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Sad Putty

"Allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts beautifully to its new position."

- Humphrey Cobbler in Robertson Davies' novel Tempest-Tost

In the Mood for Love (2000), widely considered to be Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece, is the movie that cemented the director's reputation in the U.S. after Rolling Thunders' stateside release of Chungking Express (1994). Without wishing to suggest that In the Mood for Love's classic status is undeserved, I would like to suggest that the major reason that it is more critically revered in this country than any of Wong's other films is because it is the only one that is relatively straightforward in narrative terms. The film uses a fairly pedestrian tale of adultery to get at the very complicated idea that people tether themselves to routines that don't make them happy, experience pleasure only when stepping outside of these routines, and cannot make these rare pleasurable experiences part of a daily reality because they will ultimately turn into more routines to get tethered to.

Whereas other Wong films tend to pursue several interconnected storylines and employ multiple perspectives to suggest the universality of the aforementioned themes, In the Mood for Love restricts its narrative almost entirely to the secretive relationship between Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung), both of whom are involved in unsatisfying marriages. Thus, the film's success could be largely predicated on the fact that it is the simplest and most direct expression of Wong's long-running exploration of the places where bored isolationism meets romantic/sexual entanglement. Since In the Mood for Love's emotional and thematic core is found in its central relationship, Wong's characteristically broad stylizations (the time- and light-bending camerawork of Christopher Doyle, the elaborate cross-cutting of William Chang) seem like a backdrop rather than the place where the film's meaning comes from. The immediate pleasures of watching the special chemistry between Wong regulars Leung and Cheung are in the forefront of the film, whereas their great performances might have seemed like mere points of accessibility in Wong's more eccentric work. In other words, In the Mood for Love is easier to understand on a narrative level than Wong's other work, and therefore more likely to receive wide popular and critical recognition.

By no means do I want to imply that In the Mood for Love's relative simplicity makes it a minor work in Wong's oeuvre. That the film manages to be erotic without showing any sex is incredible and unprecedented, and, as indicated above, the film manages to say some very complex things using a (by Wong standards) minimum of means. But my point is that we shouldn't discount Wong's other more difficult films simply because they are less immediately emotionally accessible; or, rather, that our standards for what makes a film immediately emotionally accessible shouldn't be so strictly determined by narrative considerations - especially when a dense film like 2046 (2005) so expressively articulates a very specific (if hard-to-define) mood largely through formal means.

A sequel of sorts to In the Mood for Love, 2046 more or less picks up where the earlier film left off, but is quickly established as a very different movie. While it wouldn't be accurate to describe In the Mood for Love as a "neat machine" (to use Davies' term), it is very streamlined in comparison to 2046's "dustbin" of narrative and stylistic fragments, many of which only find their connection in the film's overwhelming moonlight melancholy. It is as if Wong has held up a prism to Chow's mournful farewell-to-love at the end of In the Mood for Love, and split it into all of the dreams, hallucinations, and nightmares that such an act could cause a human being to endure.

It probably isn't necessary to be familiar with In the Mood for Love to follow 2046, but the occasional references to buried secrets will have a special resonance to those who have experienced the depressing-but-beautiful ending of the earlier film. More importantly (or at least more interestingly), Su Li-zhen hovers over 2046 like a ghost, impacting the way that we interpret Chow's various flings, even though Cheung herself only makes a brief appearance (in which she does not interact directly with Leung's character). It is often unclear which female character Chow is talking about in his voiceover narration, since the images laid over the words don't always match up to our expectations for whom he is addressing. While this occasionally confused me on first viewing - and gave me a radically different experience of some of the scenes on a second viewing - I think that the film's jumble of female characters is both intentional and thematically appropriate. At most points in the voiceover, Chow could be talking about any of the women, all of them, or none of them. The women of 2046 may each stand in for the real and imagined characteristics of Cheung's character from In the Mood for Love, although the characteristics that each stands in for are elusive and may even change over the course of the film.

This elasticity of meaning is not exclusive to the female characters of 2046; as usual, Wong is able to absorb the eclectic narrative and stylistic sensibility common to Hong Kong filmmakers without causing jarring shifts in mood or sacrificing coherency. Wong's style is the cinematic equivalent to the childhood method of sticking silly putty to images, and then stretching the silly putty to create new visuals. Wong appropriates various elements of pop culture and remolds them into whatever shape is necessary to get his films' mood and/or themes across. (For example, 2046's occasional sci-fi interludes suggest the dreams of a person who has just watched Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira back-to-back).

Wong's borderline-surrealist approach to pop culture reveals his rarely-discussed affinities with David Lynch. However, where Lynch uses the more shadowy areas of American folklore to delve into the darkest recesses of the hetero male psyche (even when he is using female protagonists), Wong's appropriations are pan-national, which is part of the reason why he is able to feature believable depictions of gay males (1997's Happy Together) and straight females (most of his movies) and Lynch is not. Of course, believable characters are not always necessary for Lynch's aesthetic, but the point is that Wong's style is flexible enough to include both heavily stylized characters and more conventionally realistic ones. While the expansiveness of Wong's films means that satisfying conclusions are practically impossible (a small problem in 2046), this quality also allows Wong a great deal of leverage in regards to perspective and the placement of thematic weight. It is tempting to identify the recurring giggle of Zhang Ziyi's self-employed prostitute as the bearer of 2046's meaning, as it encompasses the mixture of sexiness and sadness that runs throughout the film. However, the film's actual significance - formed through an elaborate interweaving of formal tricks and brilliant characterizations - may be too mysterious and beautiful to put into words.

4.5 of 5

2046 will screen at the Union Theatre on Tuesday, April 18th at 7 p.m. As with all of the Asian Film Festival screenings, it is free.

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