stone, Peter Weir, Joe Strummer (b. John Graham Mellor), Kim Cattrall, Carrie-Anne Moss, Alizée Jacotey.

Joi gin!