Last summer at the University of California, Los Angeles, Quentin Tarantino introduced the screening of Chungking Express, and admitted that while watching the film on the VCR, "I started crying unwittingly. ." He cried, not because of the sadness of the movie, he said. It's because "I'm so glad I love this type of movie so much." I don't have to take out my handkerchief once while watching a movie. I don't like the movie nearly as much as he does, but I get what he means: if you like the movie (the medium) itself more than the story, the actors, etc. on the surface of the movie, then the movie It's the type you would associate with. This is not a movie made for an inattentive audience, and after watching it for the first time, the movie probably won't reveal all the secrets, but the movie shows this: Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, following Jean-Luc Godard's style.
He is more concerned with the material of the story than the story itself. (Chongqing Forest) shows this by telling two stories that are similar but not clearly connected. He sets the story between fast food restaurants, big box stores, nightclubs, concrete plazas, and pop culture (one heroine wears a blond wig and sunglasses; another appears to be obsessed with California Dreams, which a generation of parents loved. ) in the world of Hong Kong built up. His visuals are often rhythmically transformed into film, video, and pixel images in slow motion, as if the extraordinary lives of the characters are in danger of disintegrating in the original channels of the film medium.
If you are in love with this style, if you think about Wong Kar-wai's style of filming, then "Chongqing Forest" is right for you. But if you want to follow the plot, you may feel lost. At the beginning of the film, we meet a policeman named He Zhiwu (Kin Chengwu), wandering around the city, lonely, depressed, and sad that a girl has left him. He gave himself 30 days to find another girlfriend, counting down the expiration time on the can of pineapple. A strange woman came into his life: this wig-wearing woman (Brigitte Lin) was engaged in the drug trade.
We were expecting their relationship to develop as in the traditional crime genre, but the film changed the story and introduced another pair. The first cop used to pass the time in a fast food restaurant, where he noticed a beautiful waitress, and in her heart there was only another cop (Leung Chiu Wai) who frequented the place. He paid little attention to her, but she got the keys to his apartment and slipped in while he wasn't there—cleaning the house, rearranging the room, even changing the labels on his canned food.
Both stories, shot in the form of a music video, tell of the lack of communication and loneliness in the metropolis, punctuated by a touch of Godard (icons, slogans, pop music) and Cassavetes (John Cassavetes). (improvised dialogue and scenes). What happens to the characters isn't really the point; the film only records their journey, not their destination. It is possible that all of them were led to despair, if not to the brink of collapse, by their contrived lives. Their lives seem cut off from authentic and believable experiences.
Quentin Tarantino loved the film so much that after he signed a contract with Miramax to set up his own projection company, the first two films he chose were Chungking Express and another Wong Kar Wai film. There are many interesting Hong Kong films, but Hong Kong films are mainly based on directors such as John Woo and Jackie Chan, who have commercial appeal. Wong Kar-wai is more of a literary film director, playing with films as a medium, with fragmented fragments of stories intertwined in plots, wrapped in pop culture and interpreting them.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, when Godard was on the rise, there was an audience for this style, but there were also film societies and repertoire theaters that created and nurtured such audiences. The younger generation of audiences who go to the cinema today, whose tastes are limited by the narrow choices of videotape shops, are no longer as curious and as broad as they used to be. They may just be a little confused about "Chongqing Forest" without shouting. It should be pointed out that no matter what happens, watching a film like "Chongqing Forest" is more of a brain experience: you like it because of your understanding of the film medium, not "Chongqing Forest"'s understanding of life .
Also, if Tarantino saw the box-office numbers, he might cry one more time.
Annotation:
John Cassavetes, born in New York, USA, is a famous experimental film director. There are often puzzling improvisations in John Cassowitz's films. Take the original version of "Shadow" as an example. Cassowitz allowed the actors to add their own interpretations to the characters during filming. People are confused. Cassavetes has also been controversial, with people commenting that his films are almost unscripted. But in fact, Cassowitz's script is very detailed and thorough, and improvisation is just the style he insists on. Another major feature of Cassavetes' films is that they are all shot in a documentary style. (The annotation comes from the entry "John Cassowitz" on Time.com.)
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