Wong Kar Wai WTF?

Wong Kar Wai's new American film has been getting mixed reviews and doesn't seems as strong as his early work. Slate's Dana Stevens looks at My Blueberry Nights and Grady Hendrix reevaluates Wong Kar Wai's career and suggests he's been making the same film throughout his career and I think he's onto something. For me the pinnacle was realized in his masterpiece In The Mood For Love. But 2046 and My Blueberry Nights (from what I hear) seem like surperfluous variations on the theme of longing that should have been out of his system after making films like As Tear Go By, Days of Being Wild, Fallen Angles, and Chunking Express.

Stevens says:

I've never quite gotten the point of Wong Kar-wai, a cult Chinese director over whom many do, in fact, swoon. In the Mood for Love made me covet a closet full of custom-made cheongsams and a recording of Nat King Cole singing "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás," but I can't for the life of me remember anything about the story. Even so, that film had a resolute purity of tone that convinced you Wong knew exactly what he was doing. My Blueberry Nights feels much more hesitant and awkward, which may be a problem of translation (the script was co-written by Wong and crime writer Lawrence Block) or a function of Jones' first-time acting performance. There's a curious mismatch between the surface of the movie and what lies beneath it. Wong's technique is layered and detailed like a couture gown, but the story it hangs on is as generic as a seamstress's dress form.

Here's some commentary from Hendrix:

Even his collaborators were getting bored. "I feel that 2046 is unnecessary, in retrospect," Christopher Doyle said to the Guardian. "I think probably Wong Kar-Wai realized that somewhere, and that's why it took so long. You do realize that you have basically said what you needed to say, so why say more? I think you have to move on."

But Wong couldn't move on. He had always been fascinated with his childhood in 1960s Shanghai and Hong Kong, and his post-2000 work has been an extension of Days of Being Wild—replicating its cinematography, sets, costume design, and characters. His latest, My Blueberry Nights, is set in contemporary America and should have been a new direction. But it comes off as desperate, playing like a greatest-hits version of his '90s filmography performed by an all-white cover band. His visual motifs of clocks and countertops, no longer carrying the shock of the new, feel as empty and shopworn as fashion advertisements.

Comments

[Edward]

It looks like I started with the best by watching In the Mood for Love. I wish I'd started with one of his decent but lessser movies and worked up to that.

[MC]

I don't know, I think some people prefer Days of Being Wild or Fallen Angels over In The Mood For Love. Needless to say I liked both a lot even if they are basically the same movie.