Cultural Labyrinth…Organic Machines

An anxiety-ridden cop transverses the claustrophobic, anarchic and shadowed alleyways of Chungking Mansions in a constant meditation on love lost and chance encounters. A gangster who strives for the consummation of a family is reluctantly drawn into an unlawful cityscape, in which the issues of pride and camaraderie are communicated through the politics of gang rivalry, an endless string of shoot-outs and violent humiliations. These are some examples of Wong Kar-Wai’s unconventional and often interweaving narratives. There is a shared sense of motif, stylistics and conventions with American classical noir with the emphasis on alienated individuals navigating the hazardous, dark and disorientating urban cityscapes.  However, being situated within the locality of Hong Kong, the social and cultural implications that give rise to noir subject matter differs. The specificity of postmodern Hong Kong results in an update of film noir, in which particular aspects are revised and used in a different context. In this essay, I shall attempt to locate these various aspects of noir in Wong’s filmography. Durgnat states that “film noir is not a genre” as it “takes us into the realm of classification by motif and tone” (1996, p. 38). It is my aim to demonstrate just this; that being a stylistic mood reflective of the human condition, film noir transgresses cultural and national boundaries. Wong’s films are not rooted to a particular noir tradition, but are reflective and reconstructive towards such motifs and tones, resulting in a unique vision of a ‘noiresque’ Hong Kong embedded with a sense of humanistic agency uncommon in classical noir.

 

Gritty Poetics: The Morally Ambiguous Outsider/Gangster as Hero

Borde and Chaumeton declare, “it is the presence of crime” and the use of spectatorial references “from the point of view of the criminals” that “gives film noir its most constant characteristic”  (1996, pp. 19-20). Classic noir draws its tradition from a backdrop of hard-boiled literary novels. Such novels propagated “a way of observing and behaving that demanded the suppression of any openly expressed feeling,” a style and stance taken up by the hard-boiled hero; a morally ambiguous “man of the city” who navigates “the criminal underworld with a shield of ironic and wary detachment” grounded to a “fundamental integrity” (Hirsch, 1981, p. 24).

For Hong Kong Cinema, there is the cycle of triad films that draw from the literary tradition of ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ and ‘The Water Margins’, portraying the criminality of their protagonists in a paradoxical immersion with Confucian ethics of “justice for the vulnerable” and “exemplary leadership” (Sondergard, 2005, p. 50). This cycle is also reflective of the social turmoil experienced by the onset of modernity’s rapid urbanisation of Hong Kong. Triad presence is reflected through cinematic realism, with its depictions of criminal protagonists navigating these mean streets with the ambiguous codes of loyalty and brotherhood. In As Tears Go By (Wong Kar-Wai, 1988), Wah is triad member whose approach in criminality, though ruthless and violent, is propelled by a sense of brotherhood and integrity threatened by the behaviour of Fly, his arrogant and edgy understudy who constantly clashes with competing triads. Wah’s relationship with his cousin Ngor who resides in the serene landscape of Lantau Island serves as a signifier of the pastoral utopia of family life. However, Wah is constantly drawn in to the anarchic triad wars within the claustrophobic cityscape.

In a particular scene, Wah journeys into an underworld hideout in an act of revenge for Fly who was slashed in the chest. The gang of antagonists who are gambling, drinking and forcing down liqueur down a cat’s throat are constructed as barbarians. This is further enforced by the blue neon-lit mise-en-scene that captures the gritty interior of their den. Wah approaches with a knife and an intense struggle shot in disorienting slow-shutter occurs, resulting with a beer-bottle smashed on Wah’s head. Wah’ menacing eyes are shot in extreme close-up, capturing the trickling blood that fragments his face, a signifier of moral uncertainty. The screeching industrial soundtrack intensifies this effect. At this moment, the spectator experiences an archetypical noir construct: the “state of tension” that results when “psychological reference points are removed” (Borde & Chaumeton, 1996, p. 25).

While the construction of this scene conjures the film’s tradition in the Hong Kong triad cycle and utilises film noir’s morally ambiguous criminal as protagonist, it also reflects Wong’s unrestrained poetical style that enables a lyrical receptivity. Classic noir utilises “lighting patterns on actors’ faces to indicate intense psychological states,” in which the prominence of black and white stock favoured the use of deeply contrasted shadows as the signifiers (Vincendeau, 1992, p. 55). Ottoson describes the tone and atmosphere of noir as “overwhelmingly black” (1981, p. 1).   On As Tears Go By, Bordwell describes it as “filmed in hard blocks of red, ultramarine, and orange, all pierced by solid black shadows; silhouettes and unexpected angles are linked by restless cutting” (2000, p 276). The deployment of a wide spectrum of colors, a fast disorientating cut rate and jerky slow-shutter capture demonstrates how Wong has updated the poetic realism of film noir into stylistic excess. Though it perpetuates the moral ambiguity of a fragmented protagonist, it further enables a specific distancing of the spectator through the aesthetical manipulation of time and space. The emphasis on color transcends the mere blackness of classic noir, adding a new contemplative dimension. Thus, it does not merely “create a specific alienation,” but introduces an introspective framework, propelling the spectator to meditate on a notion of beauty and a sense of tragedy amidst the chaotic array of blood, parangs and gunshots (Borde & Chaumeton, 1996, p. 25).

To further illustrate this and my subsequent point on Wong’s interpretation of Hong Kong’s postmodernist condition, I shall refer to a scene in Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-Wai, 1995). Chi-Ming, a hired assassin dressed in black, walks through the greenly lit interior of a barbershop with a cigarette in his mouth. The camera trails in a jerky-fashion and his movements are slowed down to an almost timeless pace. This is further heightened with the opiated down-tempo soundtrack in which the lyrical line “”Because I’m cool” is sung in repetition. The moral ambiguity of this criminal protagonist as demonstrated by a previous ruthlessly executed assassination gives way to an indulgence in style that concentrates on gesticulation. One could say this is an exaggeration of Philip Marlowe’s character in classic noir, compressed into the mise-en-scene of a single scene. The prominence of the colour green also propels the spectator to ponder on its implication. The significance of this scene in relation to the digesis is not the violent shootout that follows, in which the camera is literally stained in blood, but the inter-spliced flashback of the assassin’s agent. She transverses the same space within a suspended pocket of time, inspecting the interior prior to the assassin. This creates a sense of deja vu, in which the play of time and space signifies the impossibility of human contact.

 

A City/Culture of Disappearance: Unstable Identity and Memory

Hong Kong is struggling with a problematic identity due to its double-edged history of Britian and China’s colonial influence. The rapid urbanisation hastened by modernisation results in an ever-changing cityscape that detotalises its meta-historical reference points. Abbas describes Hong Kong’s architectural backdrop as “a space of disappearance” that “engenders images so quickly that it becomes non-descript;” a routinisation of urban change that causes “the weakening of the sense of chronology, of historical sequentiality” such that “‘continuities’ and ‘discontinuities’ appear “without being integrated” (1999, pp. 154). Wong Kar-Wai consciously reflects such disorientation. Referring to the scene in Fallen Angels mentioned above, each character’s presence in the same space is nostalgically linked within a disconnected timeframe. Chi-Ming never meets the agent that inspects the space and plans the route of action prior to the assassinations. When they converge within a suspended imaginary cinematic time and space, a sense of disappearance is experienced through each other’s absence and the subtle changes in environment between both characters’ trajectories.

Classic noir’s dislocation of characters is a rejection of “the facile optimism” of popular Hollywood,” “a falsifying [of] the American dream by concocting nightmare versions of contemporary social reality,” a reflection of post-war social anxieties and the hardboiled tradition (Palmer, 1994, p. 14). Wong’s treatment in dislocation differs from classic noir in relation to their respective cinematic tradition and cultural reference points. He updates the triad genre stylistically in reference to Hong Kong’s reflexivity towards their cultural disorientation. Analysing Hong Kong cinema in its various genres, Teo asserts that they “shar[e] one perennial theme, that of identity: the quest of, the assertion of, the affirmation of, identity” (2000, par. 6). Instead of acting as a rupture within Hong Kong cinema like classic noir is to the Hollywood paradigm, it takes on the same motif, the formation of identity, and meditates on it through an excessive concern with memory and time as threatened by a lapse in chronology. However, while “Hong Kong film was finding and portraying a specifically ‘Hong Kong identity,’” Wong “have also implicitly understood the transience and ultimately culturally fractured and transnational nature of the space of the city” (Wypkema, 2005, par. 19). Thus, in a self-reflexive construction of Hong Kong’s problematic identity, Wong creates a more realistic portrayal through his fragmented narratives and an excessive rumination on memory and the transient nature of time. As Tears Go By is probably the only film that is rooted to the Hong Kong triad genre and reflective of the hardboiled tradition of classic noir. Wong’s subsequent films that include Days of Being Wild (1991), Chungking Express (1994), Happy Together (1997) and Fallen Angels push the noir conventions of criminality and violence into the background, concentrating on more abstract narratives concerned with the formation of identity.

In the enigmatic scene that concludes Days of Being Wild, an unknown character (Leung) gets dressed for a night out in the city. His gesticulation parallels that of Yuddy the protagonist, who’s quest in fulfilling an Oedipus curiosity in reuniting with his birth-mother leads him into a life of recklessness. The mise-en-scene of Leung’s room is dark and crumbling, lighted with one single exposed light bulb that casts an array of shadows, engulfing the subject within. Leung walks around the room with a perpetual hunch due to the curiously low ceiling that fails to contain his height. Smoking a cigarette, Leung moves to his dressing table and combs his hair to a fuzzy reflection of a stained mirror.

This is reflective of classic noir’s representation of the hero’s mind “as a room with symbolic architectural features” that signifies the “unstable and paradoxical process of identity formation” (Oliver & Trigo, 2003, p. 212). Leung’s obscured reflection in the mirror and the absurd dimensions of his apartment both signify the fragmented nature of identity. His similarities with Yuddy enable the spectator to position him as his double, not as an indicator of split personality, but as a unitary function that constructs an archetype of the Hong Kong city dweller. With the strong presence of noir architectural signifiers, Leung evokes a mood that conjures up Yuddy’s Oedipal narrative; “the melancholy for an irretrievable lost object, the vertigo from a hole in the ego” and most importantly the impossibility of a true identity due to the fleeting nature of memory (ibid, p. 234). This conjures up an image of Hong Kong inhibited by an array of characters suffering from the similar existential issue of struggling with a culture of disappearance.

 

The Persistence of Memory: A Sense of Identity though Epiphany

  Abbas conceptualises three different built spaces in Hong Kong; the “merely local” that constitutes a pastiche in preservation, the “placeless” that constitutes “urban-vernacular-style buildings” and the “anonymous” that constitutes “non-descript commercial and residential blocks that seem to replicate themselves endlessly” (1996, p. 161). Wong Kar-Wai’s cinematic Hong Kong situates itself within the anonymous, rejecting the false security of architectural nostalgia of the ‘merely local’ for the realism of “anonymous” buildings that takes up the bulk of build space in the city. His protagonists do not rely on historical buildings for a sense of cultural identity. They interrogate subjective memory rather than a collective imaginary for a sense of identity. Abbas asks, “where are the erotic spaces of pleasure and encounter, the heterotopic spaces of contestation, the liminal spaces of transition and change” (1996, p. 164)? As if responding to this question, Wong constructs narratives that interweave within such a space, in which characters reconstruct ‘anonymous’ build spaces by leaving traces physically. This corresponds to what Dimendberg calls “the struggle by the inhabitant of abstract and centrifugal space to appropriate a time and space—a rhythm—capable of withstanding the leveling forces of the metropolis” (2004, p. 230). For example, in an attempt at intimacy in Chungking Express, Faye breaks into Cop 663’s apartment to redecorate and refurnish it. As Cop 663 dwells in the refurbished space, he has access to concrete clues of change rather than disappearance. Faye’s method in communicating through a manipulation of space situates Cop 663 as a jocular version of the classic noir detective. This takes on a rhythmic repetitive subjectivity, an abstract utilisation of time and space. It exists separate from the domination of a productive use of time and space. Faye explicitly dodges her work at the snack bar and Cop 663 takes random breaks from his rounds to inspect his own apartment. In classic noir, the protagonists that engage with such abstraction are often motivated by the lure of “differential temporalities of sexuality and spatial memory,” escaping the “logical calculation of time and space” but remaining trapped within “their own subjectivity” (Dimendberg, 2004, p. 234). However, in Chunking Express, the investigation ultimately helps Cop 663 transcend his previous failed relationship to the discovery of change, the proximity and possibility of a relationship with Faye. The difference in effect is attributed to a displacement of deviant sexuality. Bordwell notes that “brutal sexuality, incarnated in the drug smuggler and his lusty bargirl” within the earlier narrative, “is sterile and ends in death” (2000, p. 289). A humanistic form of sexuality propels Cop 663 and Faye who both strive for contact and identity rather than erotic impulse. Wong paints a picture of a noir cityscape that does not simply punish subjectivity. He chooses to focus on moments of connection and epiphanies that result from a preoccupation with rhythmic subjectivity.

In the formulation of identity, classic noir protagonists engage in an array of “signposts, visual cues, and even maps” that serve as “fortifications made with an unstable material” (Oliver & Trigo, 2003, p. 218). The result is similar to Jameson’s conception of the schizophrenic who “is reduced to an experience of pure material Signifiers” due to “the breakdown of the signifying chain” (1984, p. 72). With the construction of identity through free-floating signifiers, the classic noir protagonist is often neurotic. Wong’s characters function within a similar subjective level, engaging with their own spheres of memory in an attempt to map out the significance of their encounters with others. His films “feature an abundance of watches, clocks and calendars” as “important elements of the narrative and symbolism of his films” (Mazierska & Rascaroli, 2000, p. 3). With time and memory as the constructive elements towards identity, such material elements become signifiers that his characters fixate upon. The result is the Hong Kong city dweller that suffers from an identity crisis due to the utilisation of unstable signifiers. However, Wong allows moments of rupture within this instability. As material signifiers such as dates and clocks are meditated upon, it gives rise to moments of subjective clarity in which characters are able to relate a particular signifier with moments of intimacy that determine their identity.

He Zhiwu in Chungking Express compulsively collects canned pineapples with the specific expiry date of 1 May, 1994. This is his birthday and his self-imposed expiry date for his failed relationship with his ex-girlfriend. After eating all 30 cans of pineapple on 1 May, he desperately loiters in the city, meeting the mysterious woman in a blonde wig (Lin), a femme fatale previously set-up in a botched drug deal. They spend a rather uneventful night together. The next day, in rejecting intimacy and contact, Zhiwu leaves his pager clipped to a fence. As he is about to leave, the pager rings, leaving him a message by Lin, wishing him happy birthday. Clutching his heart with a genuine smile, he is struck by a liberating epiphany. In the next scene that concludes her narrative, Lin assassinates the person who set her up, takes off her wig and moves out of the frame. The camera zooms down to the corpse, capturing amidst the blood, a can of sardines stamped with the date 1 May.

This scene demonstrates how the use of dates as a map to memory enables a sense of orientation. As Zhiwu says on receiving Lin’s message, “Now I’ll remember her all my life. If memories could be canned, would they have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.” Bordwell states that “although time is presented as evanescent” in Wong’s films, there are instants that become “a curiously static point condensing both past and future” (2000, p. 276). This results in the epiphany revelatory scene that is a reoccurring theme in his films. Thus, unlike classic noir, Wong’s portrait of a noir Hong Kong is embedded with moments of lucidity. Characters, if only for an instant, do genuinely connect with one another.

Unlike noir’s investigative repression, Wong’s characters find closure and hope by embracing memory within its wide array of good and bad moments. In Happy Together, Yiu Fai experiences an epiphany at the Iguassu Falls after ending to his abusive relationship with Bao Wing. Iguassu Falls functions as a “‘spatial other,’ an object of retrogressive desire (nostalgia) or progressive desire (utopia), always defined by its absence, deferral, or unattainability” in classic noir (Hantke, 2004, par. 17). Yiu Fai actually reaches such a space. However, the scene is marked by the absence of his partner, Bao Wing. Thus, the utopian ideal of a ‘spatial other’ is accessed with an updated meaning. Yiu Fai’s voice-over says “Suddenly I think of Ho Bao Wing.” This transforms the revelatory effect of this scene into recognition of their relationship in all its fissures, allowing the possibility of change within the persistence of memory.

 

Conclusion

In this essay, I have analysed Wong Kar-Wai’s revisionist utilisation of film noir’s motifs and tones in relation to the specificity of Hong Kong’s cultural dissociation. Firstly, I discussed his use of morally unstable and criminally instated characters that draw on Hong Kong’s triad genre. The lack of stable reference points and the use of visual signifiers to induce further fragmentation are exemplary of classic noir. However, I argued that through Wong’s auteuristic use of colour and manipulation of time and space induces a contemplative framework that focuses on its aesthetics. Noir’s claustrophobia is experienced within a distance.  Next, I referred to Abba’s conceptualisation of Hong Kong’s city/culture of disappearance as the impetus for the noir motif: the formation of identity through subjective memory. I demonstrated how Faye and Cop 663 in Chunking Express engage in differential temporalities in a playful way devoid of deviant sexual impulse. Rather than inducing tragedy and inescapability, it allows the possibility of change. Lastly, I discussed the use of free-floating signifiers in identity formation. Wong utilises the iconography of clocks and dates to symbolise the use of time and memory as signifiers. The repetitive contemplation of particular dates gives rise to a sense of epiphany.  Thus, Wong transcends the subjective deadlock of classic noir to offers hopeful moments of rupture. He also allows access to the utopian ‘spatial other’ within a non-repressive subjectivity. In comparison to classic noir, Wong’s films can be considered a neo-noir that functions within the specificity of Hong Kong’s cultural condition. While the conception of a humanistic noir is a paradox, it is my aim in this essay to demonstrate how Wong infuses moments of human agency, lucid subjectivity and hope. Taken in relation to its narratives that induce dissociation, such moments become cathartic ruptures. While uncommon in noir, it represents Wong’s unique humanistic vision, opening up the possibilities of film noir that is not all pessimistic.

 

References

 

Abbas, Ackbar. (1996). “Building on Disappearance: Hong Kong Architecture and Colonial Space”. in During, Simon. (ed.). The Cultural Studies Reader. (2^nd ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 146-166.

Borde, R.  & Chaumeton, E. (1996). “Towards a Definition of Film Noir”. in Silver, A. & Ursini, J. (eds.). Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions. pp 17-35.

Bordwell, David. (2000). Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Dimendberg, Edward. (2004). “Simultaneity, The Media Environment, and the End of Film Noir” in  Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity. London: Cambridge University Press. pp. 207-259.

Durgnat, Raymond. (1996). “Paint it Black: The Family Tree of the Film Noir”. in Silver, A. & Ursini, J. (eds.). Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions. pp 36-51.

Hantke, Steffen. (Fall, 2004). Boundary Crossing and the Construction of Cinematic Genre: Film Noir as ‘Deferred Action’. Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media. Retrieved, 1 Nov, 2007 from http://www.kinema.uwaterloo.ca/hant042.htm

Hirsch, Foster. (1981). “The Literary Background: The Boys in the Back Room”. in Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen. New York: Da Capo Press. pp. 23-51.

Jameson, Fredric. (1984, July-August). Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. New Left Review, 146, 53-92.

Krutnik, Frank. (1997). “Something More Than Night: Tales of the Noir City” in Clarke, D. B. (ed.). The Cinematic City. London: Routledge. pp 83-109.

Mazierska, E. & Rascaroli, L. (Winter, 2000). Trapped in the Present: Time in the Films of Wong Kar-Wai. Film Criticism, 25(2), 2-20.

Oliver, K. & Trigo, B. (2003). “The Space of Noir” in Noir Anxiety. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 211-236.

Ottoson, Robert. (1981). A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir: 1940-1958. London: Scarecrow Press.

Palmer, B. R. (1994). Hollywood’s Dark Cinema: The American Film Noir. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Sondergard, S. L. (2005). Young and Dangerous(ly Traditional): Reading Guangong and the Act of Obeisance in Hong Kong Films Since 1986. Studies in the Humanities, 32(1), 50-73.

Teo, Stephen. (2000). Local and Global Identity: Whither Hong Kong Cinema?. Senses of Cinema. Retrieved 20 October, 2007, from http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/7/hongkong.html

Vincendeau, Ginette. (1992). “Noir is Also a French Word”. in The Movie Book of Film Noir. London: Studio Vista. pp 49-58.

Wypkema, Laurel. (2005). Corridor Romance: Wong Kar-Wai’s Intimate City. Synoptique: The Journal of Film and Film Studies, 10. Retrieved, 1 Nov, 2007 from http://www.synoptique.ca/core/en/articles/wypkema_hk/