Wong Kar-Wai
Tuesday, February 5Globalization may rapidly make us more clever. Nobody has proven this more ipressively than Chinese film director Wong Kar-Wai. His Hongkong metropolis epic «Chungking Express» was a remake of the novelle vague; yet more elaborate, liverlier, more vital than anything shown in the Europe of the 1990's. His gangster movie «Fallen Angels» was the perfect sublimation of the asian brutalo genre, a laconic poem. His love romantic movie «Happy Together» traced the story of a gay amour fou in Argentina so precisely that even a heterosexual was unable to break free from its spell. No wonder Wong Kar-Wai ultimately took the world by storm with «In the Mood for Love», the most perfect video clip in movie history.
However, globalization may terribly plumpen us. The free flows of trade of codes and traditions end in caricatures and clichés. «I intended to shoot a true American movie», Wong Kar-Wai says in his interview on his latest work «My Blueberry Nights» in Paris. As usual, he wears pitch-black sunglasses, and he looks a bit like a rock star from the 1970s. The romantic movie, starring Norah Jones and Jude Law, is the first Wong Kar-Wai that was shot in English. «It is an homage to the pieces of Tennessee Williams, to the movies of John Cassavetes, and to the painting of Edward Hopper», the producer says. That is also how the film came out: an excessively baggaged American Pie made of sentimentalities, wordy dialogs, and expectable Roadmovie-mismatches.
«In ‹Chungking Express› the story is about a takeaway», Wong points out. «My movies could be set everywhere in the world.» Wong Kar-Wai has a point in there. Also, his movies are grasped everywhere over the world. Though only if he sticks to his own, aesthetic language.
However, globalization may terribly plumpen us. The free flows of trade of codes and traditions end in caricatures and clichés. «I intended to shoot a true American movie», Wong Kar-Wai says in his interview on his latest work «My Blueberry Nights» in Paris. As usual, he wears pitch-black sunglasses, and he looks a bit like a rock star from the 1970s. The romantic movie, starring Norah Jones and Jude Law, is the first Wong Kar-Wai that was shot in English. «It is an homage to the pieces of Tennessee Williams, to the movies of John Cassavetes, and to the painting of Edward Hopper», the producer says. That is also how the film came out: an excessively baggaged American Pie made of sentimentalities, wordy dialogs, and expectable Roadmovie-mismatches.
«In ‹Chungking Express› the story is about a takeaway», Wong points out. «My movies could be set everywhere in the world.» Wong Kar-Wai has a point in there. Also, his movies are grasped everywhere over the world. Though only if he sticks to his own, aesthetic language.
