Wong Kar-wai First Draft

Complete first draft written for Hyperallergic.

Film at Lincoln Center’s virtual retrospective “World of Wong Kar-wai” offers the opportunity not only to see every feature film by one of the greatest directors who ever lived, many in new restorations, but also to shine some light on some of his lesser-seen works. While I will be the first to claim In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express as epochal masterpieces, they have received a surfeit of the attention, and every single one of his movies —even his much-maligned American effort My Blueberry Nights — is essential. To help elucidate this point, here are some further notes on six of the other eight films; I hasten to say that Fallen Angels and Happy Together are just as vital as any of the films listed. Wong’s 1988 debut, As Tears Go By, has often been compared to Mean Streets in its depiction of a gangster (Andy Lau) trying to protect his hot-headed friend (Jacky Cheung), but it bears even more resemblance to the waning crop of Triad films that formed a large part of the Hong Kong New Wave up to that point. In many ways, it is located precisely at a transitional point, equal parts governed by heroic bloodshed melodrama and a hazy, innocent hope embodied by Maggie Cheung. Two years later, Wong produced his first masterwork with Days of Being Wild, tracking the lives of numerous young people and their romantic entanglements and capricious whims, played by a who’s who of great Hong Kong actors, including all three main actors from Tears, Leslie Cheung, and Carina Lau. It is perhaps his most piercing film, overflowing with accumulating loneliness, and it has perhaps the greatest, most mysterious cameo in film history to cap things off. Another era-ending statement came in the form of 1994’s Ashes of Time, presented here in the Redux version that Wong supervised in 2008. A marvel in any form, it reshapes the codes of the wuxia film into a loose collection of stories and fragments, each haunted by past memories. Though its far-flung setting and overt generic framework set it apart from other Wong films, it retains much of the languorous atmosphere, and in the Redux version features some of the most eye-searingly vivid colors ever captured. One of Wong’s most underseen efforts is The Hand, his contribution to the 2003 triptych film Eros, which also featured films by Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. Presented here in an extended cut running just less than an hour, it is a pas de deux between Chang Chen and Gong Li as a novice tailor and his client. His most forthrightly erotic work, it derives much of its power from a sharp condensation of the years that pass, passing by with even more force than usual. That sense of slippery, uncertain time is in full effect in 2004’s 2046, quite possibly Wong’s most ambitious film, acting as both a sequel to In the Mood for Love, following a series of affairs that Chow (Tony Leung) undergoes, and a quasi-science-fiction tale set on a futuristic train. Even more than most Wongs, it is a film of profound aching and messiness, of unexpected and indelible memories and glorious pain. Wong’s last film to date, The Grandmaster from 2013, was mutilated by The Weinstein Company upon its release, but is presented here in its Hong Kong theatrical cut. Another wholly idiosyncratic wuxia film, it refracts the story of Bruce Lee’s teacher Ip Man through the shifting eras in which he lived, crossing paths with other equally great kung fu practitioners, including Zhang Ziyi in one of her greatest performances.