Today, we began a new unit on Wong
Kar Wai, a famous Hong Kong Film maker. To kick-start the unit, we watched one
of his short films, The Hand from the
Eros series. While watching, I noticed
the following aspects:
·
Paintings,
interesting source of color
·
Plays
with lighting – bloom
·
Uses
stills
·
The
sick person is never seen
·
Many
different symbols – flowers, diamonds, mirrors
·
Face
avoided sometimes, focused sometimes
I
wasn’t really sure what to be looking for in Wong Kar Wai’s films, which is why
I found Ms. Wong’s presentation on it so informative. From it, I learned of a
few reasons why Wong Kar Wai is so difficult to “get”, how Wong Kar Wai makes
special use of cinematography in his films, some characteristics and styles
specific to Wong Kar Wai, and the themes most used in his films.
Many
don’t “get” Wong Kar Wai, because:
·
His
movies are in the grey area between a feature film and a montage;
·
The
story lines are vague – nothing is spoon-fed to the audience, they must come to
their own conclusions;
·
Characters,
both main and supportive, come and go indefinitely;
·
Cinematography
is artistic, but may make viewing the events difficult;
·
Makes
the audience aware that they are watching a film;
·
Makes
audience active participants by making them come to their own conclusions
·
Uncommonly
number of voice-overs
·
Oddball
images
·
Subverts
genre conventions
·
Deliberately
urges viewers to consider the beauty of the everyday
Themes
often apparent in Wong Kar Wai’s films:
·
Unrequited
love
·
Being
alone
·
Preoccupation
with time and memory
·
Importance
of character individuality
·
Romantic
love as national identity
·
Hong
Kong’s history
As
mentioned before, this lesson was extremely informative, and by playing a
spectator role, I was able to learn a lot from it. I’m sure this information
will be important throughout this unit, even more so since our homework task is
to write a script of a story inspired by Wong Kar Wai. I look forward to
completing this task, as I have not fully written a script before and doing so
will be a good film experience.
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