Wong Kar Wai
Wong Kar Wai is one of cinema’s greatest romantics. His films are intuitive, freeform works that aren’t screenwritten but invented and improvised as they go. When production starts, no-one except Wong knows where things will head, and, , even surprises . pictures the same tendencies: his fragmented narratives filled with thwarted desire and broken hearts, full of lonely, lovelorn dreamers, pining away nights in neon-lit Hong Kong, confessing their deepest feelings only to a complicit audience via voiceover. Wong understands that memorable cinematic romance doesn’t come from people getting together, but remaining apart – no love burning so bright, and burrowing so deep, as unrequited love.
From his striking second feature, Days of Being Wild (1990), through his international breakouts Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995); his queer classic Happy Together (1997); his acclaimed masterpiece In the Mood for Love (2000) and its spiritual sequel, 2046 (2004); and his unfairly maligned English-language feature My Blueberry Nights (2007), the filmmaker – often in league with Australian-born cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and editor, production designer and costume designer William Chang Suk Ping – has forged an impressionistic, singular visual style. Wong’s films look as romantic as their sentiments: all saturated colours, evocative blur, intuitive camerawork, slow motion and varying rates of exposure, combining to create an air of melancholy hanging as thick as fog, sadness flickering in every grain of celluloid. Even his exercises in genre – his gangster-flick debut As Tears Go By (1988); his wuxia epics Ashes of Time (1994) and The Grandmaster (2013) – are shot through with a lingering sadness, less about their fight sequences than the broken hearts of their violent protagonists.
Wong was born in Shanghai in 1958. He left for Hong Kong with his mother when he was five, with the plan that the rest of the family (his father and older siblings) would soon follow. But the arrival of the Cultural Revolution meant the closing of the border between Hong Kong and mainland China, stranding Wong with his mother. He characterises his childhood as one of loneliness and isolation: ‘I didn’t understand Cantonese, and we didn’t have any relatives,’ Wong recounts. ‘I became like an observer.’1 In an attempt to counter that loneliness, Wong’s mother would take him to the cinema. ‘The only hobby I had as a child was watching movies,’ he says.2
Having grown up watching films, Wong studied graphic design, then cut his teeth working in TV production. He progressed from writing soap operas and cop shows to genre movies, before getting the opportunity to make his debut feature. As Tears Go By was made to capitalise on the popularity of gangster movies in Hong Kong, but it betrayed the hints of Wong’s future auteurist trademarks: lingering melancholy, expressive visuals, a story big on atmosphere but short on regular plot beats. It was a personal riff on genre, setting the tenor for his career. ‘I’m not coming from film school, I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity [… like] what if I make a film in this genre?’ Wong offers.3
marked Wong’s first collaboration with Maggie Cheung, whom he’d later direct in , , and . As far as leading men go, Wong’s career has been one ongoing collaboration with Tony Leung Chiu Wai, who’s starred in , , , , , and . Working with the same collaborators both in front of and behind the camera, exploring common themes, and employing his wild visual style, Wong makes movies that all feel part of the one artistic continuum. This singularity has made Wong one of the most adored of auteurs – the filmmaker feted not just for his greatness, but for the sumptuous, swooning romanticism of his sustained cinematic world.
