Photo from Wong Kar-Wai’s location scouting book for his film, My Blueberry Nights
Did you know that Happy Together was suppose to start with Tony traveling to Argentina because he’s told that his father is in trouble there? Apparently his father was there looking for his one-time lover, who is a man. Upon arriving in Argentina, Tony meets Leslie.
As he leans toward the wall, his mouth murmuring inaudibly into the crevice, the camera glides around him, and the film’s haunting theme song fills the otherwise silent space around him. The final act of a film built on lingering, lavishly layered images, and an equally enchanting soundtrack, then has Mr Chow walk briefly through one of the temple’s hallways, only to exit, in shadow, both the frame and what remains of the narrative through a doorway. After Mr Chow’s exit from the film, the camera holds the frame-within-a-frame image of the temple at dusk, seen through the very doorway Mr Chow just passed through. In the subsequent set of images the camera travels aimlessly, unhurriedly across the now vacated premises: through its hallway interiors and around the age-old exteriors, briefly pausing at the now mud-and-grass covered hole where Mr Chow has left his secret, sealed forever. Thus, quite unexpectedly, Angkor Wat becomes a character in the film. More precisely, the film’s protagonists – now absent from the screen – are upstaged by its passageways and the stone structures that have, for the most part, withstood the test of time. (via Senses of Cinema)
The Grandmaster, directed by Wong Kar-wai
At the end of the film, we see Tony visiting Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. There, he finds a hole in the ancient temple’s walls, puts his mouth to the hole, and whispers into it. We don’t know exactly what he says, but we can guess. His remorse. His guilt. His loneliness. His sorrow.
“Do you know what people did in the old days when they had secrets they didn’t want to share? They’d climb a mountain, find a tree, carve a hole in it, whisper the secret into the hole and cover it up with mud. That way, nobody else would ever learn the secret…”
The films of Wong Kar Wai are often about people who feel very intensely, who love and hate with a fiery passion that bursts out in the garish, expressive aesthetics of the films. In Happy Together, Wong examines this kind of passion especially intimately, through the gay relationship of Ho Po-wing (Leslie Cheung) and Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung), who visit Argentina together as a way to reinvigorate their on-again-off-again relationship, but wind up instead merely replaying the same troubles they always have. The film is a powerfully focused examination of this disintegrating, up-and-down relationship, capturing the violent emotions, the heartbreak, the longing and desire, and the fleeting moments of happiness that are like the glue holding this fractured romance together, momentarily bridging the gulf that’s widening between these two men. (via)
One of my favorite movie endings of all time. I love that shirt Takeshi Kaneshiro is wearing. The music works surprisingly well.
The sports section, which Faye Wong uses to make a paper airplane.
