Wong Kar-wai is a Hong Kong filmmaker known for his unique blend of pop energy and melancholic themes. Next to being deeply personal, his films also capture the cultural zeitgeist of Hong Kong, and the international scene, masterfully combining elements of both cultures.
His style is known for vibrant colors, sweeping camera movements, wide lenses, slow motion, freeze frames, undercranking, and juxtaposition of time and movement. He is also known for his ability to create layered, and nuanced characters struggling to find their place in the world with recuring themes of loss and romantic suffering.
Blending golden age Hollywood movie-making with experimental filmmaking techniques in Chunking Express made him famous, and became the staple of his work. The film is set in the city of Hong Kong and explores hidden connections inside a fast and dense city. It’s a diptych featuring two separate stories of heartbroken and down-on-their-luck cops. It’s filled with all of the mentioned recurring features of a Wong Kar-wai movie.
The following year, Wong released Fallen Angels, which is also structured as a diptych and features internal echoes of Chungking Express. Unlike its predecessor, it’s cold and dark, seen by some critics as a commentary on and deconstruction of Chungking Express. Wong did initially wrote Fallen Angels as the third story of its predecessor, but split them into two separate movies because of their length. Similar to Chungking Express, Fallen Angels emphasises mood and atmosphere over narrative. Wong considered the two movies to be complementary counterparts exploring contemporary Hong Kong.
Wong’s visual style is criticized for its resemblance to advertising and music videos, but his use of imagery is intended to convey emotion and not just to be aesthetically pleasing. That is perhaps most visible in his arguably most famous film, In the Mood for Love, which his NFT project refers to. It’s a deeply intimate, sensitive and emotional movie.
Two neighbors, suspecting their spouses are cheating on them, start an affair, but everything is hidden from us, just like their relationship is hidden from the rest of the world. Despite its surface-level beauty, the film delves into deeper themes of yearning, disappointment, and failure, capturing the complex feelings of desire and hopelessness.
Wong Kar-wai says his movies are like musicals, it’s just that actors don’t sing. This movie, set to the haunting music of Shigeru Umebayashi’s “Yumeji’s Theme” beautifully supports that idea. Take a look for yourself
In October 2021 Sotheby debuted Wong Kar-wai’s first-ever NFT creation, “In the Mood for Love — Day One”.
This micro-movie is created from unseen footage that was shot on the first day of production of the film. Now, why’s that special? In the Mood for Love was written during filming. It was a collaborative effort by Wong Kar-Wai and the main actors. He usually works without a screenplay and this story was forged as they were filming. On the first day of shooting, they didn’t have a story at all so this short film shows Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in completely different roles from the original film.
“The first day of every film production is like the first date with your dream lover — it is filled with fright and delight, like skating on thin ice. An arrow never returns to its bow; twenty years on, this arrow is still soaring.” — Wong Kar-Wai
Still, this scene has his signature compositions, freeze frames, and atmosphere, and to make it better, works as a stand-alone piece, a micro-movie with a rounded story. I’m not going to spoil anything, watch it 👇
It’s a micro-movie, like Death of David Cronenberg, but for the record, it came before it. I saved it for last because it’s the most interesting to me. As I said multiple times, I believe micro-movies and NFTs are a perfect match, and this one is beautiful and well-rounded.
The main difference is that Wong Kar-wai didn’t shoot the material purposefully for this piece. He did recycle his old material, but he did it in the best possible way imo. He showed us that you can convey a story and emotion in a minute and a half,
He showed that good NFT micro-movies are possible.
They are the next big thing in Cinema, and NFTs will enable that. Wong Kar-wai and David Cronenberg showed us the door. New, young artists will go through them and pave the way for Cinema 3
p.s.
If If you want to see a different side of Wong Kar-wai, check out his martial arts masterpiece The Grandmaster
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