Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express (1996) immerses us in the middle of a chaotic, confusing and an unclear environment, reflecting a certain social and political turning point that was about to hit the nation in a couple of years.
Timing is everything. Not exactly. Or better put, not just that It's space as well. Even though, time is space - "in a way" - what I mean is this: space affects us in all sort of directions. We do not live in absolute void where emotions and information exist autonomously or disconnected from the context, rather we, as complicated creatures as ever, are deeply affected by context. Buildings, rivers, traffic, people, fences, pets, lights....film, music, books....food, bars, wine, cigarettes, laptops....and of course POLITICS, ECONOMY...everything is intertwined together presenting us a hidden sexual relationship with one another...or with each other.
Why am I writing this? To put it simply, the movie Chungking Express (1996), directed by Wong Kar-Wai, illustrates what I said more or less. Throughout the film, we are immersed in the middle of a chaotic, confusing and an unclear environment, reflecting a certain social and political turning point that was about to hit the nation in a couple of years. Through the film’s fractures images, the characters and the physical settings, I tend to clarify and analyze Wong’s intention when he said in an interview “It’s a movie about Hong Kong. It reflects the way people felt at that time”.
Hong Kong & Cinema
Hong Kong has always been a space of continuous transience, a temporary place for residents to live in, more or less like a major port, and a typical blend of immigration from other surrounding countries, e.g. Mainland China, Taiwan and Philippines. This momentarily condition has had a direct impact on the film industry in Hong Kong, becoming a center of interest to “other nations” more than to Hong Kong citizens themselves. Starting from the 1980s, Hong Kong’s film industry took on a new form, known as the modern new wave, i.e. cinema made specifically for Hong Kong local citizens. A group of filmmakers pioneered this era, including Stanley Kwan, Ann Hui, Tsui Hark and later the critically acclaimed Wong Kar-wai, whose films address Hong Kong, not just as a place to live in, but as a state that is deeply connected to its residents, calling it “home”. This new cinema began exuberantly showing the spaces of Hong Kong as home for the first time. These images became an important part of Hong Kong’s cinema, and continued to be.
At midnight on July 1st 1997, Hong Kong returns to Mainland Chinese rule after being a British colony for 156 years. Hong Kong is a nation without a past, which indicates the absence of a British identity beneath its façade, as well as the absence of a Chinese identity after the handover process. Instead, Hong Kong finds itself in a state of “temporal narrative” between both nationalities, which defines the transition framework in which Hong Kong is going. According to the book Hong Kong: Culture and the politics of disappearance, there existed unclear connections between imperialism and globalism, which is how colonialism in Hong Kong must now be considered.
Wong was among the new wave filmmakers who emerged in the late 1980s in an attempt to establish and maintain a unified identity for Hong Kong and its citizens via narrative stories. Film Critic Roger Ebert describes him as an art director who takes fractured elements of crisscrossing stories and runs them through the blender of pop culture.
Chungking Express & The Context
The film is a tour experience through the chaotic cosmopolitan nation, shifting every now and then from manic noir to absurdist comedy. Wong claimed that it is not just the love story theme is what connects the two independent stories together, but also the idea that a lot of city people cannot find people to express their emotions to. This is the core depiction of the citizens of Hong Kong prior to and after the handover process in 1997, being so speechless and confused about their own future, questioning whether they should stay or move out, and how Hong Kong will manage itself throughout the upcoming years. Wong’s interpretation of Hong Kong at the time was experienced in Chungking Express through his unusual use of camera techniques, the symbolic colors and lights and the exotic choice of music from which he gets inspiration to make the film, as well as through his characters who seem lost in the midst of yet another unsettling physical environment.
LOVE IS ALL A MATTER OF TIMING. IT'S NO GOOD MEETING THE RIGHT PERSON TOO SOON OR TOO LATE - WONG KAR-WAI
The intro monologue of the film opened with Cop 223’s internal voice saying “Every day we brush past a lot of people. People who may become our best friends, or people we may never meet”. The use of internal voice-overs suggests how lonely Wong’s characters are, claiming that is it very hard to find a true companion in the midst of all the hustle and the bustle of the city. Uncertainty is another issue. This theme is mostly dominant in the second part of the film with Cop 663 and Faye. Both of them are not sure about their lives and are struggling to cope with this anxiety through making use of some physical objects around them.
For the film's location, Wong chose two places which celebrate the charm of the everyday and recover the effective possibilities of mundane space in the midst of a commodified chain-store Hong Kong. The first is the Chungking Mansion which depicts a unique pocket of Hong Kong urban life - characterized by its poor hygienic settings, low security status, a collection of prostitutes and illegal immigrants, and its uncertain faded facade. The second is the mid-level escalator - it plays an integral role in the second narration where Cop 66s’s apartment lies just behind the plastic screen,, and Faye’s curiosity arouses as she passes by his apartment taking a sneak at it in a funny romantic gesture.
What do you think of Hong Kong's citizens' perspective on their nation within our present time? Have the movies changed since Chungking Express? To what extent? Please share your comments, ideas, thoughts, criticism, and/or any sort of information and/or interesting facts.