Wong Kar-Wai: A Portrait of the Evolving Artist

"I think people think of my films as very complicated films, there are so many motifs and so many themes, symbols, but to me, my films are very straightforward or very simple. I always said my film is almost too simple to be a film," says Wong.

Wong Kar-Wai is almost too modest about the kind of attention he has received at an international level. Over the last fifteen years he has become one of the most respected innovators in contemporary cinema. Critics and academics have labelled him ‘the quintessential postmodern auteur’, the ‘Godard of the MTV Generation’; to most he is simply Wong Kar-Wai – a new and exciting filmmaker.

Wong Kar-Wai was born in Shanghai in 1958 and travelled to Hong Kong with his family at the age of five. He studied graphic design at Hong Kong Polytechnic and developed a passion for photography - particularly the work of Robert Frank, Henri-Cartier Bresson and Richard Avendon. Shortly after graduating in 1980, he enrolled in a TV drama training programme sponsored by Hong Kong Television Broadcasts Ltd. Making an instant mark as a production assistant on a number of serials, he quickly progressed to scriptwriting, most notably for a popular soap opera entitled Don’t Look Now. In 1982 he exited the ranks of the HKTVB, carrying his writing skills into the film industry where he scripted close to a dozen films in the span of five years.

While working on Patrick Tam’s 1986 feature The Final Victory, Wong Kar-Wai began to conceive a project that became his debut as a director. As Tears Go By – a ‘gangster picture’ portraying the mean streets of Hong Kong – was released in 1988 and received rapturously by critics, earning Wong an invitation to the Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Three years later, he followed it up with the highly influential Days of Being Wild. This nostalgic ‘chamber film’ cemented his reputation as an up-and-coming talent, and walked away with the top prizes at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

In 1992, Wong assembled an all-star cast and began work on his ambitious martial arts film, Ashes of Time. During a break in the picture’s lengthy editing process, he began work on another project entitled Chungking Express - writing the screenplay at a Holiday Inn coffee shop by day, and shooting by night. Ashes of Time and Chungking Express were both released in 1994 and received considerable critical attention. Chungking assumed immediate cult-movie status, fuelled largely by its promotion in America by Quentin Tarantino.

The following year, Wong Kar-Wai released Fallen Angels (1995), a film that was originally intended to be the third part of Chungking Express. He then relocated to Buenos Aires to film Happy Together, a film that was to be shot over 8 weeks but which extended to five months. When it eventually premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, Wong received the coveted ‘Best Director Award’. In 2000, he returned to the festival after spending almost two years on In the Mood For Love (2000). Tony Leung Chiu-Wai won the Best Actor award for his performance in the film, and the crew walked away with the Technical Grand Prize. Wong Kar-Wai’s latest film, 2046, was one of the highlights at Cannes this year.

Wong Kar-Wai’s is that kind of storyteller for whom the actual process of ‘telling’ supersedes

the importance of the ‘story’ itself. Along with his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle and editor/production designer, William Chang, he has developed a unique and vibrant visual style. Notorious for not using a definite script while shooting, he constantly experiments with structure and narrative, creating abstract puzzles in which characters function as the constitutive pieces. In a refreshing shift from mainstream cinema, he actually spends more time nurturing these characters and their emotions, and fusses less over plots and situations. It is hardly surprising then, that his name is well-circulated among critics and film students. But this is not to say that Wong Kar-Wai is ‘strictly film school’; indeed it would be careless to restrict his cinema to just that.

Wong Kar-Wai is also a popular filmmaker – his aesthetic is strikingly contemporary, even if unfairly assigned to a ‘MTV Generation sensibility’. The music in his films ranges from the lingering tunes of Nat King Cole and Dinah Washington, to re-workings of contemporary hits like Massive Attack’s ‘Karma Koma’ and the Cranberries’ ‘Dreams’. After Chungking Express, it seems impossible not to associate ‘California Dreaming’ with Faye Wong and toy aeroplanes. Wong also regularly employs popular stars from Hong Kong and the mainland, including Faye Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, Brigitte Lin and the late Leslie Cheung.

Like most filmmakers from Hong Kong, Wong Kar-Wai has confronted the notions of identity and alienation in the wake of the 1997 handover to China. However, rather than engaging with these issues in a direct, ‘political’ manner, he subtly exposes them within the fabric of his urban landscapes and in the lives and relationships of his characters. They are generally young and unabashedly romantic - alternatively finding and losing love, coming together and falling apart. Wong emphasises the importance of time and its relation to memory, nostalgia and the transience of things, consistently revisiting these themes in his films.

While there does appear to be a distinct signature to his cinema, every new film by Wong Kar-Wai throws out a few surprises and variations in theme and style. Tony Rayns has written that ‘since Wong’s creative evolution is still very much in progress, it’s premature to try to sum up his achievements’. In a similar vein, this is not so much a tribute to a legendary established filmmaker, as a retrospective of an evolving artist.

FILMOGRAPHY (as Director):

- As Tears Go By (1988)

- Days of Being Wild (1991)

- Ashes of Time (1994)

- Chungking Express (1994)

- Fallen Angels (1995)

- Happy Together (1997)

- In the Mood For Love (2000)

- 2046 (2004)

Click here to read about the films screened at the festival in this section.