Here we have a movie and a director I have heard a LOT about but never gotten to. My love of Hong Kong cinema is mostly around the action but films like this and those make me mourn for a Hong Kong I'll probably never see.
This is a masterpiece by Wong Kar Wai - it follows the stories of two neighbors in 1962 Hong Kong who realize their spouses are having an affair and come together in their own unique way. There is a haunting poetry to how the director shoots, and this seems to be pretty common to all his films
I usually don't do this but I heard this was the middle of an informal trilogy, so I watched the first film (Days of Being Wild) and I plan on watching the third film (which I think tie it all together as the trilogy) at some point. Criterion has released a Blu-Ray Set of Kar-Wai's greatest films, but interestingly there's no spine number to it so I'm not sure how many I'll get to in the collection themselves besides this and Chungking Express later one - but i'll probably watch the others for fun at some point. In the meantime most of the films are on the Channel with the exception of the 3rd film in this trilogy which I'll have to go looking for (It's on Pluto - oh god, commercial central) - - might have to find a fast rental somewhere.
Anyways this is a great piece of cinema and some believe it to be one of the greatest films of all time. It can be a tiny bit confusing as it fades in and out and some scenes are them acting out something they think will happen rather than what happens. I'd like to give it another run at some point - and get to the commentaries and special features and deleted scenes. There's a lot to unpack here and it's hard with the seminal work of a director and work back but hey, that's kinda what I did with Satyajit Ray so maybe someday :)
No comments:
Post a Comment