The World of Wong Kar-Wai
A reflection on Wong Kar-Wai’s Hong Kong cinema
The metropolitan area of Hong Kong has become a truly fascinating region in Asia due to its colonial past and relation with China. This area around the Pearl River Delta of Southern China is also one of the most densely urbanized regions in the entire world. Over the years, a huge variety of people have come to live here, bringing along their own cultures and making Hong Kong the cosmopolitan region that it is today. During the late ’70s and ’80s, the cinematic landscape of Hong Kong started to flourish due to a new group of filmmakers: The Hong Kong New Wave. These new filmmakers, such as Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, and in later years my personal favorite, Wong Kar-Wai, gave the already existing film industry an innovative twist. In this article, I want to explore the production context of the Hong Kong New Wave Cinema and find out how the big city, the people, and their cultures shaped the cinematic movement of this era.
Before the New Wave movement emerged in Hong Kong, a mass production-studio system took almost all the market share in the film industry. Films were mainly focused on the martial arts genre while trying to reinvent it with Japanese and Western influences. Although this genre became very popular internationally, after the death of Bruce Lee in 1973, the quality of martial arts films in Hong Kong started to decrease. However, in 1977 the first Hong Kong Film Festival was held, which marked the start of new innovations and talents in the industry.
While the previous film studios focussed on stunts and action, this first wave of new filmmakers approached the cinema of Hong Kong from a different perspective. Director Ann Hui, for example, started focussing on the social conditions of people in Hong Kong and emphasized the character’s psychology. Her film The Boy From Vietnam (1978) explores the dreams, hopes, and limited possibilities of Vietnamese immigrants in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has become a place where many people from different cultures and backgrounds live together. Films with themes connected to identity portray the lives of its citizens and, in essence, the region itself as well. Hong Kong’s constant struggle of becoming an independent country, firstly because of its past as a British colony and until today because of its political relationship with mainland China. Themes like alienation, loneliness, and belonging become very significant explorations for the Hong Kong New Wave in later years. Director Patrick Tam, whom Wong Kar-Wai started working closely with, made the film Nomad in 1982. He portrays the lives of Hong Kong youths living carefree, roaming around the city like nomads, until a Japanese assassin disrupts their peaceful existence and sends them on a quest for the true meaning of life. Themes and characters such as loneliness and lovelorn outsiders become central features in the famous films of successor Wong Kar-Wai.
Wong Kar-Wai was part of the second wave of filmmakers who started to flourish around the mid-’80s. This second wave started to gain more international notoriety, and for Wong, this was due to his cult hit Chungking Express (1994). This film is also set in the heart of Hong Kong, where people are constantly in transit, which forms an important theme in the film. Film theorist Allan Cameron writes about physical and virtual movement within Chungking express as a way of identity search:
“Characters are often leaving, have left, or are about to leave for another country, and there is recurrent imagery of aeroplanes, passports, airports, toy jets, and air hostesses. Alongside this “physical,” transnational movement is a parallel emphasis on “virtual,” transcultural mobility. The film actively plays with ideas of identity by investing itself with “foreign” cultural materials. These two parallel trajectories (the international and the intercultural) are closely linked, and can both be regarded within the context of identity formation”.
The foreign cultural materials that Cameron is talking about are visible and even audible on various levels in the film. Firstly the people, some of them being Western, Indian, or Chinese. Also, the use of language, sometimes Mandarin, but also Cantonese, Japanese, and English. Not to mention the various Western influences such as McDonald's and Coca Cola. But most notably, the music, namely ‘California Dreaming’ by The Mamas & The Papas and the Cantonese version of The Cranberries’ song ‘Dreams.’ Wong creates a visual and audible pastiche with his use of culture in its broadest sense, but also pop culture in music:
“Before the appearance of the music video, cinema had always been a medium for the diffusion of music and celebrities, and Wong takes advantage of this practice neither by refusing nor blindly accepting it, but by largely incorporating it into his own style. In this way, it is not surprising that Wong’s films are often associated with the style of music videos, not only by the frequent use of pop stars and songs, but also by the appropriation of a certain stylistic imagery pertaining to the music video industry”.
The music combined with themes of reminiscence and long-lost love give a nostalgic and retro feel to Wong’s films. Together with cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Wong has developed a fast-flowing and vivid cinematic style by using the ambiance of Hong Kong. The colorful neon lights and moody scenery of Hong Kong’s nightlife have become very distinct to the world of Wong Kar-Wai.
I would have loved to elaborate more on films from the Hong Kong New Wave; however, in this article, I have laid out the core impetus of this movement, namely the era and environment in which these films were created. Much like how the French New Wave came to be, the Hong Kong New Wave experimented with cinematographic techniques and different narrative forms with which they breathed new life into the Hong Kong cinema.
Cameron, Alan. “Trajectories of Identification: Travel and Global Culture in the Films of Wong Kar-wai.” Jump Cut 49 (Spring 2007). ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/wongKarWai/index.html
Chungking Express. Directed by Wong Kar Wai, Jet Tone Production Co., 1994.
Macedo de Carvalho, Ludmila Moreira, “Memories of sound and light: musical discourse in the films of Wong Kar-wai.’ Journal of Chinese Cinemas: Vol 2, No 3
Nomad. Directed by Patrick Tam, 1982.
The Boy From Vietnam. Directed by Ann Hui, 1978.
Wright, Elizabeth. “Wong Kar Wai.” Senses of cinema, issue 20, May. 2002, sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/wong/
