Lead:
This new column will be in the form of a round table or dialogue, and the guests will play out of the sky, in the form of oral expression to discuss the film, hoping to generate some vivid ideas in the mutual stimulation. Our veteran author, Kaiyin, who has rich experience in film theory and criticism, is the main planner and host of this column. The first topic is Wong Kar Wai.
Review Wong Kar-wai's creative approach
Kai Yin: Is there any news about Wong Kar Wai's films recently?
LOOK: Several. One is that all his films have been fixed and are going to be re-screened. To out of the Blu-ray Disc. There is also a new project "Chongqing Forest 2020", some media reported that Yi Qianxi was the protagonist, they called to ask for verification, but did not get a response. Then there is Wong Kar-wai who made another advertisement. In general, it is still a bit of fried cold rice news, anyway, more than ten years, about him, it feels like these news come and go.
Kaiyin: Since "The Ferryman", are there several projects he wants to operate?
The Ferryman (2016)
LOOK: After "The Ferryman", one is "Blossoms" is slowly advancing, and there is an American drama "Tong Wars", which tells the gangster story that happened in the North American Chinatown in the 70s, but after a while, he died, and it felt like he conceived a lot of projects, but in the end he died.
Just like at that time I remember that before he made "Generation Grandmaster", he also passed on a lot of projects, he was looking for Nicole Kidman to play Orson Wells's film of the same name, "The Woman from Shanghai". He mentioned this in his latest English interview book, "WKW", that he went to the United States to do a lot of homework, looked up materials in the library, and finally died for various reasons. Later, it was also rumored that Bai Xianyong's novel was to be filmed, and Lin Qingxia played it.
A Generation of Grandmasters (2013)
Kaiyin: But this is no longer a play, right?
LOOK: It's no longer a play, and I think it may still be a matter of working methods.
Kai Yin: Yes, I'm thinking about it too, there's something wrong with Wong Kar-wai's way of running a film project, because he's actually not just a director, he's playing the role of a producer. But the way he does projects is actually not suitable for the current operation mode of Chinese commercial films, especially most of the projects in mainland China are operated very quickly, scripts, actors, pre-preparation to shooting, mainly efficiency. But he still seems to be more accustomed to slow work.
LOOK: How to say it, you are right, but he was actually in the environment of Hong Kong movies at that time, his method, his way of working is also a little special. Because a very famous feature of Hong Kong movies is fast. That's how people worked. A lot of actors make seven or eight movies a year. Zheng Yuling was nicknamed "Zheng Jiu Group". Wong Kar-wai has been very slow since the beginning of "East Evil west poison". Too late to shoot, looking for Liu Zhenwei to shoot "East into West" to save the car. "2046" was too late, and I looked for Liu Zhenwei to shoot "Unparalleled in the World". "Blossoms" is far away from the start, so I looked for Zhang Jiajia to shoot "Ferryman".
East Evil and West Poison (1994)
He's always had this way of working, and there's one that I think may also have to do with the cultural environment, with his personal proclivities. His response to the whole era seemed to be getting more and more sluggish. I stumbled upon an interview the other day between Steven Delom, former editor-in-chief of The Film Handbook, and another film critic, Nicholas Elliott, in 2014. There's a saying in it, which roughly means that wong kar-wai and Terrance Malik's films are imitated by too many filmmakers.
This aspect of course proves the excellence of Wong Kar-wai and Malik's video language, but there is another point, in DeRom's view, that neither of them can respond to this era. They felt that Jarmusch was also a problem, and they could only keep going back to the eighties.
And Bella Tarr's long shots are just showing off. They believe that the movie that really matters about the moment is Carax's "Sacred Carriage", which cannot be copied, no one will imitate such a movie, but everyone will imitate Malik, imitate Wong Kar-wai. The latest Zhao Ting's "The Land of No One" proves this again.
The Divine Carriage (2012)
Kai Yin: Now the mainland audience is not the same as the Hong Kong audience in the 1980s and 1990s, and now the audience's taste has become more homogeneous. In the past, Hong Kong and Taiwan audiences still had subdivisions in terms of viewing tastes, including special commercial entertainment, but there were also those who liked B-grade films or Cult films. In the works of directors like Qiu Litao, Mai Dangxiong and Deng Yancheng, we can always see some special things, and the audience does not reject the super-outline things, and even enjoys seeing fresh content. But now the audience's taste is particularly single, it has actually become a filmmaker as long as it hits the audience's few stimulus points, the film will sell well.
Without them, no fancy is useless, such as "The Ferryman". So now, although the scale of the film is getting bigger and bigger, the actors are getting more and more expensive, and the production cost is getting higher and higher, in fact, the scope of things that everyone can accept is getting narrower and narrower. In this case, the slow work like Wong Kar-wai is farther and farther away from the prevailing business operation mode. Many of his projects were sensational when they were first proposed, but after a year or two there was no follow-up, the theme or the actors who were set are likely to be outdated.
In the golden age of Hong Kong movies, stars such as Chow Yun Fat and Andy Lau can dominate the market for 20 years and have always had box office appeal. But now the market is changing too fast, a star may have really had the appeal of hundreds of millions of box office two years ago, but in two years it may have declined very badly. So if the project says it works too slowly, the adaptability becomes particularly poor, and I think that may be a very important factor in the abortive of his project.
Blossoms (2021)
LOOK: Yes. Maybe he himself realized it, so he was more cautious when choosing the project, and finally chose the one he was most familiar with, or playing the Shanghai card, "Blossoms". There is also a clichéd problem, which is the problem of cultural environment. The mainland market, the mainland theme, for the director who is not in this cultural environment, is always a bit of a barrier, which also causes him to be very slow.
Kai Yin: For example, "The Ferryman", the overall structure, atmosphere and character status are very much hong Kong cinematic in the 1990s, and it may be very successful in Hong Kong in the 90s, but now the audience may be indifferent to it.
LOOK: "The Ferryman" is a feeling that "East Evil West Poison" and Zhang Jiajia are mixed together. I re-watched some of Wong Kar-wai's 1990s work the other day, and I wonder if your perception has changed? I actually changed a bit.
Kai Yin: My personal opinion is that director Wong Kar-wai's work, starting with "Carmen in Mong Kok", what he really wants to express, to "Fallen Angel" has been finished. No matter how famous the later works are, they are all repeating themselves, such as "Fancy Years" or...
LOOK: "Spring Breaks".
Kaiyin: There is also "Generation grandmaster", which is an internationally renowned work, and there are many tricks in the form, but he is essentially reproducing the same things.
LOOK: I've changed my perception quite a bit, I used to be fascinated by his form, and in Chinese films, Wong Kar-wai is also an enlightened director for my generation. "Carmen of Mong Kok" and "Fancy Years" have not been watched for many years, and this re-watch, including re-watching the fragment of "Generation Grandmaster", I feel that his core expression is really a little shallow. He used such an exaggerated, so complicated and gorgeous form, and the core feeling he wanted to express was always the emotional trauma of the urban petty bourgeois men and women.
Only "The Legend of Ah Fei" and "Chongqing Forest" are two that I think are different. This time re-watching "Fancy Years", what is the most attractive place for me? Wong Kar-wai himself talked about the disappearance of a way of life in an interview. But he made a lot of movements, and the final foothold and repeated expression were still the regret of emotional missing. "A Generation of Grandmasters" is also like this, to talk about the entire Republic of China martial arts, talk about inheritance, the final foothold is this. I felt a bit wasteful, spent so much effort, looked at so much material, and finally settled on this.
The Wonder Years (2000)
KaiYin: I remember wong Kar-wai filming an advertisement for Philips TV, which should have been shortly after the shooting of "Fancy Years" or "2046", and that advertisement was a little different from his previous image style, sci-fi style, especially gorgeous and dazzling. Wong Kar-wai's images in the 1990s have a texture that combines coarseness, flakiness and delicacy, which looks sloppy, but is actually very elaborate. But the ad is soothing, visually exquisite, and completely without an oriental atmosphere, very withdrawing and emotional, and the characters act like artificial intelligence.
That was probably the direction of some possible image style development after "Fancy Years". Because it is completely unrealistic, it has an attraction, which gives us a glimpse of his side that has not yet been fully expressed, a very abstract and extreme aesthetic side. But this direction also passed in such a flash, and he could not help but return to the expression of linking with Chinese identity, of course, there was also the unsuccessful attempt of "Blueberry Night", which was very vague.
Blueberry Night (2007)
LOOK: This may be a reason, and another, after all, he grew up in Hong Kong, has a very commercially conscious side, he knows that he is selling this thing, especially when "Fancy Time" is sold to that extent in the world, he feels that this emotional model is very valid for him in business, he can't give up this piece, so when he made "Generation Grandmaster", the emotional model of Ip Man and Gong Er directly copied Zhou Muyun and Su Lizhen.
Kaiyin: Even in the book "WKW", he did not explain in detail and clearly how his aesthetic choice transformation was completed, I guess he may have gone in a different direction after the filming of "Spring Break", and he finally chose to move from the image of the state of motion to a more subtle state.
Spring Breaks (1997)
LOOK: Relatively static.
Kaiyin: He also has different choices in terms of content, such as whether to continue to tell these stories of the Chinese, or to get rid of the identity problem to tell more international stories, and take another form that is not related to reality and national identity and cultural identity. I think he chose a relatively conservative direction at that point in time at the end of the 20th century. So with "Fancy Years", the impulse was replaced with static. I have written about "Iris" before, and I think "Fancy Years" is the end of Wong Kar-wai's film career. As soon as this film came out, it seemed that his creative career was over.
The second half of "Fancy Years" becomes like a video that uses a lot of slow motion, and it feels like he's actually trying to find a form to represent something that's actually a bit blank. Before "Fallen Angel", he was also talking about the emotional waves between people and people, but the audience can have a lot of space to feel outside the emotions, but in "Fancy Years", this space is locked, and the room for echoes becomes particularly small. After this, he was generally in a relatively closed state, and there was less and less room for white space in the work.
LOOK: One more thing, since Fallen Angel, he hasn't made contemporary Hong Kong. Some of his previous films, such a space, such a time, he has a direct reaction to it. After Fallen Angel, his own life began to change, and his son seemed to have been born in 1997, and he began to completely indulge in the nostalgic imagination of history. I think that once an artist falls into such a state, it seems that there is no way to express creatively.
In addition, I saw reports that "2046" started filming a little earlier than "Fantasia", and then the Asian financial crisis led to insufficient funds. The scale of "Fancy Years" is relatively small, so he finished filming "Fantasia" first. Later, "Fancy Years" became a mythical work around the world, and in all the film selections so far this century, it was Wong Kar-wai's "Fancy Years" and David Lynch's "Mulholland Road" that confronted the east and west works.
《2046》（2004）
And "2046" is a very failed work in terms of acceptance, when he went to the Cannes Film Festival, the global media exploded, and the final reception was actually a very large gap. He also made a very political gimmicky title. I think this very large gap also caused him to give up the sci-fi and abstract expression as you just said.
KaiYin: In "Carmen Mong Kok" and "The Legend of Ah Fei", we can see that Wong Kar-wai has a lot of potential to develop as a director, and there was a lot of creative imagination space for this person at that time, but when I saw "Fancy Years", I would feel that the potential in his previous films had disappeared. This is actually a pity, we can compare it with other directors, such as Godard.
Carmen Mong Kok (1988)
LOOK: Godard thought of it too.
Kaiyin: "Exhausted" makes us think that he really has a bright future, but when we see "Film Socialism", we will feel that the potential of the seventy-year-old is still unlimited. This is really a top film master, and after making movies for so many years, he still has potential to tap. He can keep moving forward, and a very important reason is that he has a rich multi-faceted inner mind to constantly express unique ways.
Socialist Cinema (2010)
In comparison, what Wong Kar-wai wants to express is relatively simple, filming "A Generation of Grandmasters", a kung fu film, when seeing the backs of Liang Chaowei and Zhang Ziyi walking down the street, that emotion is almost completely reproduced by the backs of Liang Chaowei and Maggie Cheung in "Fancy Years". He couldn't resist returning to a relatively single state. I think this may be a limitation of a director.
LOOK: In fact, I re-watched this time, and also watched the fragment of Godard's "Pierrot the Madman", and I found that the same is the expression of Wenqing's romance and Wenqing's funeral, this gap is still quite large, just take the lines to compare, Wong Kar-wai is a primary school student in front of Godard.
Pierrot the Mad (1965)
There is also a comparison point or an object for reference, that is, Zhang Ailing. Both are artists who grew up in a colonial environment, both love to depict the love affairs of men and women, and their works have very gorgeous and dazzling external forms, but the core expression is very different. In the mainland, I think that Zhang Ailing seems to have written those things, that is, those love affairs between men and women, but if you look carefully at Zhang Ailing's things, including the two novels that have not been published in the mainland, "Song of The Song" and "Love of the Red Land", her famous "Golden Lock", and the late masterpiece "Color Ring", you will see that Zhang Ailing has a very sharp expression, and its final foothold is not a love affair between men and women, and it will not stay in the sad state that never seems to be able to get out. Zhang has a very sharp, critical, and subversive expression of human nature, patriarchal society, Chinese history, society, and politics, but Wong Kar-wai really does not.
Color, Ring (2007)
KaiYin: But I have another view, Wong Kar-wai's works are not just about content, he has some aesthetic aspects of video...
LOOK: Repeat?
Kaiyin: No, he has some unique characteristics of the aesthetics of images. It's more impactful to me than the content. "Carmen of Mong Kok" adopts the technical means of drawing frames and stopping the printing, and the dynamic freshness of the form of the effect is far beyond the story content of his gangster. But in the same film, the way he portrays Maggie Cheung is completely static and emotional. Together, the two form a strong contrast in aesthetics, which is eye-catching. This formal charm transcends the scope of content and establishes Wong Kar-wai's personal style.
Later" "Ah Fei Zheng Biography", "East Evil and West Poison", "Chongqing Forest" are all forms first, and it has become the core of Wong Kar-wai's works. But in the later stage, when the formal means were exhausted, he began to repeatedly sculpt the content, spent a long time doing research, and spent a lot of energy to accumulate details, but still failed to fully activate the form, but led to an increasingly closed effect.
LOOK: "Carmen Mong Kok", my feeling is that the cannon hits the flies. The form gave me a huge impact. Specifically, the film's expression of space and time is very sensitive, and many scenes can make you feel this pure spatial structure and the passage of time. Among the Hong Kong movies of the same period, it must be extremely stunning. But those rotten plots of repeated entanglements between Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, and Wan Ziliang, portraying brotherhood as Qiong Yao's childish and ridiculous emotions, always want to jump out and interfere with me.
Andy Lau played the Hua brother in "Heavenly Love" for a while, and then seemed to become Zhou Muyun for a while, very divided. "The True Biography of Ah Fei" I think it is very well combined, and the thing he wants to talk about is seamless with his form.
The Legend of Ah Fei (1990)
Kaiyin: I think it's the best combination of films.
LOOK: It's still a bit to do with his creative approach. What he is more accustomed to is that when he arrives at a place, he thinks that this space is very good, or let Zhang Shuping transform this space, and after he has inspiration, the characters will automatically come out. It's space that creates characters, and then there's a plot. Instead of reversing it, having a story, having these characters, and then creating a space for the characters. Later, the filming of "Fancy Years" and "A Generation of Grandmasters" changed, he had to do a lot of fieldwork work, and the working methods changed. After the change, it became more and more screwed.
There is one place where I am particularly strange, in fact, when I first watched "A Generation of Grandmasters", my first feeling was like this, and I re-watched it this time. The fight at the beginning of the film is very much like a commercial, both visually and audibly (soundtrack), which feels like a commercial. I later checked the information and found that it was intentional.
The French photographer Philippe Le Sourd that Wong Kar-wai sought out specializes in actually shooting commercials. Later, Chinese photographer Song Xiaofei took over the film for a while, saying that an important reason for Wong Kar-wai's choice of him was that he had experience in advertising. In other words, Wong Kar-wai is looking for a person who shoots an advertisement to be the cinematographer of this film. I think it's a minus for his creation, and he overemphasizes the aesthetics.
I also saw an interview a while ago, when he was chatting privately with Jin Yucheng, he said you give me 100 photos, about the old house in Shikumen, Shanghai, I can find three photos in a few minutes, the most beautiful three. Jin Yucheng said that I can't do this, I am a writer, Wang Dao, after all, you are an image thinking. That is to say, Wong Kar-wai's strengthening of beauty in his bones has become more and more prominent, and this incident has led to his increasingly deformed expression.
Kaiyin: But I think it is also an interesting direction to emphasize the form to the extreme.
LOOK: Like the aristocratic slump films that Visconti made in his later years, Nazi Mania, Ludwig.
Kaiyin: In fact, the extreme form has a source in the film, the history of film can be traced back to the French film of the 20s, for example, when Abbey Gunns made "Napoleon", he already had this consciousness, content and form, can be separated to a certain extent, and even the content can serve the form, such as some fragments in "Napoleon", it seems that the content is not so important, but it repeatedly accelerates the form of movement, making people feel too impactful, and even sometimes the content is to serve the form.
Napoleon (1927)
Just like the Philips TV commercial just mentioned, the content is no longer important, he only cares about how the tone and sound of the picture are matched, forming a very extreme form of expression. But I think the problem is that he's going to repackage something that's already a cliché in this "good-looking" format, which is a very deadly point, like what we saw in "Fancy Years."
LOOK: There's no way to really get rid of content, right?
Kaiyin: Yes, and it is a particularly good look for mediocre content, like a box of toothpicks wrapped in a gorgeous outer packaging. I chose the wrapping paper for half a month, but in fact, I only wrapped a few toothpicks very carefully. This viewing effect is actually very deadly.
LOOK: At the beginning of "A Generation of Grandmasters", when the subtitles were first released, the soundtrack gave me the feeling that the epic sense was very strong, and the first scene of the positive film began, and the soundtrack gave me the feeling of how suddenly it became advertised.
Kaiyin: You can't hesitate to be extreme. Otherwise, make a standard commercial blockbuster, gorgeous appearance, package a complete dramatic story of ups and downs, like "Hero" and "Full of Golden Armor". But "Generation Grandmaster" actually allows the audience to see the gorgeous form, but it is distracted, trying to set off the fragmented content.
LOOK: When you said that, I suddenly thought of Hou Xiaoxian. According to your train of thought, Hou Xiaoxian is a very worthy object to refer to. In our opinion, Hou Xiaoxian's best work is actually taken after he has finished saying everything he really wants to say. The things of his own family and his youth were told in the eighties in "Childhood Memories", "The Man from the Wind Cabinet", and "Love wind and dust". The reflections on Taiwan's society, history, and politics have been completed in "City of Sorrows", "Drama Dream Life", and "Good Man and Good Woman". That is to say, in terms of content, after the most personal expression, Hou Xiaoxian's outbreak really began. "Goodbye Southland, Southland", "Flowers on the Sea", "Coffee Time", show the huge energy of the image, that is, the content has been completely thrown away.
Goodbye To the South, Goodbye to the South (1996)
I even think that Hou Xiaoxian's best work is "Coffee Time", which is the thinnest content in Hou Xiaoxian's film, almost no content, and it is a Japanese film, and the pure form of image tension is expressed to the extreme. This is actually quite interesting, when you have nothing to say, in fact, you can also take a very rich image.
Kai Yin: Wong Kar-wai may have gone the opposite path to some extent with Hou Xiaoxian, who in the 80s showed his story in a more realistic style, when he felt that he had finished telling these things... At the end of the eighties he read a lot of books and movies...
Coffee Time (2003)
LOOK: Not the late eighties, it was the early eighties. He watched a bunch of books and movies, before he made The Man from the Wind Cabinet. After reading it, the feeling and grasp of time, space, and viewpoint have undergone a qualitative change. This is somewhat similar to Wong Kar Wai. Great directors must be sensitive to time and space.
Kaiyin: Anyway, he had a big shift in style when he moved from the '80s to the '90s. He realized that he had finished talking about himself. So he turned to a very rather extreme new form, in fact, in order to adapt to the process of his creative ideas from "telling" to "depicting", his overall visual style, technical means, and editing ideas were changed in order to adapt to changes in form and method.
The Man from the Wind Cabinet (1983)
It is said that Hou Xiaoxian is a more persistent and stubborn person, but his creative ideas are very flexible, and he will use new forms to match new content to adapt to the renewal of his creative ideas. But Wong Kar-wai is actually constantly using new forms to package old content, whether the two can be matched, more and more become a question mark. In the end, it will become like what you just said, using a very gorgeous way to shoot advertisements, rigidly attached to an old content.
The use of actors
Kaiyin: I would also like to talk about Wong Kar-wai's use of actors. As far as Hong Kong films are concerned, one thing that is very special is that Hong Kong actors are particularly malleable, and to some extent much more malleable than mainland actors. This is probably because many Hong Kong film actors have not undergone a long period of specialized training.
LOOK: Not from a science class.
Kaiyin: This is particularly critical. Especially in the era of commercial film explosion in Hong Kong in the 1980s, a large number of actors appeared on the screen as entertainment stars. At that time, the atmosphere of the entertainment industry was that a star must become an all-rounder, singing, performing, hosting everything had to be good, a bit of a bully hard bow posture. It looks like a wild road, but in fact, it leaves a lot of room for people to develop their potential. Cheung Kwok-wing, Jacky Cheung, Aaron Kwok, etc. were all originally born in singing, but they all later became very expressive film actors.
Many of Wong Kar-wai's finishing touches on actors come from the untapped performance potential of these people. For example, Zhang Guorong's first film emperor-level performance appeared in "The Legend of Ah Fei", Liang Chaowei was one of the most popular young students throughout the 1980s, but he used his own words to open the first performance, which also appeared at the end of "Ah Fei Zheng Biography".
The training of Hong Kong actors is largely in the apprentice-style model of the set master, only the basic skills are honed, but there is no theoretical indoctrination. This is completely different from the actor training system in the mainland. It has led to Hong Kong actors retaining a lot of ontological intuition that can be tapped. Wong Kar-wai's ability is that as long as he realizes that this actor has enough talent and ability, he can always come up with ways to find this potential in the shaping of the situation in the shooting.
Just like Li Jiaxin, an actor who is considered to be a very vase, when he arrives in "Fallen Angel", he has a new look and a performance that goes straight to the heart, which is inseparable from Wong Kar-wai's vision of performance potential, and it is also very related to the Hong Kong actors who do not have too many constraints, only the performance program but weaken the performance habits. This feature cannot be replicated on the mainland.
Fallen Angel (1995)
But after 2000, more and more actors in Wong Kar Wai's films came from classes, and many of them carried the habit of academic methods that could not be erased. They have undergone rigorous training in school, molting layer by layer, completely removing their amateurism, and everyone wants to become "Teacher Chen Daoming".
When Wong Kar-wai's lens is aimed at these people, you will find that although they are skilled in acting, the potential part is gone, he/she is a very skilled actor, very accurate to meet the requirements of the script dramatization, even more than the script requires, but it becomes particularly difficult to discover some subconscious level. This is actually a by-product of the mainland film industry becoming stronger.
But for Wong Kar-wai, his cameras gradually began to fail to capture the intuitive performance parts that were really very good for him. He also doesn't use unnamed actors. It will not be like Zhou Xingchi, who every few years will bring out a new person who no one has ever seen. So the actor problem also forms an obstacle for Wong Kar-wai.
LOOK: I think Wong Kar-wai's use of actors is an integral part of the overall cinematic feel of his films. This is related to his sensitivity to time and space.
I personally find it difficult to watch Chinese films before the 1980s, and one of the reasons is that I think the performances of these actors, whether they are Taiwanese actors, Hong Kong actors, or mainland actors, are supported by a crutch, and this crutch is opera. The performance of opera and film are only established under very special conditions if they are compatible. In a realistic space, the ideographic, symbolic and stylistic expression of opera performance will have serious negative effects.
In Chinese films before the 1980s, I felt that the performance of the actors had always been supported by this crutch. After the 1980s, the two sides of the strait and the three places began to change slowly. But this side of the mainland is a little different, after throwing off the crutch of opera, there is another drama crutch, Stanilawsky and so on. After the 1980s, Hong Kong films experienced the New Wave movement, and the traditional vertically integrated blockbuster production collapsed, and the state of the actors was completely different.
Zhang Guorong, Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, Chow Sing Chi, these actors, they are not from the Shaw system, there is no very strict foundation of class training, and there is no opera baggage. In the same period, the older ones, Zhao Yazhi, Zheng Shaoqiu, and Dillon still existed, but these actors were completely absent. In addition, Wong Kar-wai has commercial considerations, he makes any movie, the use of actors has an important premise, he must use stars. But when he transforms these stars, the method he uses is very cinematic, he is not throwing an actor into an unfamiliar environment to experience life for a while. He is changing his shape, putting the actor in a different space, in a different shape, trying to consider what kind of physical possibilities the actor can show.
For example, if there is a script, the director's usual creative method is actually to translate the script. For the actor, there is a preset role, and the actor translates this role, reproducible. But Wong Kar-wai is not this line of thinking. That's not how he thinks. It's not that there's a role, whether the actor can play it or not, it's not like that. Because no matter how well you act again, you will also act. It's about whether you, the actor, try this or not, try that, and there's no preset base for you to refer to.
In this way, you will accidentally discover a side of the actor himself that has never flashed. The most typical example, I think, is not Zhang Guorong, but Lin Qingxia. In my opinion, the best performance of Lin Qingxia's acting career is still after she met Wong Kar-wai in the late stage, and the roles she played before, I think it is very beautiful, only beautiful, there is nothing special that can move people. Lin Qingxia even had the opportunity to use her own acoustic performances until she worked with Wong Kar-wai in the late stages.
In "Chongqing Forest", she really has a sense of amazement, and she is a very three-dimensional character. So how did Wong Kar-wai transform her? An important trick is to constantly try various styles, and later after she tried the blonde style of the heroine in Casawitz's "Female Glory", the role was immediately established. Lin Qingxia herself also said that Zhang Shuping's transformation ability is very strong.
Playing Tan Jiaming's "Love to Kill", Zhang Shuping did not let her wear a bra, and she resisted at first. But after trying it later, the feeling from the inside out was completely different. Even farther away, Aaron Kwok's later sudden outbreak was also because of Zhang Shuping's change in his style. The traditional experiential lifestyle isn't the only way.
Love to Kill (1981)
Wong Kar-wai probably uses such a method to use actors, so you see he will not use an actor like Huang Qiusheng. Because Huang Qiusheng has received strict class training, he has his own set of methods. Liang Jiahui acted in "East Evil and West Poison", and later he did not use it. Wong Kar-wai still takes into account the physical state of the entire actor, the state presented in the image, rather than the so-called acting skills, which is also a bit similar to Hitchcock. Hitchcock particularly hated the Methodists.
Kai Yin: Wong Qiu Sheng and Leung Ka Fai are both methods of Hong Kong film actors. Many times it is not the true color, but they can play any role.
LOOK: Right. Liang Chaowei is also very representative. Liang Chaowei has a characteristic, which is rare among Chinese actors, especially mainland actors, and he has a particularly strong ability, that is, his expressiveness in close-up shots. He is extremely good at the natural expression of subtle facial expressions. This is actually very important for film actors, and it can also be said to be cinematic.
For an actor like Huang Qiusheng, he may not pay much attention to this. In fact, Maggie Cheung's ability is also very strong, and the end of Chen Kexin's "Sweet Honey", her facial expression is like a flower slowly blooming process, which is a classic scene in the history of Chinese film. So I think Wong Kar-wai's film talent is really very good, his sense of time, his sense of space, the use of actors is very holistic, not a few of the elements, just a few elements, his understanding and grasp of the film is very holistic.
Sweet Honey (1996)
Kaiyin: But after entering the 21st century, the room for finding such an actor is getting smaller and smaller. Actors who can have both great commercial appeal and talent for intuitive performances are rare.
From these aspects, the way Wong Kar-wai's films are produced and created is decoupled from the current operating mode of the entire Chinese film industry. In the 1990s, when he filmed "Carmen in Mong Kok", "East Evil and West Poison", and "Ah Fei Zheng Biography", although his shooting method was also very special and very debascular, forever overspending or not completing on time, it still conformed to the personality of Winning in the chaos of Hong Kong films as a whole.
But now the mainland film industry operates in a completely different way, and the actors are all from the class, and the performance is very mechanical and rigid. And today's big-name actors simply can't be with a director and a crew 365 days a year. A project that can give you three or four weeks is already very face-saving. In this state, Wong Kar-wai's old production operation model is unlikely to be too harmonious with the general environment.
Influence in the West
Kai Yin: Wong Kar-wai's influence in the Western film industry is also worth talking about.
LOOK: Do you think Wong Kar-wai has been exaggerated? His peak was in the nineties, the famous British "Sight and Hearing" magazine, the first few issues of 2000 I forgot, anyway, a certain issue in 2000, the cover is Wong Kar-wai, the title is Wong Kar-wai defined the nineties, just such a title, "Sight and Listen" such a top film magazine, just such a title, is equivalent to saying that it is the top halo, the top film author. Then there was the Cannes Film Festival that year, so much sacrifice he could make.
The interview record "WKW" I read the experience, Wong Kar-wai has a ability is indeed the top level of Chinese directors, anyway, in my scope of coverage there is no second Chinese director can match him. This is Wong Kar-wai's reserve of knowledge about Western film culture and Western film.
This point "WKW" made a deep impression on me, as well as the various interviews he did for the North American promotion of "Generation Grandmaster", the dialogue with Western film critics, and the conversation with Scorsese, I felt that he was the author of the entire Western film history, all kinds of film history, similar to why Orson Wells made "The Best of the Past", it is simply a number of family treasures, hand in hand.
Then there is Wong Kar-wai's highly formal style, which is relatively easy for Westerners to understand. He photographed urban life again, which is different from the national fables of the fifth generation in the interior. A love movie like "Chongqing Forest", which seems to have been made badly for Westerners, can actually be rejuvenated with a unique face.
Tarantino watched "Chongqing Forest" completely fascinated. Even The super poisonous Tongue Levitte could not say anything bad about Wong Kar-wai, expressing his love for "Spring Break", but instead blackened Hou Xiaoxian's "Goodbye to the Southern Kingdom, Southern Kingdom".
Kai Yin: I think that before "Fancy Years", thanks to Quentin Tarantino's admiration for "Chongqing Forest" at the Cannes Film Festival, it has always been Western film professionals, veteran film critics and fans who prefer Wong Kar-wai, but he was actually relatively niche at that time. What really popularized the name Wong Kar-wai to the general audience in the West was "Fancy Years".
Before "Fancy Years", the average Western audience looked at China, and there were several different models, one was martial arts films and kung fu films, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan models; the other was art films and independent film art films, the fifth and sixth generations, there were many audiences in Europe. Neither model is romantic.
LOOK: I think they like the fifth and sixth generations and the Cold War imagination, more for political reasons. This is not the same as their mentality of liking Jackie Chan.
Kaiyin: Until "Fancy Years", no one really showed the more subtle, gentle and cultured side of Chinese culture in the movie. Just like the impression left by ancient Chinese poetry, classic literary works, paintings and calligraphy on the middle class intellectuals in the West. There's actually a sense of separation. For example, when a Western cultural person looks at literati paintings, he will definitely feel that the latter's style is neither like Jackie Chan, nor like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.
But before Jackie Chan and Zhang Yimou, Westerners had a partly impression of China like this, and probably quite mainstream. Especially in many classic Hollywood movies of the forty or fifty, Chinese elements like this are very popular, and often a Western female star appears on the screen wearing a cheongsam.
LOOK: Just like Yellow Willow Cream, right?
Kaiyin: Right. Or the imagination of the East like in "Sussie's Yellow World". But this intention disappeared in Western cinema long after the sixties. But as soon as "Fancy Time" came out, many viewers immediately found this initial impression of China.
The World of Sussie Yellow (1960)
LOOK: Actually, I think it satisfies the Eastern imagination of western middle-class audiences. There is definitely a distinction between people who watch Jackie Chan and Chen Kaige movies and those who watch Wong Kar Wai movies.
Kaiyin: This is the most important factor in the success of "Fancy Years". In a way, it's an element outside of the movie. Wong Kar-wai spent a lot of thought on this, he may have communicated with Westerners throughout the 90s, and he is more familiar with the history of Western films, especially the Chinese elements in classic Western movies, such as female stars wearing cheongsam.
LOOK: Maggie Cheung changed twenty-six sets of cheongsam.
Kaiyin: I'm talking about the cheongsam and other Chinese elements in Hollywood movies, such as Hitchcock's Ecstasy that I particularly remember...
LOOK: Yes, there's a lot of Chinese imagination in it, including the pattern on the balcony railing, and a lot of Chinese red, the screen. Hitchcock uses Chinese elements in this film to highlight the mysterious atmosphere, and Kim Novak is even more fascinated and dizzy under the packaging of mysterious Chinese elements.
Ecstasy (1958)
Kaiyin: Yes, after watching too many Hollywood movies, I think this element is quite common, so as a Western audience, they are probably very familiar with these elements, but they disappeared for a long time. Wong Kar-wai's grasp of this western imagination of the East is very accurate, and he consciously put a lot of effort into deliberately symbolizing these elements.
LOOK: Encoding.
Kaiyin: He has a particularly strong sense of symbolizing these oriental elements, including hairstyles, the way he walks, the tableware he uses, etc. In a way, "Fancy Years" is actually a film stacked up by a large number of Oriental symbolic elements in the Western imagination. This has had a big impact on the general Western audience, especially the middle-class educated audience, who may not know china that well, but have a strong curiosity.
This was the decisive factor in the success of Fantasia in the West. Secondly, the overall story structure, visual design, and soundtrack are all in line with the appreciation habits of Westerners. The combination of all these things, combined with the content of the symbolic elements of Orientalism, is what really made Wong Kar-wai popular in the West.
LOOK: Obscure, roundabout, indirect expression, unlike Wong Kar-wai's previous films. For example, when he photographed Maggie Zhang and found that her husband and the female neighbor had secretly had an affair, she went to find the female neighbor next door, and when the female neighbor threw the door, she went home and cried. That scene was shot with a particularly vague sense of obscurity, and in the depths of the camera, he patted the part above the shoulder. The sound of bath water was also used to mask the crying. Then there is the relationship between people, the tacit feeling. Even the other two men and women who stole love did not have a single shot. It's all off-screen shots, or sound displays.
In addition, "Fancy Years" is also expressed in terms of ideology, but it is also a bit indirect. The film has a meaning that the way of life of these Shanghai remnants in Hong Kong no longer exists, and the object of nostalgia is a way of life. This symbolism is stronger.
Especially considering the era when the film was released. But Wong Kar-wai's handling of this meaning is more obscure, and he does not go straight to the ground like "Spring Breaks". He ended with a clip of de Gaulle's visit to Cambodia, and then borrowed Pan Dihua's lament for Maggie Cheung to express his intention to move to the United States and leave Hong Kong, indirectly expressing the meaning of the end of the colonial era.
Kai Yin: "Fancy Years" may be a relatively closed idea for Wong Kar-wai himself, but at the same time he has left a lot of attention for audiences from different countries and different classes. No matter what country or culture you come from, you can find points of interest in this film. "Fancy Years" is actually the best he did in market research and the best grasp of the target market.
LOOK: Yes, the Chinese films of 2000 were really special. Going farther away, I think that since the film spread to China, Chinese film has not been a good environment, how can I say something else? But the environment first doesn't allow you to play. That is, in the 1980s and 1990s, this small twenty years, Chinese filmmakers had such a time and space condition, relatively free to shoot. By the end of the nineties, this condition was gone.
Moreover, we can first put aside our personal preferences for these films, which have been talked about by Chinese film fans since 2000. "Fancy Years", "One Eleven", "Here Comes the Devil", and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", right? Four films exploded in Cannes that year. Later, "Fancy Years" swept the global art film market, and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" swept the global mass market. But it's a little sad that these four films have a common feature, and none of them think much about the Chinese market. When Yang Dechang filmed "Yiyi", he did not consider the Taiwan market at all, and the film was not released in Taiwan later. He targets the European and Japanese art film markets.
One One (2000)
The same is true of Wong Kar-wai, because he cannot rely on a Hong Kong market or a lost Southeast Asian market to recover the cost of such an art film as "Fancy Years", which is impossible. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", 15 million US dollars of investment, the mainland market has not been opened, Ang Lee must have focused on the overseas market.
Of course, "The Devil is Coming" is another thing, a bit complicated, but Jiang Wen at least did not compromise for the integrity of the expression of the work, and finally gave up the mainland market. You just said that wong Kar-wai did the market research, I don't think we are fooling around, because the situation of the entire film industry at that time determined that he had to do it.
Here Comes the Devil (2000)
Kaiyin: The film industry has come to this moment, and the focus of everyone's eyes has invariably been placed abroad.
LOOK: I remember that public opinion in Taiwan was very turbulent at that time, and Yang Dechang gave up the Golden Horse Awards to participate in the European Film Awards. At that time, these top directors basically really focused on the overseas market, and the fifth generation was also the case. At that time, the entire Chinese film industry was already on the verge of collapse.
Kaiyin: In this case, the last of these four films to prove that the strategy is the most effective is "Fancy Years". "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" box office is good, he did not make Ang Lee the darling of the world film industry, many Western filmmakers will say that my favorite is Wong Kar-wai, but few Western film researchers and professionals say that my favorite is Ang Lee.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
LOOK: Because one is the market for commercial films, the other is the market for art films, and the right to speak is still in these great authors and directors, and Ang Lee is still a Hollywood director for them.
Kai Yin: "Fancy Years" successfully established a reputation for Wong Kar-wai that did not fall for 20 years. Going to any film school or film department in the West, you will meet many people who say that I want to become the next Wong Kar Wai, and everyone from students to teachers will feel that Wong Kar Wai is a god. "I must make a Wong Kar Wai-esque movie", but few Westerners say , "I want to make an Ang Lee movie." In a way, Wong Kar-wai's audiovisual symbols communicate more effectively with Westerners, and are more useful than Ang Lee's large-scale explanation of Buddhist Andi Confucianism in the film.
LOOK: At the beginning, I was really encouraged, and for the Chinese, it seems to be honored. Sophia Coppola won the Oscar for "Lost in Tokyo," and she thanked Wong Kar-wai directly at the Oscars. I have watched various interviews myself, and I feel that the two Chinese directors who are most appreciated by Western filmmakers are Wong Kar-wai and Hou Xiaoxian. Others really rarely hear it, and Cai Liangming occasionally has some.
Lost in Tokyo (2003)
Kaiyin: It's also a very interesting phenomenon, Ang Lee has achieved such a great commercial success in Hollywood industry, and everyone in the West thinks he is very good, but no one says to follow his example.
LOOK: It is the Great Author defined by the French, the Great Scene Scheduler that Levitte said, and the great author who has the ability to arrange scenes, otherwise you are not a great author. Just look at a scene from your movie, it's wong kar-wai! But if you look at Ang Lee's movie, you can't tell that this scene was made by Ang Lee, right? Wong Kar-wai You can see it when you look at a shot, "Carmen Mong Kok", the opening of such a commercial movie, the first shot, the left side of the picture is the sidewalk with subtitles, the right is the image of the flowing clouds, and this deceased image continues to appear in the movie behind Wong Kar-wai.
You just said stop and add seals, and people's movements suddenly slow down. People in the foreground are very slow to move or not, and things in the background are passing through quickly, very Wong Kar Wai. There are also the kind of literary and mournful, ancient dragon-flavored lines, which are perfectly in line with the Definition of Great Authors by French Filmmakers. Ang Lee is a Hollywood director no matter what he looks at.
Kaiyin: But on the other hand, in the category of Chinese films, there are many people who take Ang Lee as an example.
LOOK: Ang Lee is a success learner, the American Dream, won't wong Kar-wai right? It depends on what kind of person you want to be, what kind of director you want to become.