FROM THE EYES OF A MASTER : LIFE AND LOVE "CHUNGKING EXPRESS"

Well, we started off in Denmark, now we jump half way around the world to Korean master-director Wong Kar Wai. Now, if you had this general impression of Asian cinema as being slow paced, philosophical or heavily action based (Kung-fu films) please think again. Chungking Express is an intelligent, fast paced- sometimes to the point of bewildering – and sensitive consideration of modern life. Life and love in general in fact. No big surprise that the name of the film comes from Chungking House, a massive labyrinth like shopping mall in Hong Kong (I have to say, I never checked to see if it’s actually real or not…). Much in the vein of Vive l’amour, confined spaces in modern life bring extraordinary characters together and adventures – real live adventures – take place…
Police officer 223 is not having a good time these past couple of days. He has been dumped by his long-term girlfriend and is having trouble getting over it. On the evening of his 25th birthday, he decides he must force himself to get over it so he goes to a bar and vows he will fall in love with the first woman who walks in. And the first woman who walks in just happens to be a drug smuggler who has recently lost a group of Pakistanis with whom she had made an agreement to smuggle drugs out of the country. She is now in deep trouble. True to form, officer 223 falls in love with her immediately, but this for him will be the starting point of many extraordinary adventures… Some of them life-changing…
What I love about some movies is the way that two completely unrelated stories and genres can be just mushed up together and actually make a meaningful whole. This happens many times in this film, and the number of times Wong Kar Wai has pulled this off is a true tribute to his talent. The entire film is set on parallel stories, only the stories change – keeping officer 223 as a constant as far as I can tell – to make first one extraordinary pattern, then another. In the first half we explore the underworld, then the young officer and his sadness and his (rather bizarre) ways of coping. Then it’s a love story – only not the kind of love story you’re thinking of, it’s complicated – and then it’s goodbye… But maybe there’s a hello just round the corner… Scattered throughout the film, thanks to a series of truly extraordinary but touching characters, are a series of weird thoughts and considerations on life, love and relationships. I watched it in the cinema, but after I’ve finished working on my blog I think I’m going to just check the internet to see if there are any sights were quotes are compiled, they are so good and so touching, I’m sure someone thought of writing them down…
Another small thing, I was amused to find out that this also seems – in a way – the granddaddy of the French hit film Amelie. I won’t go into detail but you have to be blind not to see the parallelism. You will get it though if I say, for example, that Wong Kar Wai will pick up the same theme in a future film, Empty House… I’m not quite sure what it is in Asian culture that makes the theme of two people living in the same house without one or both parties being aware of it come back over and over again… I guess, like I said before, it’s the very confined spaces flats and apartments are set on in that part of the world. People virtually live on top of each other without knowing a thing about each other, it is rather spooky when you think about it…
And yes, I do rather seem to have given a chunk of the second half away but firstly you don’t know how we get there from the first half, and secondly, there is no way you can unite these two halves and get to the ending, I’m sorry guys you’re just going to have to watch and see…