Watching certain films makes one feel empty, maybe because it resonates with the emptiness already embedded inside them or maybe it becomes an outlet for a viewer to drain all their repressed emotions, however this cathartic experience doesn’t release the heaviness a heart holds rather consolidates it with the solace that probably this is the way of life and no matter what it goes on.
Chungking Express directed by Hongkonger auteur Wong Kar-wai feels like a letter for the heartbroken. Wai’s films generally include innovative slow-motion shots, handheld cameras and nonlinear storytelling. He is a poet at heart and his films explore themes of love, loss and memory with a melancholic tone.
Very few movies can stir one’s emotions in a way that they will always keep going back to a film whenever they want to share their melancholy, Chungking Express is an epitome of one such film. A film that is a saga of heartache mixed with angst and desire.
•Cultural Context•
Hong Kong New Wave, was a film movement that begun in late 1970s and lasted till early 2000s. The films of this era were characterized by synchronous sound, new editing techniques and filming movies on location. The movement was divided into two distinct periods- The First Wave and the Second Wave which begun in 1984. Wong Kar-wai belonged to the second wave of the movement which explored the different spaces of the city and its residents.
Hong Kong was a British colony for over 150 years from 1841 till 1997 which indicated that the city was going through a transition blurring the lines between imperialism and globalism. The city had been a temporal space where there’s always a coexistence between residents and immigrants from surrounding countries e.g. India, Taiwan and Philippines.
Kar-wai explored this very aspect in his film Chungking Express. Throughout out the film a lot of Indians were seen working in different professions, some among them involved in illegal business of drug peddling.
The opening sequence of the film captured a chaotic cosmopolitan, where the camera was continuously shifting from one subject to another who were in a mad rush. This signified the confusion and chaos that the citizens of Hong Kong underwent during that time due to the handover process of 1997 followed by the cultural shift.
Wai used stutter-step along with symbolic colours(such as the excessive use of blue colour to represent the state of loneliness and expiration), lights and exotic choice of music in order to depict the unsettling physical environment. Wong chose two locations for the film to depict the claustrophobic and mundane urban life- the first was the Chungking mansion characterized by its unhygienic milieu flocked with prostitutes, illegal immigrants, poor financial condition and uncertainty, the second was the mid-level escalator which played an integral role in the second narration.
•Content, Themes & Symbols•
The film opened with a monologue of Cop 223’s internal voice stating, “We rub shoulders with each other everyday. We may not know each other but we may be good friends some day”, The use of internal voice reflected the sheer loneliness surrounding the characters of Wong Kar-wai’s films. The four main characters in this film are the two cops(Cop 223 / He Qiwu & Cop 663) and the two women( woman in blonde wig and Faye). The narrative was split into two stories sharing common themes of loneliness, unrequited love, heartbreak and loss.
The first story revolved around Cop 223 and the blond wig woman- two people coping up with their personal and professional adversities of life. Cop 223 was enduring a hard breakup, he was in denial and therefore couldn’t accept his situation. Whereas on the other hand the lady in blonde wig was having a hard time surviving in the drug underworld after a smuggling operation went sour.
Cop 223 was mostly seen in his apartment gulping cans after cans of pineapple(since pineapples were his ex girlfriend May’s favourite) with the expiration date of 1st May, his birthday. These scenes symbolized his entrapment in the memories of his past , becoming more evident when he said, “If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries”.
However he breaks free from the shackles of his past when he had this chance encounter with the blonde wig woman on his birthday i.e. 1st May. Cop 223 chose alcohol as a medium to redeem his sorrows stating, “I will fall in love with the first woman who walks into the bar”. Seeing the blonde wig woman walking in the bar, Cop 223 took his chance however the lady wasn’t in a talking mood and therefore didn’t indulge much in the conversation, they shared a comforting silence just by sitting next to each other.
While Cop 223 in between went on blabbering about his ex girlfriend who loved pineapples, the blonde wig woman’s internal voice could be heard stating, “Knowing a person doesn’t mean you’ll be able to win his love. A person changes. He may like pineapples today. Tomorrow he’ll like something else.” Both of them embraced a change from here onwards in their life. They spent a night together in a hotel room, the woman exhausted from running fell asleep meanwhile He Qiwu aka Cop 223 ordered food and watched old movies.
The next morning cuts to glimpses of a shaky, handheld shot tracking Qiwu running across the road abiding his own words, “We’re all unlucky in love sometimes. When I am, I go jogging. The body loses water when you jog, so you have none left to tears.” In the multiple jogging scenes the camera featured Cop 223 in the center frame as he jogged, creating the image of him getting nowhere in his desperation to reach his ex girlfriend.
In the following scene Cop 223 was seen leaving the running field, which indicated that he was leaving his past behind. As the pager rang, Qiwu retrieving it, received an earlier message from a woman wishing him happy birthday.
The film then abruptly cuts to the drug baron, the employer of the blonde wig woman and the bartender who was the mediator. The baron heading outside for a drink and crouching down noticing something well this whole sequence acted as premonition of his impending doom. The camera suddenly shifted to the woman pointing a gun at him. A series of low frame rate blurred images unfolded next depicting scenes of chaos: people trying to escape the rain.
The woman in blonde wig finally dropped her wig and her real hair could be seen for a split second. This signified the woman freeing herself from the chains of her past. A few scenes back the drug baron was seen putting an identical wig on the bartender, the wig acting as a symbol of the baron’s current lover, simultaneously hinting his xenophobia.
The action of dropping the wig symbolized the freedom the blonde wig woman achieved by killing the baron. The following close pan shot of the tin can with the expiry date of 1st May 1994, beside the dying baron indicated the importance of this particular date- a recurrent trope of the narrative that marked a new beginning for both Cop 223 and the blonde wig woman.
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One of the main characters of second story was Cop 663, who was also going through a breakup with a flight attendant. It’s officially the season of heartbreak. He talked to the soft toys of his girlfriend which she left in his apartment and played with toy airplanes. Like Cop 223, Cop 663 was ensnared too in his apartment, in the mundane routine of his life.
His conversation with the inanimate objects clearly emphasized his loneliness and his ordering of same “chef salad” and “black coffee” signified his emotional stasis. His first encounter with Faye(the other main character of the second story) was nothing extraordinary except she was dancing on California Dreamin’ by The Mamas & the Papas.
Faye was a admirer of loud music since it kept her away from thinking much. The use of the particular song symbolized the Western influence prevalent in Hong Kong through the decades as well as indicated a cultural exchange between the English and the Chinese.
Faye instantly fell in love with the policeman who was too invested in his sorrow to acknowledge her feelings. The letter that his ex girlfriend(the flight attendant) left containing a set of keys to the officer’s apartment acted as a knot consolidating the relationship between Faye and Cop 663.
The most iconic scene that echoed the situation of the four characters from both the stories took place when the camera focused on Cop 663 sipping his coffee and Faye gazing at him, the frame consisting both of them are fixed at center and shot in slow motion and the juxtaposition of people in the same frame moving in different directions, signified passing away of time while they are stuck. Faye’s unrequited love for Cop 663 was evident in a sequence of scenes where the camera followed Faye entering into Cop 663’s house using the keys that his ex girlfriend left with the letter.
She renovated his entire apartment by changing the shabby, worn out objects. It felt like she infused life inside the dead apartment bringing the much needed change that Cop 663 needed. There were instances when Cop 663 nearly caught Faye breaking into his apartment but he could never find his way, a strange romance brewed between them and their relationship was starting to evolve when Faye left for California chasing her dreams, her wanderlust. Women in Wong Kar-wai’s films are either femme fatale or this unattainable figure for men who love them but can never be with them.
A year later Faye returned to Hong Kong as a flight attendant( her choice of same profession as Cop 663’s ex girlfriend reflected her desperation to be with Cop 663) and found Cop 663 in the buffet of her cousin where she previously worked. Her cousin sold the place to him and he was converting the place into a restaurant.
This time Cop 663 was listening to California Dreamin’ the same song that Faye was listening when they first met, the song previously foreshawdowed Faye’s abrupt escape to California and one year later the repetition of the same song indicated how Cop 663’s heart had been smitten by Faye, that he was enjoying the same music, she admired. He then invited Faye for the grand opening also asking her to send a postcard before she left. Before leaving Faye wrote in a wrinkled and water-stained napkin, presenting the boarding pass asking him, “Where do you want to go”, he replied, “Wherever you want to take me to”.
The ending of the film is both hopeful and ambiguous to some extent. Hopeful in the sense that maybe Faye and Cop 663 would end up together and ambiguous in the sense that it’s just an assumption we really don’t know for sure if they are going to end up together. This kind of maze and incomprehensibility is typical of a Wong Kar-wai film.
Being residents of this chaotic world, where we are all lonely in someway or the other, surviving through the chaos, films like Chungking Express pierces through one’s heart, because we see a part of us in the characters, we feel the uncertainties they undergo. Very few movies can stir one’s emotions in a way that they will always keep going back to a film whenever they want to share their melancholy, Chungking Express is an epitome of one such film. A film that is a saga of heartache mixed with angst and desire.