Wong Kar-wai

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Wong Kar-wai (born 17 July 1958) is a Chinese film director.

Nonlinear narratives, atmospheric music, and vibrant cinematography with bold, saturated colors are all characteristic of his art films.

Wong, a central figure in Hong Kong cinema, has a huge influence on filmmaking thanks to his trademark personal, unconventional approach, and his films appear on top-of lists both domestically and internationally. Wong, a Shanghai native, and his family immigrated to Hong Kong when he was five years old.

He began writing for soap operas before moving to direct with his debut, As Tears Go By (1988).

Wong, who was very popular in Hong Kong, shifted away from the popular crime and action film style to more experimental filmmaking styles.

Days of Being Wild (1990), his first attempt to go this route, did not do well at the box office.

However, it received critical acclaim and was named Best Film and Best Director at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards.

Ashes of Time (1994), his next film, was met with mixed reviews due to its vague plot and atypical interpretation of the wuxia genre. Ashes of Time was time-consuming and left Wong feeling drained; he later directed Chungking Express (1994) with the intention of returning to filmmaking.

The film, which portrayed a more lighthearted setting, brought Wong to international prominence, winning Best Film and Best Director at the 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards.

With the 1997 film Happy Together, Wong consolidated his global fame, winning Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.

The 2000 drama In the Mood for Love, which is known for its lush graphics and subtle storytelling, exemplifies Wong's trademark filmmaking techniques.

2046 (2004) and The Grandmaster (2013) are two of his other books, both of which have received accolades and nominations around the world.

Early life

Wong Kar-wai was born in Shanghai on July 17, 1958, becoming the youngest of three siblings. His father was a sailor and his mother was a housewife. By the time Wong was five years old, the Cultural Revolution was reigniting in China, and his parents' parents had to relocate to British-ruled Hong Kong. The two older children had intended to join them later, but the borders were not established before they had a chance, and Wong did not see his brother or sister again for ten years. The family settled in Tsim Sha Tsui, and his father started working in Hong Kong as a nightclub owner. Wong, the only child in a new town, has felt lonely during his youth; he was unable to learn Cantonese and English, but he was only beginning to speak these new languages as an infant.

Wong was often taken to the cinema by his mother and introduced to a variety of films as an adult. "The only thing I had as a child was watching movies," he later said. He was an enthusiastic graphic designer at school and obtained a diploma in Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1980. After graduating, Wong was accepted into a television broadcasting course, where he learned the art of media production.

Personal life

Wong and his wife, Esther, have one child – a boy named Qing. The director is known for always wearing sunglasses, as James Motram of The Independent adds "to the alluring sense of mystery that swirls about him and his films."

Following his detention in connection with his 1977 sexual harassment arrest, who had been arrested while attending a film festival, Wong signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, which the petition said would jeopardize the art of film festivals as a place for film screenings to be shown "freely and safely," and that arresting filmmakers going to non-Western countries could open the door "for activities of which no one knows the consequences."

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Career

He began writing shortly, first with television series and soap operas, such as Don't Look Now (1981), before moving to film scripts. He worked as part of a team, contributing to a variety of genres, including romance, comedy, thriller, and crime. Wong had little enthusiasm for these early projects, described by film scholar Gary Bettinson as "occasionally diverting and mainly disposable," but he continued to write in 1980s scripts including Just for Fun (1983), Rosa (1986), and The Haunted Cop Shop of Horrors (1987). He has been credited with ten screenplays between 1982 and 1987, but he claims to have appeared on more than fifty shows without official credit. Wong spent two years writing the screenplay for Patrick Tam's action film Final Victory (1987), for which he was nominated at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards.

The Hong Kong film industry was at its peak in 1987, owing to a lot of growth and innovation. To sustain this success, new directors were needed, and Wong was invited to join In-Gear, a new independent company, and was given the opportunity to control his own images. At the time, Gangster films were still popular, particularly in the aftermath of John Woo's highly successful A Better Tomorrow (1986), and Wong decided to imitate him. Specifically, unlike Hong Kong's other crime films, he chose to concentrate on young gangsters. As Tears Go By, a film about a troubled youth who must watch over his hot-headed friend.

Since he was well-known with producer Alan Tang, he was given a lot of freedom in the making of As Tears Go By. His cast included singer Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, and Jacky Cheung. In June 1988, Tears Go By first appeared on televisions and was extremely popular with audiences. Many journalists have tagged Wong as part of the "Hong Kong New Wave." Although it was a traditional crime film, Wong "[stood] out from his peers by avoiding the kinetics of comedies and action films in favour of more fluid atmospherics, according to critic David Bordwell. On the initial release of Tears Go By, Western commentators were dismissive of the film's directors' Fortnight, 1989.

Wong decided against the Hong Kong cinema trend for his next film, opting for something indifferent. He was keen to make something special, and As Tears Go By made this possible. Wong's choice of the 1960s as a setting for a more personal project than his previous film, evoking an age that he recalled vividly and had a "unique feeling" for. Days of Being Wild focuses on a disillusioned young adult named Yuddy and those around him. There is no straightforward plot or apparent style, but Stephen Teo sees it as a film about the "longing for love" in the case. Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, and Jacky Cheung returned to Wong for his second film, while Leslie Cheung was cast in the central role. Christopher Doyle, who became one of Wong's most influential collaborators, was hired as cinematographer, shooting his next six films.

Days of Being Wild was supposed to be a mainstream film, but instead it was a character piece, more concerned with mood and atmosphere than plot. The film, which was released in December 1990, earned little at the box office and divided critics. Despite this, the film received five Hong Kong Film Awards and attracted some international attention. Days of Being Wild is referred to by film critic Peter Brunette as the first typical "Wong Kar-wai film" due to the experimental narrative, expressive camerawork, and themes of lost time and love. It has since been known as one of Hong Kong's finest launches. The director's first setback was disheartening, but he was unable to obtain funds for his next venture, a planned sequel.

With Jeff Lau in 1992, Wong formed Jet Tone Films, a struggling to find funding for his films. In need of more assistance, Wong accepted a studio's offer that he make a wuxia (ancient martial arts) film based on Jin Yong's popular book The Legend of the Condor Heroes. Wong was ecstatic about the prospect, claiming he had long wanted to make a costume drama. He deviated from the book other than three characters and began experimenting with many different narrative styles in 1992 to create what he described as "a very complex tapestry." Leslie, Maggie, and Jacky Cheung all-star cast members: Brigitte Lin, Carina Lau, Charlie Young, and Tony Leung Chiu-wai, the latter of whom became one of Wong's most popular collaborators.

Ashes of Time, a period of Song dynasty, concerns a desert-exiled assassin who is encountered by many characters when grieving a broken heart. It was a lengthy build, and it wasn't completed for two years, at a cost of HK$47 million. Audiences were pleasantly surprised by the film's vague plotting and atypical interpretation of wuxia upon its release in September 1994. Martha P. Nochimson, a film scholar, has described it as "the most unusual martial arts film ever made" as fast-paced action scenes are replaced by character rumors, and plot becomes secondary to the use of color, location, and imagery. As such, Ashes of Time was a commercial failure, but observers were generally appreciative of Wong's "refusal to be loyal to [the wuxia] genre." Doyle received several local awards and competed at the Venice Film Festival, where Doyle received Best Cinematography. In 2008, Wong reworked the film and re-released it as Ashes of Time Redux.

Wong took a two-month break during Ashes of Time's long-running production, while waiting for machinery to re-record sound for certain scenes. He was in a bad shape, under heavy strain from his backers and fearing for another failure, and so he decided to start a new one: "I should do something to make myself feel better about making films again." "I made Chungking Express, which I made like a student film," I wrote. The new scheme, which was scheduled and completed within six weeks, was delayed until Ashes of Time, two months before.

The Chungking Express is divided into two distinct parts – both set in modern Hong Kong and focusing on lonely policemen (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung Chiu-wai) who each fell for a woman (Brigitte Lin and Faye Wong). Wong was eager to try "two crisscrossing stories in one film" and performed spontaneously, filming at night what he had written that day. Chungking is much more amusing and lighthearted than the director's previous efforts, according to Peter Brunette, although the film does not use the same themes. It was named Best Picture at the 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards, and Wong received Best Director. Miramax acquired the film for American distribution, which "catapulted Wong to international attention," Brunette said. "While other films by Wong have more emotional resonance, Chungking Express does a striking triumph of style over substance."

Wong continued to work without break, expanding his Chungking Express's visions into another film about alienated young adults in contemporary Hong Kong. The original Chungking Express had been planned as three stories, but when time ran out, Wong created the third as a separate venture, including new characters. Both films were considered complementary studies of Hong Kong by Wong: "To me, Chungking Express and the Fallen Angels are a film that should not be three hours long."

Fallen Angels is primarily regarded as a crime thriller, and it includes scenes of brutality, but it is atypical of the genre and heavily embedded with Wong's fractured, experimental style. The loose plot of two distinct, closely related stories are woven into two separate stories, and frantic pictures dominate the tale. The film mostly takes place at night and explores Hong Kong's darker side, which Wong planned to balance the sweetness of Chungking: "It's fair to show both sides of a coin." Again, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Charlie Young were cast, but Leon Lai, Michelle Reis, and Karen Mok were among Wong's film debuts. Several commentators felt that the film was too similar to Chungking Express upon its release in September 1995, and others expressed their dissatisfaction with the decision, who said that Wong had become self-indulgent. However, critics would continue to examine the film as time progresses, and it has raked off a large fanbase, making it one of Wong's most well-known and iconic films. Fallen Angels has been consistently regarded as one of the director's most popular films, and it has also been lauded for its non-conventional, fragmented plot. "While not as groundbreaking as its predecessors, the film is still different and innovative enough to show [Wong's] presence on the international stage."

Wong's international fame grew steadily in the early 1990s, but his celebrity was "thoroughly solidified" with the 1997 romance film Happi Together (1997). The handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, which occurred the year, had influenced its growth. Wong had been expected to address the incident in his next film, but instead, he avoided the heat by shooting in Argentina. The handover was nevertheless vital: knowing that homosexuals in Hong Kong were in danger after 1997, Wong decided to concentrate on a man's love. As he found Hong Kong's previous LGBT films unsuccessful, he was eager to display the friendship as both normal and universal.

Happy Together tells the tale of a couple (Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Leslie Cheung) who traveled to Buenos Aires in an effort to save their marriage. As he felt he had become predictable, Wong decided to change the shape and style from his previous films. Happi Together is a marked departure from his earlier work: the plot is more linear and comprehensible, there are only three main characters (with no women at all), and although it does have Doyle's "exuberant" photography, it is more stylically restrained. The film was released in May 1997 to high critical acclaim after a lengthy production period – where a six-week shooter was dragged out to four months. It was part of the Palme d'Or Film Festival in Cannes, where Wong became Hong Kong's first recipient of the Best Director Award (an honor he denied): "It makes no difference, it's just something you can put on an advertisement."

Brunette opines that Happy Together marked "a new stage in [Wong's] artistic evolution," and that its successor – In the Mood for Love (2000) – showcases the director at "the zenith of his cinematic art" in his 2005 monograph. The new film came from a two-year film history. Many different titles and projects were considered by Wong before they developed into the final result, a romantic melodrama set in 1960s Hong Kong, which is seen as an unofficial sequel to Days of Being Wild. By concentrating on Shanghainese émigrés, Wong returned to the period that captivated him, bringing along his own experience.

Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai play the lead characters, who live in a flat in 1962 and discover that their spouses are having an affair; over the next four years, they will have a strong attraction. Teo discusses "typical Chinese reserve and repressed desire," while Schneider explains how the "strange relationship" is choreographed with "the grace and rhythm of a waltz" and depicted in "a dreamlike haze by an eavesdropping camera," according to Schneider.

The shooting lasted 15 months, with Cheung and Leung reportedly being pushed to their breaking point. Wong shot more than 30 times in the video, but only finished editing the film the morning before its Cannes premiere. In the Mood for Love received the Technical Grand Prize and Best Actor for Leung at the festival. The National Society of Film Critics selected it as the Best Foreign Film ever. After its introduction, Wong said, "In the Mood for Love is the most difficult film in my career so far, and it's one of the most important." I am very proud of it." It has been on lists of the top films of all time in subsequent years.

Although In the Mood for Love took two years to complete, its sequel, 2046, took twice as long. When Wong selected the film as a reference to China's "One country, two systems" promise to Hong Kong, it was actually conceived first. Despite the fact that his plans changed and a new film was created, he shot material for 2046, with the first video dating back to December 1999. After In the Mood for Love was complete, Wong immediately began with the scheme, according to news that it was becoming obsessed with it. "Before a behemoth, it was impossible to finish," Bettinson's account.

Chow Mo-wan, Leung's character from In the Mood for Love, is still 2046, but he's considered much cooler and more complex. Wong found that he did not want to leave the character and picked up where he left off in 1966; nevertheless, he wrote: "It's another tale, about how a man faces his destiny due to a specific past." His intentions were vague, and Teo said he established "a new record in his own style of free-thinking, time-extensive, and improvisatory filmmaking" with the project. Scenes were shot in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Macau, and Bangkok. As the protagonists of a science fiction book titled 2046, actresses Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li were slated to play the women who consume Mo-wan. The film premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, but Wong finished the print 24 hours late, and the film was not happy: he continued editing until the film's October premiere. It was Wong's most expensive and longest-running program to date. The 2046 Hong Kong commercial failure, but the majority of western commentators gave it high marks. The Boston Globe's Ty Burr described it as a "enigmatic, rapturously beautiful reflection on passion and remembrance," while Los Angeles Magazine's Steve Erikson called it Wong's masterpiece.

Wong made his debut on his next film with the anthology film Eros (2004), delivering one of three short films (the others directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Steven Soderbergh) based on the theme of lust. "The Hand" by Wong featured Gong Li as a 1960s call girl and Chang Chen as her potential client. Although Eros was not well-received, Wong's segment was still the most popular.

Following the difficult production of 2046, Wong wanted his next film to be a simple, enthralling experience. "It's a new world," He decided to make an English-language film in America and later justified it by saying: "It's a new landscape." It's a new name, so it's refreshing." Following a radio interview with Norah Jones, he immediately felt he needed to contact her, and she accepted her as the leader. Wong's perception of America was based solely on short visits and what he had seen in films, but he was keen to represent the country accurately. He co-wrote the film (one of the few times a screenplay was edited) with author Lawrence Block as a result. It was called My Blueberry Nights because it portrayed a young New Yorker who goes on a road trip after finding that her boyfriend has been unfaithful. Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and David Strathairn were among the celebrities she encountered.

In 2006, filming on My Blueberry Nights spanned seven weeks, with scenes in Manhattan, Memphis, Las Vegas, and Ely, Nevada. Despite Doyle being replaced by cinematographer Darius Khondji, the same Wong produced it in the same way as he would in Hong Kong, and the themes and visual style remained the same despite the fact that he was not changed by cinematographer Darius Khondji. My Blueberry Nights was Wong's fourth consecutive film to qualify for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May 2007. Despite the fact that he called it a "extraordinary experience," the film did not receive favorable critical feedback. My Blueberry Nights became Wong's first critical failure, with widespread concerns that the content was poor and the product was uneven.

Wong's next film was not released for five years because he was involved in yet another lengthy and costly production on The Grandmaster (2013), a biopic of martial arts instructor Ip Man. The idea occurred to him in 1999, but he did not commit to it until the completion of My Blueberry Nights. Ip Man is a legendary figure in Hong Kong, best known for training actor Bruce Lee in the art of Wing Chun, but Wong has chosen not to concentrate on an earlier period of Ip's life (1936–1956) that chronicled the tumultuous aftermath of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. He set out to make "a commercial and colorful film." In 2009, filming began after a lot of study and planning. After being trained in Wing Chun for 18 months, Tony Leung Chui-wai returned to Wong for their seventh film together. The "gruelling" operation lasted for three years, but it was interrupted twice by Leung fracturing his arm, making it the most expensive to date.

Bettinson's description of the Grandmaster as a mash-up of popular and arthouse styles, with style, pictures, and colors that match with Wong's earlier work. Three different versions of the film exist, as Wong kept it from its domestic release for the 2013 Berlin Film Festival and then for Weinstein's US distribution. The Grandmaster received twelve Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, as well as two Academy Award nominations (Cinematography and Production Design), and was described as Wong's most accessible film since his debut in Slant Magazine. Critics also approved the film, and it is Wong's most profitable film to date, with a worldwide gross of US$64 million.

When asked about his work in 2014, Wong told The Independent, "I'm only halfway done." In November 2016, he was announced as taking over a new film about Maurizio Gucci, the former director of Ridley Scott, but he denied being involved in the project in October 2017. Amazon Video announced a straight-to-series order for Tong Wars, a television drama directed by Wong, in September 2017. It focuses on the gang wars that occurred in nineteenth-century San Francisco, but Amazon later discontinued the series. The Asian media has announced that it will be called Blossoms and based on Jin Yucheng's book of the same name, which focuses on a variety of characters in Shanghai from the 1960s to the 2000s. Blossoms is also expected to be a Tencent web series, which Wong produces.

In May 2019, Wong announced the complete filmography of his filmography, which was released in 2021 in honor of the 20th anniversary of In the Mood for Love. L'Immagine Ritrovata, Cineteca di Bologna's film restoration laboratory, carried out the restoration. In March 2021, the Criterion Collection presented Wong's restored filmography as a box set in the United States.

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