Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai is a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films are characterised by nonlinear narratives, atmospheric music, and vivid cinematography with bold, saturated colours. A pivotal figure of Hong Kong cinema, Wong is considered a contemporary auteur. His films frequently appear on best-of lists domestically and internationally.
Born in Shanghai, Wong emigrated to Hong Kong as a child with his family. He began a career as a screenwriter for soap operas before transitioning to directing with his debut, the crime drama As Tears Go By. As Tears Go By was fairly successful in Hong Kong, but Wong moved away from the contemporary trend of crime and action movies to embark on more personal filmmaking. Days of Being Wild, his first venture in such a direction, did not perform well at the box office, but received critical acclaim and won Best Film and Best Director at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards. His next film, Ashes of Time, met with a mixed reception because of its vague plot and atypical take on the genre.
Exhausted by the time-consuming filming and post-production of Ashes of Time, Wong directed Chungking Express, a smaller film that he hoped would rekindle his love of cinema during a two-month sabbatical while waiting for post-production equipment to arrive for Ashes of Time. The film, with its more lighthearted atmosphere, catapulted Wong to international prominence, and won Best Film and Best Director at the 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards. Wong followed up with the crime thriller Fallen Angels in 1995. Although it was initially tepidly received by critics, Fallen Angels has since come to be considered a cult classic of the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema and especially representative of Wong's style. Wong consolidated his worldwide reputation with the 1997 drama Happy Together, for which he won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.
The 2000 drama In the Mood for Love, revered for its lush visuals and subtle storytelling, concretely established Wong's trademark filmmaking style. Among his other works are 2046 and The Grandmaster, both of which received awards and nominations worldwide.
Early life
Wong Kar-wai was born on 17 July 1958 in Shanghai, the youngest of three siblings. His father was a sailor and his mother a housewife. By the time Wong was five years old, the seeds of the Cultural Revolution were beginning to take effect in China, and his parents moved to Hong Kong. The two older children were meant to join them later, but the borders closed before they could and Wong did not see them again for ten years. In Hong Kong, the family settled in Tsim Sha Tsui, and his father got work managing a nightclub. As an only child in an unfamiliar city, Wong has said he felt isolated; he struggled to learn Cantonese and English, becoming fluent in these languages only as a teenager.As a youth, Wong was frequently taken to the cinema by his mother and exposed to a variety of films. He has said, "The only hobby I had as a child was watching movies". Wong studied graphic design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1980, but dropped out of college after being accepted to a training course with the TVB television network, where he learned the processes of media production.
Career
Beginnings (1980–1989)
Wong soon began a screenwriting career, first on Hong Kong TV series and soap operas, such as Don't Look Now, before progressing to film scripts. He worked as part of a team, contributing to various genres, including romance, comedy, thriller, and crime. Wong had little enthusiasm for these early projects, described by the film scholar Gary Bettinson as "occasionally diverting and mostly disposable", but continued to write throughout the 1980s on films including Just for Fun, Rosa, and The Haunted Cop Shop. He is credited with ten screenplays between 1982 and 1987, but claims to have worked on about 50 more without official credit. Wong spent two years writing the screenplay for Patrick Tam's action film Final Victory, for which he was nominated at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards.File:Andy Lau.jpg|thumb|Andy Lau starred in Wong's debut, the crime film As Tears Go By
By 1987 the Hong Kong film industry was at a peak, enjoying a considerable level of prosperity and productivity. New directors were needed to maintain this success, and through his links in the industry Wong was invited to become a partner on a new independent company, In-Gear, and given the opportunity to direct his own picture. Gangster films were popular at the time, in the wake of John Woo's highly successful A Better Tomorrow, and Wong decided to follow suit. Specifically, unlike Hong Kong's other crime films, he chose to focus on young gangsters. The film, As Tears Go By, tells the story of a conflicted youth who has to watch over his hot-headed friend.
Because he was well acquainted with the producer, Alan Tang, Wong was given considerable freedom in making As Tears Go By. His cast included what he considered some of "the hottest young idols in Hong Kong": singer Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, and Jacky Cheung. As Tears Go By was released in June 1988 and was popular with audiences. Several journalists named Wong among the "Hong Kong New Wave". While it was a conventional crime film, critic David Bordwell wrote that Wong "stands out from his peers by abandoning the kinetics of comedies and action movies in favour of more liquid atmospherics." As Tears Go By received no attention from Western critics upon its release, but was selected to be screened during the Directors' Fortnight of the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.
Developing style (1990–1994)
In his next film, Wong moved away from the crime trend in Hong Kong cinema, to which he felt indifferent. He was eager to make something unique, and the financial success of As Tears Go By made this possible. Developing a more personal project than his previous film, Wong picked the 1960s as its setting, evoking an era he remembered well and had a "special feeling" for. Days of Being Wild focuses on a disillusioned young adult named Yuddy and those around him. There is no straightforward plot or obvious genre, but Stephen Teo sees it as a film about the "longing for love". Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, and Jacky Cheung rejoined Wong for the film, while Leslie Cheung was cast in the central role. Hired as cinematographer was Christopher Doyle, who became one of Wong's most important collaborators, photographing his next six films.With its popular stars, Days of Being Wild was expected to be a mainstream picture; instead it was a character piece, more concerned with mood and atmosphere than narrative. Released in December 1990, the film earned little at the box office and divided critics. It won five Hong Kong Film Awards, and received some attention internationally. With its experimental narrative, expressive camerawork, and themes of lost time and love, Days of Being Wild is described by film critic Peter Brunette as the first typical "Wong Kar-wai film". It has since gained a reputation as one of Hong Kong's finest releases. Its initial failure was disheartening for Wong, and he could not gain funding for his next project, a planned sequel.
Struggling to get support for his work, Wong formed his own production company, Jet Tone Films, with Jeff Lau in 1992. In need of further backing, Wong accepted a studio's offer that he make a Wuxia| film based on the popular novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong. Wong was enthusiastic about the idea, claiming he had long wanted to make a costume drama. He eventually took little from the book other than three characters, and in 1992 began experimenting with several different narrative structures to weave what he called "a very complex tapestry". Filming began with another all-star cast: Leslie, Maggie, and Jacky Cheung returned alongside Brigitte Lin, Carina Lau, Charlie Young, and Tony Leung Chiu-wai − the latter of whom became one of Wong's key collaborators.
Set during the Song dynasty, Ashes of Time concerns a desert-exiled assassin who is called upon by several different characters while nursing a broken heart. It was a difficult production and the project was not completed for two years, at a cost of HK$47 million. Upon release in September 1994, audiences were confused by the film's vague plotting and atypical take on. The film scholar Martha P. Nochimson called it "the most unusual martial arts film ever made", as fast-paced action scenes are replaced by character ruminations, and story becomes secondary to the use of colour, landscape, and imagery. Ashes of Time was a commercial failure, but critics were generally appreciative of Wong's "refusal to be loyal to genre". The film won several local awards, and competed at the Venice Film Festival, where Doyle won Best Cinematography. In 2008, Wong reworked the film and rereleased it as Ashes of Time Redux.
Breakthrough (1994–1995)
During the production of Ashes of Time, Wong had a two-month break as he waited for equipment to re-record sound for some scenes. He was in a bad mood, feeling heavy pressure from his backers and worrying about another failure, and so he decided to start a new project: "I thought I should do something to make myself feel comfortable about making films again. So I made Chungking Express, which I made like a student film." Conceived and completed in six weeks, the new project was released two months before Ashes of Time.Chungking Express is split into two parts, both set in contemporary Hong Kong and focusing on lonely policemen who each fall for a woman. Wong was keen to experiment with "two crisscrossing stories in one movie" and worked spontaneously, filming at night what he had written that day. Peter Brunette notes that Chungking is considerably more fun and lighthearted than Wong's earlier work but deals with the same themes. At the 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards it was named Best Picture, and Wong received Best Director. Miramax acquired the film for American distribution, which, according to Brunette, "catapulted Wong to international attention". Stephen Schneider includes it in his book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die with the summary: "While other films by Wong may pack more emotional resonance, Chungking Express gets off on sheer innocence, exuberance, and cinematic freedom, a striking triumph of style over substance".
Wong continued to work without break, expanding his ideas from Chungking Express into another film about alienated young adults in contemporary Hong Kong. Chungking Express had originally been conceived as three stories; one of them was later included in his later film, Fallen Angels, but with new characters. Wong conceived both films as complementary studies of Hong Kong: "To me Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are one film that should be three hours long."
Fallen Angels is broadly considered a crime thriller, and contains scenes of extreme violence, but is atypical of the genre and heavily infused with Wong's fragmented, experimental style. The loose plot again involves two distinct, subtly overlapping narratives, and is dominated by frantic visuals. The film mostly occurs at night and explores Hong Kong's dark side, which Wong planned to balance the sweetness of Chungking: "It's fair to show both sides of a coin". Kaneshiro and Young were cast again, but new to Wong's films were Leon Lai, Michelle Reis, and Karen Mok. Upon its release in September 1995, several critics felt that the film was too similar to Chungking Express and some complained that Wong had become self-indulgent. But as time went on, critics reappraised the film, and it has amassed a large cult following, becoming one of Wong's most popular films. Fallen Angels has often been said to be one of Wong's most stylish films, and been praised for its unconventional, fragmented plot. Film historians Zhang Yingjin and Xiao Zhiwei wrote: "While not as groundbreaking as its predecessors, the film is still different and innovative enough to confirm presence on the international scene."