Fallen Angels (1995): A Wong Kar-wai feature on the heaven and hell of Hong-Kong. Hell, mostly.
(Trailer Link given at the end of the article.)
Written, Directed & Produced by: Wong Kar-wai
Starring: Leon Lai, Michelle Reis, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung, Karen Mok
This
particular world of Hong Kong is presented in a fast paced manner. The world
flashes past the eyes of these leading characters and they absorb only a few
moments of sensory pleasure. Like other Wong Kar-wai films, this one is also
poetry portrayed cinematically. There is a deep study of a few characters.
Their idiosyncrasies make up for the bulk of the movie. It is comedy, tragedy,
action, and love, all bound along the streets of Hong Kong.
The characters live with fatalism. Their hearts are drenched with the acid rain
of loneliness. So much so, that the burns have reached their minds.
Love, is state of being which only the comfortable and satisfied can handle. But, for the ones whose battle with their minds and events never ceases, they fail to move beyond infatuation. The characters here are bound in the same maze trap. Beers, fights, cigarettes, and sex, do not offer them the peace in their minds and bliss in their bodies. They get high on their supply and lose the delicate life to just the passing of time. If only they could gather the understanding from the motorbike rides in the night, that they have to give in completely to the darkness, and light will embrace them on their own. Letting everything go is the hardest and cruelest, yet the truest sense of faith.
The actors embody, embrace and sincerely live the characters. The pain, smiles, mania, delirium, and action seems to be rooted deep in them. To us, they appear and feel like infatuation ridden, love deprived and phased out of life. Just and how the characters were meant to be. Cult classic stuff.
There are cool moments in the film. The suave in the walk, the close encounters in the shoot-out scenes, accompanied with a groovy background music gives an edge to the action sequences. This groovy music is introduced when the characters, who otherwise pass through life in a dazed and confused manner, feel something, feel a rush.
Against the intensity of experience in these scenes, the comedy in other
moments make you taste a wide variety of contrasting emotions. It is a ride
that is rarely felt in one single movie experience. It is not like most of the
films where one single emotional build-up leads to a catharsis, and after the end
of the film there are running thoughts and matters to discuss. At the end of
this film, the viewer ends up with silence. Or maybe, it is just me and a few
others with a similar temperament, who get silent after an emotionally rich art
experience.
Writer and director, Wong kar-wai presents the surrounding world of these
lovelorn characters in a haze, while keeping the focus on their feelings and
actions. Suffering from an urban loneliness, they have but a few words to say
to each other. He chooses monologues to have their inner thoughts expressed out
to the viewers, as we might be the only ones ever in their life to listen
intently. These monologues are not the shortcuts to hurry the sub-plots, as
used by many filmmakers, instead they compliment the overall plot by giving a
detailed character study.
The city
of Hong Kong is treated like a character. Where on one hand, the city is
bejeweled with bright lights and smooth roads, on the other hand, it has dull
rooms with tired occupants whose paths in life are uneven, and quite possibly
extending to doom. The city on one side supports families with members of
diverse ages, while on the other side it has citizens who try hard for
sustaining a family having just one other occupant.
The contrast in the sub-plots of the film stems from the contrast in life that
the city supports. Wong kar-wai's Hong Kong has people all over it, yet the
struggle for individuals to form their own supportive communities is huge.
From the perspective of two characters (hitman and his partner), the city is shown to move with a blur, like the sight of a traveller outside a fast moving bus. We see colors losing their boundaries. Lights merging with the darkness.
For the remaining two lead characters (mute and his crush), there isn't such blurred aspect in Hong Kong. For them, the tragedy of life becomes a joke. For them, humor isn't a choice but a need to bear their heaviest burden and stay alive.
To
be able to see these characters of faded spirits, the lights are kept jazzy,
with a neon feel, in nearly the entire span of the film. Ultra wide angle
shots, nearing to fish eye lens image in many scenes, is used to show their
lives visually.
Imagine you are watching a person, standing outside the door, through a
peephole. That's how we encounter many scenes in the film. It's as if Wong
Kar-wai did not want them to be seen through a regular perspective. Instead,
they were shown with this ultra-wide distorted perspective, similar to the
nature of their lives.
Coupling with this meaning, is also the aesthetic experience this fish eye lens
type image gives. Visual aesthetics matter a lot to this director, and Fallen
Angels time and again give those screenshot worthy moments.
The camera is deliberately kept tightly close to their faces, pulling us viewers close to their distorted lives.
There are many wonderful, creative devices used by writer-director in the storytelling in Fallen Angels. The one particular incident in the film (no spoiler for plot reveal) which moved me was the use of a video camera by a mute character to record himself impromptu while doing a lip-sync to a dramatic song about heartbreak.
We see his eyes on the TV. The eyes, which emote his ache.
Wong
Kar-wai uses this creative element to show us this mute character’s heart ache.
The build-up of the mute guy's love story along with his disability of not
being able to speak, combined with his humorous ways to deal with life, and
ending with this scene... this alone makes Wong kar-wai a genius in
storytelling.
It had been a long time since I watched a Wong kar-wai film. While writing this review, the song California Dreamin' used in his other film Chungking Express (1994) plays in my mind. Perhaps because both these films offer a deep artistic exploration into the psychological and sociological dimension of an individual surviving in a concrete jungle.
(Note: the images used are still from Fallen Angels (1995) by Wong Kar-wai. A Jet Tone Productions film.)
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