Author: Hua Er Dao
"If memory is also a can, I hope this can will never expire, and if I have to add a day, I hope it will be 10,000 years."
Yesterday was the 26th anniversary of the release of the movie "Chongqing Forest". This is one of the lines, but in comparison, we are more familiar with the ridicule in the nonsensical movie "Journey to the West":
"If God gives me a chance to come back, I will say three words to that girl, I love you. If I have to add a deadline to this love, I hope it will be 10,000 years."
As we all know, Wong Kar-wai's films usually do not have scripts, and the progress is extremely slow. Sometimes a film takes seven or eight years, and most of the material will become waste. At this time, he needs his friend Liu Zhenwei to help him spread the cost of a nonsensical movie of the same team.
But "Chongqing Forest" is an anomaly. This film was shot very quickly and released quickly. It only took two months in total.
Compared to other finely crafted creations, it's like a chef's salad, quick, cheap, perishable, but "the moment."
It accurately recorded the confused state of Hong Kong before the handover in the early 1990s, so it is regarded as a classic by many fans and friends.
Why did you think of making such a movie?
In 1993, the Hill Road Elevator in the mid-levels of Hong Kong was officially opened. Photographer Du Kefeng happened to live nearby, and the window of his apartment just faced the elevator.
During the day and night, looking at the busy lives of those hurried urbanites is very different from what his old friend Wong Kar Wai saw. So, they came up with the idea of making a movie that showed Hong Kong's "day and night".
The outline written by Wong Kar Wai was originally planned to shoot three stories, but due to the accidental overplay of Tony Leung and Faye Wong , the material was too long and reluctant to cut it out, so the original three-stage film was forced to throw out one section and take the film. It came out as a single production of "Fallen Angels" .
It can be said that "Chungking Mansions" and "Fallen Angels" are like twin sisters, the first and second episodes of the same movie, but the latter's reputation and influence are not as great as the former.
"Chongqing Forest" has nothing to do with Chongqing, it refers to "Chungking Mansions". This is a modern building in reinforced concrete style on Nathan Road.
In the 1920s and 1950s, the land at the foot of the building was called "Chongqing Market". In 1961, the market was demolished and converted into a commercial building, retaining the word "Chongqing", and the building was called "Chongqing Mansions".
This building, according to the original plan, was supposed to be a high-end place, but it will start from the late 1960s when it evolved into what it is today.
At that time, some people who provided sex services moved in here. Affected by the Vietnam War, a large number of American soldiers were stranded in Hong Kong, and Chungking Mansions became an important check-in place for them to have fun. Ordinary citizens couldn't bear the disturbance and moved out one after another.
Gangs and illegal immigrants from all over the world soon took over the building. Cheap shops, backpacker hotels, and cheap food stalls fill the building.
The space here is small, rotten and chaotic. In the era of no cameras, the crime rate was extremely high at one time, and it is often regarded as a miniature version of the Kowloon Walled City.
Shooting a movie here, of course, involves taking certain risks.
Not to mention the occlusion of space, the mixed environment brings unexpected troubles to the shooting work. For example , a chasing scene of Brigitte Lin in the building was filmed by Wong Kar-wai and his team, and was even chased and intercepted by the Indian police.
Lin Qingxia 's character is a killer, and she always wears a pair of sunglasses in the film. Regarding this pair of sunglasses, many people use it to ridicule Wong Kar-wai, who always wears sunglasses.
In the movie, Brigitte Lin's lines are: "I also wear sunglasses when I wear a raincoat, because you don't know when it will rain and when the sun will come out in this world."
And Takeshi Kaneshiro's guess about her wearing sunglasses is "there are only three possibilities: one, she's blind; two, she wants to pretend to be cool; three, she's broken up and doesn't let others know that she has cried."
The real reason is the second, she wants to be cool.
In the original setting, this character was a former star, with many fancy dresses, and blonde sunglasses were just one of many looks, but Wong Kar-wai felt that it was very stylish to wear it, so he continued this dress as much as possible.
Besides Chungking Mansions, another important location in the film is the home of photographer Du Kefeng himself . In the movie, this is the apartment where the policeman 663, played by Tony Leung, lives.
The story that takes place in this apartment is, strictly speaking, the closest to the original design intent.
The policeman Tony Leung would leave the apartment to work during the day, and the girl who works in the chef's salad shop, played by Faye Wong, would sneak in, like a snail girl, to clean the room for the person she likes, talk to his plush toys, and talk about herself. Secret love.
It perfectly fits the original intention of "day and night".
And from the window of this apartment, you can clearly see the mid-level escalator, which is also shown in the movie.
The strong breath of life conveyed by the apartment stems from the fact that it is a real human dwelling.
Du Kefeng said in an interview that "everything here is used", sofas, sheets, tableware, these are his things.
"I love the player, he's been with me for four years."
The most classic scene in the movie is the scene of Tony Leung drinking coffee in front of the chef's salad booth.
In this scene, the actors move at a relatively normal speed, while the surrounding environment is bustling with pedestrians. Light and shadow float, creating a strange romantic feeling.
Many people asked Wong Kar-wai how to do this? Because in 1994, the special effects technology was not advanced enough to adjust the speed freely.
Wong Kar Wai's explanation is also straightforward.
There are really no special effects used, this is a performance that is all done by human beings.
In fact, the picture you see is deliberately speeded up. When shooting this clip, the actor played "drinking coffee" at a slow speed, while the pedestrian in the foreground walked at a normal pace, and the speed was increased later to achieve such a magical effect.
Two important images appear in the film - canned pineapple and chef's salad . One of them is easy to preserve, the other is perishable, and their common feature is that they are all cheap and convenient.
This is like the life of an urbanite, greedy for speed and convenience, some things have a longer lifespan, and some things have a shorter lifespan, but they will eventually expire.
"The days on the can tell me I don't have much time left."
The film was shot in 1994, and the date on the can is May 1, 1994.
On December 19 of the same year, the countdown to the return of Hong Kong was erected in Tiananmen Square. Even after 100 years, it will eventually expire.
Many Hong Kongers are bewildered by the impending transformation. Some people choose to escape, and the immigration boom comes one after the other. In the first year after the handover, there will be a financial tsunami sweeping across Southeast Asia, which no one knows at this moment.
But Wong Kar-wai thought: "There will be interesting things, I like to stay."
He said: "Mainlanders are different from Hongkongers, mainlanders will plan what they want, but Hongkongers are very flexible, I think everyone will connect with others at a certain time, but I think we will shoot more movie of."
Ten years later, in 2004, Chungking Mansion was renovated and more than 200 cameras were installed inside, which alleviated the original chaos.
Even outside the law is slowly changing. No one can predict the future, and nothing will stay the same. A lot of things are random and we can only live in the moment.
If life is a chef's salad, then movies are more like canning, which preserves short-lived perishables for longer.
"Chongqing Forest" is such a can, which has sealed the past life and a little trivial moment for a long time in 1994. Even if it is opened today, it is still a fresh and refreshing "taste of life".
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