Two of the slots in Francis’s “20 essential films to be marooned in a deserted island with” belong to films directed by the brilliant Wong Kar-Wai: the quirky, delicious, delirious, and ultimately heartbreaking Chungking Express (1994), about two sets of lovers in a Hong Kong anxiously awaiting the handover back to China, and the gorgeously-shot and designed but bone-achingly sad tale of two unhappily married people falling in love with each other, In the Mood for Love (2000), which Sofia Coppola has acknowledged as one of the main inspirations for her own masterpiece of dislocated feelings, Lost in Translation. I am such an ardent Wong fan that I have seen almost all of his movies and some of them twice. Two years ago, I took a Facets Film School class about his work, and nearly brawled with two annoyingly pretentious, pseudo film-geeks who seemed like they based their knowledge of Asian culture on being avid customers of Panda Express (sniff!). I really think Wong is unsurpassed right now among contemporary directors in successfully evoking mood, emotions, and characters’ perspectives with the barest of dialogue- instead he uses cinematography, actors’ facial expressions, design, and innovative editing techniques (both fast-frame and slow motion). Wong has a unique, identifiable style, and a very specific East Asian point of view - a world view that contains fatalism; deep-seated melancholy; loyalty (to family, to loved ones); a focus on subtext and unexpressed emotions; the powerful influence of the past on the present and the de-emphasis, almost the avoidance, of thinking about the future and what comes next. So I was very, very nervous to go see his first English-language film, My Blueberry Nights, set and shot in America, starring Hollywood stars…and Norah Jones. Will his style and sensibility translate well? Will he be able to still create a distinctive Wong Kar-Wai film versus an attempt to come up with a Hollywood art film? Can he give an interesting take on distinctively American situations, characters, and milieus? What can he do with Norah Jones’s, uhmmm, acting prowess? Well, I’m sure Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, Warren Buffett, masters all of their fields, have had bad days sometimes, and that’s fine. I’d like to think that the Wong who directed My Blueberry Nights was just having one long bad day.
Apr 21
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