If the sky is affectionate, it is also old.
Based on a short film shot in Hong Kong in his early years, Blueberry Night is wong kar-wai's first English-language film, the opening film of the 60th Cannes Film Festival, and the first opening film directed by a Chinese. Co-starring Nora Jones, Jude Lowe and Natalie Portman.
The film was first screened at the Festival de Cannes on 16 May 2007. The film is mainly about Nora Jones, a young girl who loves blueberry Pi, who meets many different people on a journey across the United States, tries to find the true meaning of life and love, and unknowingly falls in love with the coffee shop owner played by Jude Lowe.
"Blueberry Night" with a typical Wong Kar-wai style, to achieve the combination of Chinese and Western culture, on the one hand, the appearance of Western culture, exists on the surface, but its deep connotation is still the implicit meaning of the East, in the processing of love stories appear to be very subtle, this movie will make Wong Kar-wai truly placed in the Western urban story, so that the imported products truly become "authentic" with a personal style of image products.
Overall, "Blueberry Night" is divided into three stages, the purpose of the first two paragraphs is to create a tragic love-hate separation, and the third paragraph is a sublimation based on the first two paragraphs, which is the true love feeling of returning to the teenager.
The three stories of "Blueberry Night" are rooted in a large number of enclosed spaces, starting from the male protagonist's coffee shop, which has deliberately shown the street scene outside through the window separation, but the perspective has never left the small shop, so we can think of it this way: this is a private "public space", and the collision of private and public constitutes this interesting category.
On the one hand, a café is a public space that is open for business, pick-up, or work. But on the other hand, this is also a real private world, a microcosm of the male protagonist's inner world, this café is a private area controlled by him, it carries the persistent waiting in love, and the real meaning it has is more embodied in the spirit.
At the beginning of the film, when the two men and women communicate, the third-person perspective of the audience is still isolated by the window, which represents a transparent "estrangement", which naturally presents Wong Kar-wai's typical sense of estrangement, and also hints at a necessary process of going out of the private space and loving others.
In the second and third paragraphs, the bar, restaurant, and casino where the heroine Beth works are still like this, they are all confined spaces, and in these closed environments, people in similar situations intersect with each other's love stories and personal lives, integrate into each other, and become each other's comfort. This also reflects another meaning of these enclosed spaces: to provide a place of comfort for "the same fallen people at the end of the world".
There is an enclosed space, and naturally there will be outdoor scenes, but in "Blueberry Night", the outdoor scenes only appear briefly in the third story, and this treatment may represent the existence of love.
One way is the infinite intimacy between couples, constructing a closed space where only two people exist, they are bound to each other and live in this narrow range, for them, the outdoor expanse does not seem to be able to meet the viscosity and intimate tone of love, the sense of distance will tear this intimacy, and being outside will make the two people thousands of miles apart.
But correspondingly, the second way of interpretation can also be extended, as su lin, the wife of the policeman in the film, said: "Who would have thought that we were married?" Fall in love with a cop and get stuck in this sacred town. ”
For another kind of person, this constant bondage becomes a pressure and a bondage, limiting their personal freedom, the more tight the bondage will make them want to escape, this way seems to be more in line with the current situation of love, one clings to it, one craves the sun, and eventually leads to the collapse of love, and everyone is scaled.
Wong Kar-wai's films have never been indispensable to the existence of symbols, in this "Blueberry Night", blueberry pi and key are the two most prominent symbols, blueberry pi actually refers to the heroine herself, just like the male protagonist's evaluation of the blueberry pie: it has no reason to be ignored by people, in fact, it is not a matter of taste, but did not meet people who really understand its taste, but some people will look at it, never leave or give up, which is actually a shallow film tone that reflects Wong Kar-wai's personal thoughts.
The key refers to the love story of everyone, on this few centimeters of the object, carrying the emotions of countless people, initially is constantly asking, questioning, the key as a good medicine to save love, the middle is hesitant, still unwilling to give up, in the end, everything is relieved, the key is just the key, forgotten, has become a symbol of past love.
Just as the train in the film acts as an image of time flying by, in Blueberry Night, the object is given a different meaning, so that it is no longer a mere object.
In general, "Blueberry Night" inherits Wong Kar-wai's aesthetic style as always: the lens after the media gap, the dim lighting, the shaking picture, the confused breath and the sense of alienation between people, to achieve the optimal aesthetic solution, to split a simple story narrative, expand the narrative space, the feelings between the two have both tacit understanding and point to the end, in line with the Oriental view of love.
But that's not enough, the story of Blueberry Night is too weak and monotonous, and it inevitably infects a "chicken soup smell", making its little bourgeois smell too strong.
Wanton story fragmentation is not the basis of literary and artistic films, perhaps the audience at this stage has learned to accept a more plain and natural exploration of deep love, and their limited time and acceptance will inevitably require directors to reduce deliberate twists and turns, no longer gold and jade, monotonous.