Wong Kar-wai Read online

  Film auteurs usually produce, direct, and write their own films, and Wong Kar-wai is no exception. My Blueberry Nights and The Grandmaster notwithstanding, Wong is the sole-credited screenwriter for his films. In 1990, Jimmy Ngai asked why Wong does not collaborate with a scriptwriter, to which he replied, “No scriptwriter would like to be stuck with a director for such a long time. They have to make a living!”

  In addition to the lengthy processes of preproduction and production, Wong Kar-wai also spends a long time on postproduction, especially in editing. In their 1994 interview Yeung and Lau wondered why Wong spends so much time in editing. Wong explained the process is so time-consuming because he films a lot of footage that could be used in the final cut. The uncut time is much longer than the screening time. However, Wong does not get tied up by the footage. If he deemed some scenes redundant or unsuitable for the final cut, Wong does not hesitate to exclude them from the final cut.

  Sometimes the editing process takes so long due to his “rough script” approach where the story is constructed during the cutting process. For Ashes of Time, he told Yeung and Lau he stitched the many fragmented scenes into a coherent story. The same happened with Happy Together. He tried different cuts with different scenes and sequences; cutting was “more of a process of elimination than of addition” (Ciment and Niogret 1997, 11). As a result, all footage of the character played by Hong Kong singer Shirley Kwan was cut. (The scenes with Kwan’s character were included in Buenos Aires Zero Degree: The Making of “Happy Together.”) For In the Mood for Love, Wong told Ciment and Niogret in their interview in 2000 he had more than two hours of materials for the final cut, but he edited it scene by scene to figure out the story structure. “Going to Cannes” has become a synonym for deadline. But the feedback that Wong receives from Cannes prompts him to edit more. The existence of different film cuts excites fans; they want to see all other versions not played in their region. Die-hard fans usually acquire DVDs of different regions for comparison. In this way, Wong follows the long-standing practice of the Hong Kong film industry by releasing different cuts. Traditionally, the first cut is played at a midnight premiere. The feedback gathered from the audience prompts another round of editing, and then the film is further edited to meet overseas regulations and to respond to different market tastes.

  Wong explains in several interviews why some films deserve so many cuts. For his first feature, As Tears Go By, Wong admitted to Lok Ching in 1998 that the ending of the Hong Kong cut in which Andy Lau is killed is “weak but acceptable.” The Taiwanese cut has an alternative ending in which Andy Lau becomes mentally impaired. The Hong Kong audience compared its ending to the alternative ending and debated which one was better. The midnight premiere of Chungking Express was fifteen minutes longer with more scenes of Brigitte Lin than the final cut. According to Yeung and Lau (1994), Wong was responsible for editing the story of Brigitte Lin while William Chang was responsible for editing the story of Faye Wong. Neither of them had any idea how long the other’s cut was until the very last minute. In the case of Ashes of Time Redux, Wong included scenes that did not appear in the original version because, during the re-making process, he found out the film is longer in Chinatown copies. More action scenes were included by overseas distributors to appeal to overseas Chinese (Houx 2008). The original film reels and the various Chinatown tapes provided much material for Wong to restore the film negative and to redo film scoring and coloring. He believes the re-edited film presents a clearer story structure.

  Wong prefers to see some of his films as a collection of stories. Days of Being Wild was conceptualized as two films with multiple stories; however, its poor box office showing made investors withdraw funding so the already-planned sequel was never made. Wong envisioned a three-to-four-hour version of Days of Being Wild on VHS. Similarly, Chungking Express was conceptualized as a film with three stories, and one of them was later included in Fallen Angels.

  The Grandmaster is rumored to have a six-hour ultimate version, but Wong denies this version exists. Nonetheless, there are four versions in the market: the 3D version, which is the longest; the Greater Chinese cut; the European cut; and, finally, the US cut, which is less than two hours long. These different lengths not only reflect the expectations of different markets, but they also reflect how the story of Ip Man appeals to different audiences. For example, the US version explicates the history of the Republic of China and highlights Ip Man’s relationship with Bruce Lee while the Greater Chinese version downplays both. In the interviews with Poland (2013) and Mulligan (2013), Wong said he wanted to tell the story in different ways, although he thinks it is the same film regardless of length and has no preference of the three versions.

  Two years after the domestic version release, Wong presented a 3D version of The Grandmaster, which focused more on the character Ip Man than the time period (An Ying 2015). Unlike most film directors, Wong supervised the entire production of the 3D version, thus reinforcing the talk about his ongoing editing. And in response to fans’ requests, Wong included two deleted segments deemed unsuitable for the 3D version at the end of yet another version of the film. In explanation, Wong said, “the unknown is very attractive for the audience, and I would like to share the footage with them” (An Ying 2015).

  Some critics claim the deleted scenes are mentioned in interviews as a marketing strategy. Once the fans know about deleted scenes, alternative endings, and different versions, they want to see them and, therefore, buy a copy of each version. However, some deleted scenes from Wong’s films can be found online or are included as bonuses in DVDs. For example, the Criterion collection of In the Mood for Love contains a few deleted scenes in which Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung meet again in Cambodia.

  Unlike most Hong Kong directors, Wong Kar-wai is not afraid of drawing from great film directors and literature. While some fans say his films are too literary, he says it only appears to be so (Yeung and Lau 1994).

  To what extent should Wong’s films be interpreted based on his life experience and arts that have inspired him? The “1960s Trilogy” (Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046) seems to reflect Wong’s impression of Hong Kong when he first moved from Shanghai with his mother. In a number of interviews, Wong talks about his impressions of the city when he and his mother adopted Hong Kong as their new home. He was aware of his status as an outsider because he did not speak Cantonese.

  After so many years in Hong Kong, Wong feels Shanghainese are losing their identity. Nowadays, there is no longer a distinction between Shanghainese and Cantonese; there are only Hong Kong people. In the Mood for Love is an attempt for him to show “how the Shanghainese communities [were] really like” (Ciment and Niogret 2000, 80) because even the contemporary Shanghainese do not know much about the history of their community, customs, and rituals. Wong strives to retain some of that history in his films. The English subtitles for In the Mood for Love have omitted subtle details of the Shanghainese way of life in 1960s Hong Kong. Because the film was first conceptualized as one about food, Wong paid a great deal of attention to what Maggie Cheung and her landlady’s family eat throughout the film. The mention of a particular kind of vegetable in a Shanghainese household hints at the time of the year.

  In addition to preserving his memory of the Shanghainese way of life, Wong also wants to preserve buildings and traditions that will soon disappear or have already disappeared. Wong uses film negative to catalog old buildings in Wan Chai—a district that has undergone tremendous change due to redevelopment (Gary Mak 1995). For example, the inn in 2046 was a prison that has been torn down since the release of the film. Wong believes future audiences will see these newly demolished buildings still standing in his films, and they will contemplate how Hong Kong looked in past years.

  The Grandmaster also attempts to preserve something that will soon disappear—in this case, different schools of martial arts. The film was originally titled The Grandmasters, and Wong did not only want to show Ip Man and one s
chool of martial arts. He wanted to show several schools of martial arts through the story of Ip and his colleagues. He regrets the cultural traditions associated with martial arts are dying because the Chinese government only sees martial arts as a sport where coaches train students, not as a school where the master represents the father figure to his apprentices. He hopes the film will renew public interest in learning martial arts, not as a sport, but as a traditional art (Li Hongyu 2013).

  Much of the audience’s fascination with Wong Kar-wai springs from his reticent answers to questions about his artistic point of view. In interviews, Wong is very good at explaining how his films are made, but he provides little information on how he views his body of work. As previously mentioned, whenever interviewers suggest Wong’s films are art, he rebukes them and replies his films are actually very commercial. Wong’s ambiguity towards his body of work is further illustrated when Gary Mak asks Wong in a 1995 interview if he prefers surface acting or dramatic acting. Wong answers both are fine as long as it is good; however, “most times good acting cannot be described.” When asked if he prefers a specific kind of film genre, he says again anything goes as long as it is good.

  While Wong hesitates to list film directors who have influenced him, he does not shy away from sharing his opinions of directors whose films he likes. In his early years in Hong Kong, Wong and his mother went to the theater daily. They would watch a few films a day, whether they were imports from Hollywood, Europe, or Japan. During college and through his collaborator Patrick Tam, Wong started watching films by great masters such as Yasujirō Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Bernardo Bertolucci, Michelangelo Antonioni, Éric Rohmer, and Robert Bresson. He mentions to Yeung and Lau in 1994 that Bresson taught him to not spend unnecessary effort to make films. Wong imitates Bresson’s close-up frames to shoot in small, enclosed space in In the Mood for Love. Also in that interview, Wong comments on a number of other directors: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Martin Scorsese, Leos Carax, Gus Van Sant, Andrei Tarkovsky, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhang Yimou, and Zhang Yuan. He highly praises Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia and Hou’s City of Sadness, which he regards as the best film of all time. In another interview about his contribution of The Hand to the omnibus Eros, Wong points out that Antonioni’s The Eclipse taught him film protagonists do not have to be the characters, they could also be the space.3

  Cultural critics and fans admire Wong’s films because they appreciate the literary quality of the dialogues, internal monologues, and narratives. Unsurprisingly, Wong is an avid reader and his love of literature is expressed in his films and interviews. Modern Chinese literature inspires Wong to make films. Ashes of Time focuses on the early life of the two protagonists, Eastern Heretic and Western Venom, characters introduced in Louis Cha’s The Legend of Eagle-shooting Heroes. In the Mood for Love and 2046 were inspired by Intersection and The Alcoholic, written by Liu Yichang, a Hong Kong writer who was born and raised in Shanghai. In the Mood for Love and 2046 led Hong Kong scholars to revisit Liu’s works (Tony Lan 2004). The Hand in Eros was adapted from Shi Zhecun’s The Taxi Dancer in the Dusk.

  Of course, Wong’s repertoire of literary knowledge goes beyond modern Chinese literature. In a 1994 interview with Lin, Wong discusses books he read while growing up. Because his father believed one has to read all the classics during childhood, Wong began reading classical Chinese literature quite early on. To maintain a connection to his siblings who were stranded in mainland China during the Cultural Revolution, Wong wrote to them about world literature, such as Honoré de Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine as well as the works of John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. Later, Wong’s reading list expanded to include Japanese writers such as Yasunari Kawabata, Kobo Abe, Osamu Dazai, and Riichi Yokomitsu; modern Chinese writers such as Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Lu She, and Mu Shiying; and Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, whose Chronicle of a Death Foretold taught Wong about the possibility of nonlinear storytelling. Argentinian writer Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman and Heartbreak Tango are also some of Wong’s favorites.

  Wong Kar-wai pays a lot of attention to the music and sound of his films. Some Hong Kong New Wave directors insisted on using scored music in their work, but Wong uses both original film scores and ready-made music. He sees himself as a DJ for his films and sometimes incorporates his favorite music into his films. For example, Wong uses “Take My Breath Away” in the climactic scene in As Tears Go By where Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau kiss in a telephone booth. That song was selected because they needed a song, and Wong liked that one. Wong had not thought of a song for this scene. The use of Latin music in In the Mood for Love and 2046, reflects the music that he grew up listening to. His father was a manager of a night club and Filipino bands played a lot of cover version of Latin music. Although those films have ready-made music in them, Wong does not shy away from using original scores; however, choosing original scores can be uncertain. Wong believes that directors generally have a difficult time talking to musicians because they use different languages. His collaboration with Frankie Chan in Ashes of Time succeeded because he is both a musician and a director.

  In addition to picking music, Wong Kar-wai has a few people he works with regularly—most notably art director and editor William Chang and cinematographer Christopher Doyle. The trio’s frequent collaboration invites questions: To what extent is the director the only decisive author? Is Wong’s authorship always a co-authorship? Wong often talks about Chang and Doyle in the interviews and acknowledges their imperative roles in his films. In an interview with Ciment in 1995, Wong describes himself as a team leader who has jam sessions with Chang and Doyle. Because of their early and constant collaborations, Chang and Doyle understand Wong’s expectations and share his artistic visions.

  William Chang has worked with Wong since the filming of As Tears Go By. Better known as Wong’s art director, he is also the film editor (sometimes uncredited). Wong says of Chang, “He would not hesitate to cut a frame if it seems necessary to him, even if the décor had taken a lot of effort and time” (Ciment and Niogret 1997, 14). Hong Kong Film (2007) asked Wong whether a film’s aesthetic is Wong’s or Chang’s vision. Wong replied that he and Chang have very similar ideas and they often know what each other is thinking without telling the other his thoughts.

  Another long-time collaborator, Christopher Doyle, has been Wong’s cinematographer since Days of Being Wild. Wong seldom gives instructions to Doyle about lighting, color, or framing as he already knows what Wong wants. “I don’t even have to look at the video screen because, in following his movement, I know what his take will be like” (Michel and Niogret 1997, 10).

  In the two earliest interviews on As Tears Go By, Wong Kar-wai reveals his thoughts on filming process, such as the need for research and working with the same people regularly. At the beginning of his directing career, Wong told an interviewer, “I don’t believe in research because it is impossible to know someone’s story by just chatting [to them] for one day or so,” and he hoped he could “stay relaxed like Juzo Itami when making films” (Lok Ching 1988, 24, 25). Wong seemed to be very self-reliant—he scouted locations and did postproduction. At the end of his interview in 1988, Cheuk commented on that self-reliance, “Perhaps one day he would be the only person in the crew; this must give him an overwhelming satisfaction. And hopefully when he is a producer, he would suppress all his romantic thoughts and become sensibly realistic” (17). As Wong’s filmmaking career continued, he learned that research and collaboration are important. He did extensive research for The Grandmaster before starting to film. And beyond his work with Chang and Doyle, Wong has expanded his group of collaborators in the last few years even though he prefers to work with the same few people (Cheuk Chi 1988).

  The editors would like to remark on a number of translation choices in this concluding section. First, some of Wong’s answers are further explained in endnotes in recognition of the audience outside the Greater China region. The endnotes elaborate on Wong’s answers on a num
ber of issues, such as what he intended to do in a film, the work from which he adapted, historical events in Hong Kong and China, as well as relationship between the characters.

  Second, it has to be noted that Hong Kong Chinese speak Cantonese, a Chinese dialect that is very fluid. Most Hong Kong Chinese are bilingual, so they regularly use English words or phrases in daily conversation. However, these words are not used in the same ways as native English speakers. Some of the interviews from Hong Kong publications translated those English words to Chinese, but others kept them. In cases where English words and phrases appeared in an interview originally conducted in Cantonese, the editors kept and italicized those words. The English words might show how a local Hong Kong Chinese talks. The editors noted instances where the words are not used as a native speaker would. Concepts that are difficult to translate in English are presented in Mandarin pinyin in the body text and the meanings are stated in the endnotes.

  Third, names are presented in the following way: For Chinese and Korean names, the last name precedes the given name. For Hong Kong Chinese who have an English name, the English name precedes the last name. Sometimes, the English name and the last name precede the given name. For example, Maggie Cheung is well-known, so her Chinese first name is not used. However, Wong has worked with two famous actors both called Tony Leung, so we spell out their full names the first time they appear in an interview. For actors and crew members who are less well-known, their names will be presented in the order of English name (if any), last name, and first name (such as Barry Wong Ping-yiu). For mainland Chinese actors and crew members, their first names are not hyphenated. For Japanese and non-Asian names, the first name precedes the last name.