“Some people make films as a way of providing answers. The way I make films is a way of posing questions” – Wong Kar-Wai
Chungking Express (1994) opens with a sequence of shots strung together, as a woman makes her way through narrow alleys in an Indian neighbourhood. We then hear Takeshi Kaneshiro’s voiceover – “You brush past so many people every day. Some you may never know anything about. But others might become your friend someday”. That forms the thesis of Chungking Express. A question to ponder, rather than an answer made explicit.
I did chance to watch Chungking Express earlier in the year. But, I stopped after a few sequences in the first narrative, realizing that the movie was something different. A rare one. Something I didn’t want to watch just for the sake of watching what was on my list of movies. So when I watched In the Mood for Love this week, I decided to continue on the Wong-Kar-Wai timeline. And every time I play a movie from the director’s stable, I secretly hope to be amazed. Chungking Express was not different.
The film opens with Zhiwu, a patrol cop chasing down an offender, as the voice-over continues. Something that I noticed immediately was the way the entire sequence was shot. There was a pervasive haze, almost as if the viewer was masquerading in a crowd under neon lights. If you have jostled through alleys, you must have felt a sense of narrowness. As you try to squirm your way out, you get stifled. This sense of defining the perspective for the audience, has been a big takeaway from Kar-Wai’s films. His methods aren’t conventional. And breaking the convention itself, gives you as a filmmaker, and your audience, a kind of high, like PC Sreeram says.
But technicalities aside, Chungking Express is most certainly a fascinating odyssey. In the first narrative, Zhiwu, on his birthday realizes, that his long-standing girlfriend May has finally dumped him, waking up from the false belief that it was all a joke that began on the April fool’s day. He buys a can of pineapples every day, because they were supposed to be her favourite snack. And all these cans are to expire on the first day of May, which is supposed to be Zhiwu’s birthday. If she doesn’t return, then just like the can of pineapples, their love too, will expire. The whole affair made me smile. All of us, at some point in our life, tend to be irrational. Without that irrationality, we as human beings, would lose our essence. That sense of surprise in each individual would then be smeared, and the lines between ourselves would become blurred. Some directors claim to take you into the minds of their characters, but I find myself questioning whether what goes on inside is premeditated rather than spontaneous. The spontaneity in thoughts and actions is what makes Kar-Wai’s films realistically exuberant.
The overarching theme of Chungking Express, like most of Kar-Wai’s films is loneliness. I watched the film through the night, and the effect is still tarrying within me. The walls of my room echo with California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and the Papas. The wish to move through the bustling streets of Hong-Kong is still at large. But I ask myself why? What was it in the film that really injects life into its viewers? Was it the way it was shot? Was it the revelling soundtrack? After retrospection, I zeroed in on the fact that I had indeed fallen in love with the originality of its characters.
After the opening sequence, we are introduced to an unnamed woman, who is shown to be a mule forwarder. She flaunts sunglasses in the dark, and wears a raincoat in constant trepidation of a downpour. She ponders whether she is being too cautious. When the mules under her responsibility vanish, she walks the length of Hong- Kong, searching relentlessly for them. She kidnaps a store owner’s daughter, demanding details, all the while threatening to kill his daughter if he doesn’t marshal the information regarding the disappeared for her. After she places the receiver down, she slips back into her seat next to the young girl, ordering another ice cream for her. It’s almost as if to say tenebrous as she may be, she still has a wonderfully human side. An hour later, she walks out, leaving the child to embrace her father.
There is this wonderful scene during the first narrative, when Zhiwu sits in a bar, goggling at the candescent glass of alcohol. He fondles the idea of falling in love with the first woman that walks through the door of the bar. When the woman with a raincoat walks in, he propels the idea into reality, and sidles up to her. After mangling the thirty cans of pineapples, the only thing on Zhiwu’s mind is pineapples. So to break the ice, he asks her, if she likes pineapple. Her response, although short, falls into the philosophical realm. As the night grows old, these two strangers , completely sloshed, find their way to a hotel room. What happens isn’t a tale of lust. The woman crashes on the bed, and Zhiwu helps himself to the chef’s salad. He is fascinated by this woman, and leaves her in the morning, to return home and begin jogging, as he theorizes, by jogging, he would leave no water in the body for the eyes to swell with tears.
The entire story, in both halves, questions these chance meetings. Some become intimate, some don’t. Having already crashed into each other a few nights before, Zhiwu and the woman met again at the bar. Purely coincidental as it may be, it makes one wonder, have I passed through someone I knew intimately now, without having crossed roads before? There is something fascinating about human ignorance. No, not ignorance. I’d rather term it as negligence. We seldom commit to our everyday life proactively. We are merely floating, not walking. We jostle through crowds, and any exchange of glares, is inadvertent. More nature than flaw I’d like to think, and none of us are at fault for it. Wong Kar Wai plays with the idea of an increasingly rushed world, with a burgeoning populace, and our relationships within it. We cross paths unknowingly, only to cross paths again consciously. Do we have deeply rooted relationships with people, whose presence slipped past our train of thoughts before?
As Zhiwu finishes his jog, and shuffles into his favourite snack bar, Midnight Express, ironically, the muse for the title of the film itself, he strikes up a conversation with the owner, who tells him to try and ask Faye, the new attendant, out on a date. And as he reels back, both of them crash against each other, separated by 0.01 cm as he says. And 6 hours later, she falls in love with another man. It reverts back to his first statement at the beginning of the film. Some chance meetings materialize, and some just don’t. They remain forever strangers to you. It’s alluding to the very fact that nothing in this construct, can we do pre-planned. Everything is still left to chance, and if you’d like to believe it, destiny.
Faye is portrayed by Faye Wong herself. Initially a singer, she did not have any acting experience whatsoever. This was her very first film, and I think, the astuteness in vision from Wong-Kar-Wai gets the best out of her. She was put in a role that required spontaneity more than composure. Behind the rind and guise, she is nervous and flustering. She tries to act uninterested, but you can always catch her eye gleaming through glass panes. It was a role that required her to be more herself than anything. I guess that’s why her character too, was named after her.
The second half of the film is my personal favourite amongst the two stories. Although, if I were to pick from a larger lot, I would still express my fondness for the titular characters of In the Mood for Love. But the second narrative in this film doesn’t fall short. It’s extremely magical in its own way. In the first scene of the second narrative, Faye is tending the counter, with a cop sporting badge 663, who patrols the vicinity, strolling up to her. California Dreamin is yammering on the stereo box. The moment is languid, and the cop asks her if she likes to listen to loud music. She assents, stating the loud music stops her from thinking too much. She avoids gazing at him, continuing to flit through the counter, jiving to the music.
The second narrative of the film is another angle on an exploratory odyssey of chance meetings. As anxious as she may seem, refraining from overt expressions, she houses a different kind of boldness. When Cop 663’s girlfriend leaves a letter with a key to his house stating that she is on travel and that they shouldn’t meet again, she takes the liberty to explore his house, strapping on gloves, and leaves traces, that someone would normally neglect within their own surroundings. As she makes the regular trip towards his house, she shrouds her diffident nature, and confronts him with an air of calmness as he patrols the block.
What makes Chungking Express distinctly different is how it is able to transport your presence, as close as possible, into the personal boundary of its characters. When Cop 663 returns home, he converses with his bar of soap, his towel, and huge teddy bear, entreating them not to lose heart because his former girlfriend let him. When Faye wrong-foots on one particular visit, the tap in the apartment overflows, and floods the hall. When the cop enters, he goes one step further in theorizing that even the apartment weeps in the absence of his partner. I couldn’t resist smiling.
On a side note, I started realizing the patterns in filming. In both In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express, the characters are placed within frames. The constant idea of placing the viewers in an outsider’s shoes, who is peering through a frame to see someone else’s life is a trope that is constantly employed by Kar-Wai. And directors are fond in revisiting their tropes. However, its appearance in this film is restricted, and it finds better footing in his future venture.
The naming of characters in both these films fascinates me. Cop 663, Mr.Chen, and even the absence of names, as in the case of the raincoat woman. Names don’t matter in Kar-Wai’s films. It’s the exploration of one’s inherent nature, and not his or her identity or social standing. I like the fact that the psychological expedition in his films take precedence to attributing events and actions to a name. It’s what happens within, not who it happens to. You would remember the character for their actions and thoughts, more than their names. It’s not to say that naming is wrong, it’s just that they don’t find some kind of space that is utilizable in Kar-Wai’s story. Maybe I’m the only one who sports that outlook, but my opinion still has room to change with further viewings.
After a few sequences, the cop discovers that she has been fiddling in his house, and returns the CD she had left in his apartment. Supposing the moment to be sanguine, he even asks her out on a date at a restaurant called California, which is again ironical, as Faye’s wish is to visit the real California. He arrives on time, and finds that she is a no-show. The owner of Midnight Express states that she left him a letter before departing in pursuit of her dream. He doesn’t read it and assumes that they both visited different California’s that night. He then recovers the letter after it is drenched, finding it to be some kind of sketched-out boarding pass, with the destination smudged by the water. A year later, Faye returns, and learns that the Cop has now bought the outlet. The moment is still, and he retrieves the boarding pass he has safeguarded for one year. They exchange a few inquisitive questions, and the film draws to a close.
For me, on a personal level, Chungking Express is a fascinating, exploratory tale of chance, intimacy and loneliness. Its ethereal background, the neon lights, and lonely cops will remain as old as May 1994 and not a month older. It doesn’t expire, unlike our relationships. And I hope, the same way Zhiwu does, that if the magic of film comes in a can, I hope with much fervor that its expiration date is 10,000 years.
Beyond Four Corners 