What is the film style of Wong Kar-wai?

The China film circle in the last two decades of the 20th century has contributed many excellent works and directors to the world film circle, among which Wong Kar-wai is undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy film writers. His six works so far have successfully constructed a unique "Wong Kar-wai-style" film aesthetics with extremely stylized visual images, post-modern expression techniques and a keen grasp of urban people's spiritual temperament.

Wong Kar-wai 1958 was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong with his family at the age of five. When he was studying graphic design in Hongkong Arts and Crafts School in his early years, he became fascinated with photography, especially the works of robert frank, henri cartier bresson and Richard Avedon, which had a far-reaching influence on him. 1980 After graduating from school, he entered the TV production training class run by TVB in Hong Kong to study script writing and film production, and then worked as a production assistant and screenwriter in a series of TVB TV dramas. 1982, Wong Kar-wai left wireless and officially entered the film circle. He first worked as a film screenwriter for nearly five years. 1987, Wong Kar-wai wrote the script of the series "Gangster Trilogy" for Tan Jiaming, the main director of Hong Kong New Wave movies. As a result, Tan Jiaming only adopted the last one and made it a "final victory". The first one became the script of Wong Kar-wai's first director's work When Tears Flowed in 1988. From The True Story of Teddy Boy by 199 1 to fallen angels by 1995, outstanding works are constantly emerging, which completes Wong Kar-wai's establishment and consolidation of his own artistic style. 1997, Wong Kar-wai finally won the best director award at Cannes Film Festival for his film "Spring Break", which was affirmed by the international film circle.

The uniqueness of Wong Kar-wai's films lies in his profound understanding of the city and times in which he lives, and in such a special external environment, he found an appropriate way to express his life experience. He is an artist who has the most keen insight into Hong Kong today: chungking mansions, which is crowded with foreign cultures, the dark blue sky cut off by high-rise buildings in Mong Kok, the apartment windows where airplanes can take off and land at Kai Tak Airport, and of course, roadside stalls, convenience stores and dark bars. With these symbolic elements, Wong Kar-wai created a century-end Hongkong. The most obvious examples are Chongqing Forest and fallen angels (of course, you can also regard the lonely and indifferent desert in Ashes of Time as a fabled modern city, and the rootless feeling in a foreign land in Discharge in Early Spring is also the reflection of another colonial city in a foreign land in time and space). Wong Kar-wai is an image presenter with strong "urban sensibility". The inorganic and symbolic nature of modern cities often makes his works hidden in form and style, or the style itself is sometimes his content. In the works of Xu Anhua and Tan Jiaming, the representatives of Hong Kong New Wave directors in the past, you can easily touch the "life realism" that supports the style, but you can't see it in Wong Kar-wai's films.

Wong Kar-wai's image world is a highly abstract reality, which is first manifested in his unique view of time when he narrates. The scenes in Wong Kar-wai's films are always in a state of suspension in the past and future of linear time. Although he constantly emphasizes the concept of time with details, such as the famous opening in The True Story of Teddy Boy, the repeated narration of dates in Chongqing Forest, and the solar terms often pointed out at the beginning of events in Time has passed, these stories he tells have no special time background. They may happen in the corner of the city every day, but they are just out of the city life. If you read Chongqing Forest carefully, you will find that some details of the two stories are actually intertwined. Wong Kar-wai used this game of hide-and-seek to create a * * * time effect, which not only dispelled the linear time concept of traditional narrative, but also highlighted the contingency and disorder of contemporary urban life, thus forming an existential spiritual implication.

The "abstract truth" of Wong Kar-wai's films is also manifested in his occasional fragmentary narrative structure and collage borrowing of popular symbols. If you are moved by Wong Kar-wai's works, it is not because of the impression of the whole world, but because of the atmosphere aroused by details, fragments and long-winded subjective monologues, which can make you feel the message. Atmosphere exists in the fragments, or mixed in the gaps between fragments, which is very similar to the abandonment of grand narrative and the preference for fine impression in postmodern aesthetics. In Wong Kar-wai's films, you can find a lot of symbols of popular culture, such as pop music, trademarks, cartoon toys and so on. , including his favorite characters, such as police, killer, punk, etc. Is actually a subculture symbol on the edge of the city. This kind of consumption code provided by the city, after collage by Wong Kar-wai, becomes like a mirror, reflecting the symbolic sensibility of modern society, which also makes his films extremely sensitive, fresh and thought-provoking.

Of course, when it comes to Wong Kar-wai's movies, you will immediately think of the trance-like and dazzling shocking shots taken by hand-held cameras, irregular picture composition and gorgeous but indifferent tone use. To a great extent, this trademark image is attributed to his long-term cooperation with production designer Zhang Shuping and photographer Du Kefeng. Today, you can see this Wong Kar-wai-style image in many Hong Kong independent art films and even some commercial films, but most of them are simply copied and lack of inherent creativity.

Wong Kar-wai's films have a cool and dazzling sense of form, but they are actually full of emotions: the irony of fast-food love in Chongqing forest, the delicate and tangled feelings in spring, and the scene of Takeshi Kaneshiro making ice cream for his father in fallen angels, which is unforgettable. A theme that has always been carried out in his works is: the desire for some kind of talk and communication between people and the impossibility of individual communication that is far stronger than this desire. No one in China's film circle can express this theme more delicately and vividly than Wong Kar-wai.

The film world in Wong Kar-wai is still developing. It is said that his two new films "In the Mood for Love" and "2046" will have a major breakthrough in style, so it is too early to draw conclusions about his achievements today. The famous British magazine "Sound and Painting" named Wong Kar-wai as the most important film innovator in the 1990s, with andre bazan in the 1950s and andy warhol in the 1970s before his name. When evaluating him, the magazine said: "Wong Kar-wai may not be the whole of future movies, but he did point out a direction for future movies."

Chronology of director's works:

With the passage of tears (1987)

The True Story of A Fei (1993)

The ashes of time (1994)

Chongqing Forest (1995)

Fallen angels (1996)

Spring is bursting (1997)

In the Mood for Love (2000)

2046 (2004)

The hand of love (2004)

Blueberry Night (2007)