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When one looks over the body of films made in Hong Kong leading up to 1997 one can detect certain reoccurring themes and emotions of abandonment, change and expiration. It is therefore not that presumptuous to link these motifs with Hong Kong’s tricky break up from English rule, and its consequential return to Chinese communism. Most Hong Kong films from this period, especially the Tsui Hark engineered New Wave in the late 80’s, manifest this post-1997 consciousness in rather varied ways. Wong Kar-Wai’s films are excellent examples of how the 1997 question has attempted to be answered, exploring the issues it arises with overt subtlety. The pinnacle of his wonderful kookiness is 1994’s ‘Chungking Express’.
As 1997 approached, Hong Kong’s residents had to face how their culture would be threatened by the return to Chinese power. Although Hong Kong would not be fully under Chinese reign until 2046 (another date Wong Kar-Wai confronts in the originally titled, futuristic love story, ‘2046’ (2004)) because of a 50 year transition period, 1997 marked the beginning of their end. This raised the questions: what is Hong Kong’s national identity, and will it ever be the same after Britain’s lease expires?
Britain’s seizing of Hong Kong in 1841 after the first Opium War began Hong Kong’s unique status as a hybrid culture. In 1898, Britain secured Hong Kong on a 99-year lease from China. Since then Hong Kong had been able to entertain the conflicting, dual cultures of China and Britain, a mixture of Eastern tradition with Western practices. The threat of losing this American-Chinese lovechild culture, combined with the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, influenced the Hong Kong New Wave in the mid-80’s to make films which subconsciously or consciously dealt with 1997. In effect the directors dealt with subjects they felt were in danger of being lost.
‘Chungking Express’ itself is split into two halves, both involving policemen who have been left by their girlfriends. The first half of the film centres on Cop 223’s (Takeshi Kaneshiro) method of healing his broken heart. As his ex, named May, left him on April 1st, he believed it to be an April Fool’s joke. Rationally, he decides to eat a tin of pineapples (each with the expiry date of May 1st – his birthday) every day until May 1st. Upon realising their love has expired, on April 30th, he goes to a bar to find new companionship. He here meets a woman in a blonde wig, who is in the bar because her drug smuggling operation had just failed. After wearing her down, they retreat to a hotel room where she falls asleep. Cop 223 leaves early the next day (his birthday) to jog. Once he receives a birthday text message from the woman in a blonde wig, he realises he is now over May. The woman in the blonde wig then finds the man who set her up and kills him.
At this point the second half of the film begins, this time centring on Cop 633 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and a girl called Faye (Faye Wong). Cop 633 reveals to his regular snack bar’s owner that he has recently been left by his flight attendant girlfriend. Faye, a worker at the snack bar, overhears this and begins to fall in an odd form of love with him. She copes with this silent love by sneaking into Cop 633’s apartment whilst he is at work and slightly changing his living conditions; the occasional new bar of soap; replacing old cuddly toys with new ones; dusting his cupboards. Cop 633 slowly realises what Faye is up to and invites her on a date. She agrees when asked but decides to travel the world (as a flight attendant) for a year instead of meeting with him. She returns a year later to find that Cop 633 has bought the snack bar she worked at and that he wants to be with her.
The initial impact of that summary is assumingly, dates, numbers, abandonment, and dates. The focus on April and May as months and names, the cop’s numerical identities and the focus upon expiration as a defined and repeated date all stand out in ‘Chungking Express’ as examples of consciousness towards 1997. The most prominent example of this is Cop 223’s test to see if May leaving him was merely an April Fool’s joke. As April progresses, Cop 223 finds it increasingly difficult to find tins of pineapples with the expiry date of May 1st. On April 30th he argues with a shop keeper over the lack of May 1st expiring pineapples on his shelves. He goes on to say how the shop keeper should maybe consider the pineapple’s feelings a little bit more, rather than casting them off while they are still ripe. The overtly obvious nature of this subtlety becomes amusing to watch as Cop 223’s pineapple anger is an allegory for his own, unrequited love. However, Cop 223’s abandonment exists on another level of national interpretation. Cop 223’s rant at the shop keeper – a man who can do nothing about the expiration date of pineapples – may be anger towards the forces that are abandoning Hong Kong. Wong Kar-Wai has here created an almost metaphysical allegory.
However, the more important aspect in these two stories of lost love is how both Cops overcome their heartbreak and begin to lay the foundations for a new life, possibly even a new love. The lack of complete consolation may leave the ending ambiguous, but the feeling of hope is undeniable. This is most present in Cop 633’s apartment. Mise-en-scene is used to show how change may not be all that bad. At one-point Faye is literally dusting away the cobwebs in the apartment, symbolising an upcoming freshness. More interestingly though is how she swaps a standard cuddly toy, culturally anonymous, with an oversized Garfield one, albeit not the icon of Western capitalism, but a strong enough symbol, nevertheless. By embracing Garfield as a cuddly toy, Wong Kar-Wai is embracing Hong Kong’s American heritage. When one looks around at ‘Chungking Express’’ scenery, even more signs of Hong Kong’s cultural hybridity are evident. The huge McDonald signs and fish and chips are paradoxical against the blurry Cantonese neon signs.
Whereas Wong Kar-Wai’s portrayal of post-1997 consciousness is restrained and offers hope and optimism for the future, other directors concerned with the subject have reacted slightly differently. If Hong Kong is a child of divorce from its parents, the Western world and China, Wong Kar-Wai is the cutely inward girl to John Woo’s aggressive, attention seeking boy. John Woo chooses to focus on what will be lost, often having a central character, who embodied these values, dying at his film’s conclusions.
Hong Kong’s mixture of cultures is also seen in Wong Kar-Wai’s direction. By contrasting slow motion with undercranking techniques the film entertains a varied pace, making it difficult to give ‘Chungking Express’ an overall speed. The undercranking is present when the woman in a blonde wig shoots the man who set her up in the drug deal. As the camera captures each frame at a rate much slower than it will be played the series of images appears to blur. This gives a frantic and disorientating vision to the chase scene after the shooting, but also serves as a reflection on 1997. The time-lapsing present in undercranking portrays the uncertain and inevitable future that Hong Kong faces.
This is contrasted with the slow motion used during Cop 633’s visits to Faye at the snack bar. The speed of the shot is extremely reduced here, making Cop 633’s second long movement to the counter last for ten. Narratively, the slow motion does not seem to serve any purpose. There is no need to use slow motion here as the action is insignificant and the emotion between the two characters is not particularly emphasised. The positioning of the camera is also strange as it is across the street to the snack bar where pillars and people often block the way. After the rapid nature of the undercranking, this slow motion allows the viewer, and possibly Wong Kar-Wai himself, to reflect upon what is happening in the now. The screen shows Hong Kong for what it is, and how it may be missed in the future.
Maybe Wong Kar-Wai is not trying to explore the question of Hong Kong’s national identity here, but rather answer it. The casting of Takeshi Kanershiro, a well-known Hong Kong pop singer, to play Cop 223, and Tony Leung, another Hong Kong icon, to play Cop 633 hints that Wong Kar-Wai is showing his audience this is Hong Kong. ‘Chungking Express’ may possibly be the documentation of a pre-1997 Hong Kong for future reference, preserved in celluloid for the post-2046. Hong Kong is the mixture of not only the cultures around it, but also the Western cultures which their hybrid status allowed them to inherit. Hong Kong is not British, American, or Chinese; instead it has mixed its diverse cultural influences into their very own hybrid culture. Wong Kar-Wai’s films show his love for this Hong Kong and how he fears yet hopes for the future.
Country: Hong Kong
Budget:
Length: 102mins
Filmography:
‘2046’, 2004, Kar Wai Wong, Arte
Pub/2008
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