Wong Kar Wai - Feature Films, 1988-2007

In the coming 5 weeks a local cinema is organising screening of the following 4K restored movies:
Chungking Express
Fallen Angels
Happy Together
In The Mood For Love
2046
I've never seen any of them so may sign up for all five

Lucky you!

Faye Wong in Chungking ftw

x-post thank you :) Tickets for Chungking Express ordered! I can't even remember the last time I went to a cinema

if you do plan/have the chance to see more, go for Happy Together and In the Mood for Love, I say

I’d go for Chungking and Fallen myself

Really just go for all of them

In the mood and happy together are the only really 'great' ones

https://asia.si.edu/events-overview/films/

The Freer has a virtual WKW festival starting June 11. What besides In the Mood for Love do I need to see?

There was a retrospective at Anthology Film Archives where I caught "Chungking Express" and "Days of Being Wild". Saw "In The Mood for Love" on the big screen when it came out. The rest I've only seen on video.

all his films I’ve seen (in the mood, chungking, ashes of time, fallen angels) are well worth the price of admission, but only in the mood for love I’d call a great film, chungking just a tier below

thanks for the feedback everyone, it's appreciated! I'll try to go see as many as I can :)

i remember how gorgeous 2046 looked on the big screen when i saw it originally, but some combination of the look of that particular film aging badly and needing the big screen has meant that it has never come close again

happy together is definitely the equal of in the mood for love i think, a really great film about lots of things: buenos aires, loneliness, apartment buildings, and being young and gay in a big city.

this is an incredibly controversial piping-hot take but the order in which you listed them is actually my ranking of them all, FALLEN ANGELS is incredibly underrated and cool and excellent, ITMFL is probably the "best" in terms of like the most impactful and stuff, idk, I just didn't click with it super hard when I watched it (though I need a rewatch), HAPPY TOGETHER is honestly one of the best and most groundbreaking works of queer cinema imo, I would say all of those are like 10/10 essential except 2046 which you could skip if you really wanted to.

all the leaves are Brown

https://www.ifccenter.com/series/the-world-of-wong-kar-wai/

Daaaamn

box set is 50% off at barnes and noble rn if 6th ave is too far a trek

A very nice piece on the stars of WKW films: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7448-the-stars-in-wong-kar-wai-s-universe

I noticed Ashes of Time Redux is on Mubi so I rewatched it. I saw it when the Redux edit was released in 2008 (on a big screen, thankfully) and I remembered it as gorgeous and nearly incomprehensible. Rewatch confirmed both, tho the plot strands do more or less all connect. It just gets hard in the middle to keep track of who’s in love with/wants to kill whom. But just one ravishing image after another, and the very ‘90s high contrast saturated look feels dated now in a good way — it makes it aesthetically singular. Never seen fight scenes like the ones in this movie, the slow-motion blues are really effective and evocative. Not Wong’s best, but in my second tier of faves by him.

Slow-motion blurs that should say.

The original 1994 release of Ashes of Time is sublime

Is that available anywhere? Seems like Redux is the only print in circulation.

It’s on backchannels. There is no HD version of it available, so it’s basically VCD quality. I just hate his revisionist bullshit, as the film was perfect as is

I thought the revisions were partly because he didn’t have the original master to work from anymore. But not having seen the original I don’t know what changed.

I’ve seen both (might even have the VHS copy I picked up in Montreal Chinatown around) but don’t remember any significant differences, except that the blood spatters in Redux seemed faker (CGI?).

I’ve always been a little disappointed by it in either version, likely because I was expecting something far more experimental, non-narrative, and “difficult”, based on all the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Western HK movie fanboys at the time (check out vintage HKMDB reviews for some classic “you got arthouse in my grindhouse!” sentiments), or J. Hoberman’s memorable description of it as “The Seven Samurai at Marienbad”. But aside from the Brigitte Lin sequence (my favorite section) it seemed relatively straightforward.

In the long run I prefer Tsui Hark’s The Blade, which has sometimes been viewed as an “answer” to Wong. Certainly the character of the dreamy, romantically longing heroine who narrates the film feels like a pointed parody, especially since there’s otherwise zero romanticism in the Tsui, just sweaty, half-naked, seemingly deranged men beating and flogging and chopping the hell out of each other.

There are a hell of a lot more differences between the two versions than blood spatters. For god’s sake, the entire colour palette was altered. The blue skies in the original look like teal vomit in the Redux. It’s shorter. The score was redone. Even the credits are completely different.

Tsui Hark’s The Blade is magnificent. Very fortunate to have seen it in 35mm some years back. Maybe the single best wuxia film of the last 40 years

Ah see I like the weird palette of Redux. But would be interested to see the original too.

I remember seeing the original and thinking that it couldn't have seemed more incoherent if all the shots had been edited together in random order.