Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai (born 17 July 1958) is a Hong Kong filmmaker. His films are characterised by nonlinear narratives, atmospheric music, and vivid cinematography with bold, saturated colours. An auteur of Hong Kong cinema, Wong frequently appears at international film festivals.

Born in Shanghai, Wong emigrated to Hong Kong as a child with his family. He began a career as a screenwriter for soap operas before transitioning to directing with his debut, the crime drama As Tears Go By (1988). As Tears Go By was fairly successful in Hong Kong, but Wong moved away from the contemporary trend of crime and action movies to embark on more personal filmmaking. Days of Being Wild (1990), his first venture in such a direction, did not perform well at the box office, but received critical acclaim and won Best Film and Best Director at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards. His next film, Ashes of Time (1994), met with a mixed reception because of its vague plot and atypical take on the genre.

Exhausted by the time-consuming production of Ashes of Time, Wong directed Chungking Express (1994), a smaller film that he hoped would rekindle his love of cinema during a two-month sabbatical while waiting for post-production equipment to arrive for Ashes of Time. The film, with its more lighthearted atmosphere, catapulted Wong to international prominence, and won Best Film and Best Director at the 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards. Wong followed up with the crime thriller Fallen Angels (1995), which has since become a cult classic of the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema and is considered especially representative of Wong's style. Wong consolidated his reputation with the 1997 drama Happy Together, for which he won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.

The 2000 drama In the Mood for Love, revered for its lush visuals and subtle storytelling, concretely established Wong's trademark filmmaking style. Among his other works are 2046 (2004), a romantic drama and science fiction film, and The Grandmaster (2013), a biopic of Ip Man, both of which received awards and nominations worldwide.

Early life

Wong Kar-wai was born on 17 July 1958 in Shanghai, the youngest of three siblings. His father was a sailor and his mother a housewife. By the time Wong was five years old, the seeds of the Cultural Revolution were beginning to take effect in China, and his parents moved to Hong Kong. The two older children were meant to join them later, but the borders closed before they could and Wong did not see them again for ten years. In Hong Kong, the family settled in Tsim Sha Tsui, and his father got work managing a nightclub. As an only child in an unfamiliar city, Wong has said he felt isolated; he struggled to learn Cantonese and English, becoming fluent in these languages only as a teenager.

As a youth, Wong was frequently taken to the cinema by his mother and exposed to a variety of films. He has said, "The only hobby I had as a child was watching movies". Wong studied graphic design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1980, but dropped out of college after being accepted to a training course with the TVB television network, where he learned the processes of media production.

Career Beginnings (1980–1989) Wong soon began a screenwriting career, first on Hong Kong TV series and soap operas, such as Don't Look Now (1981), before progressing to film scripts. He worked as part of a team, contributing to various genres, including romance, comedy, thriller, and crime. Wong had little enthusiasm for these early projects, described by the film scholar Gary Bettinson as "occasionally diverting and mostly disposable", but continued to write throughout the 1980s on films including Just for Fun (1983), Rosa (1986), and The Haunted Cop Shop (1987). He is credited with ten screenplays between 1982 and 1987, but claims to have worked on about 50 more 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.

By 1987 the Hong Kong film industry was at a peak, enjoying a considerable level of prosperity and productivity. In 2008, Wong reworked the film and rereleased it as Ashes of Time Redux.

Breakthrough (1994–1995)

During the production of Ashes of Time, Wong had a two-month break as he waited for equipment to re-record sound for some scenes. He was in a bad mood, feeling heavy pressure from his backers and worrying about another failure, and so he decided to start a new project: "I thought I should do something to make myself feel comfortable about making films again. So I made Chungking Express, which I made like a student film." Miramax acquired the film for American distribution, which, according to Brunette, "catapulted Wong to international attention". Stephen Schneider includes it in his book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die with the summary: "While other films by Wong may pack more emotional resonance, Chungking Express gets off on sheer innocence, exuberance, and cinematic freedom, a striking triumph of style over substance". Although his plans changed and a new film developed, he simultaneously shot material for 2046, with the first footage dating to December 1999. Wong immediately continued with the project once In the Mood for Love was complete, reportedly becoming obsessed with it. In Bettinson's account, it "became a behemoth, impossible to finish".

2046 continues the story of Chow Mo-wan, Leung's character from In the Mood for Love, though he is considered much colder and very different. Ty Burr of The Boston Globe called it an "enigmatic, rapturously beautiful meditation on romance and remembrance", while Steve Erikson of Los Angeles Magazine called it Wong's masterpiece.

Before starting his next feature, Wong worked on the anthology film Eros (2004), providing one of three short films (the others are by Michelangelo Antonioni and Steven Soderbergh) that centre on the theme of lust. Wong's segment, The Hand, stars Gong Li as a 1960s call girl and Chang Chen as her potential client. Although Eros was not well received, Wong's segment was often called the most successful.

Following the difficult production of 2046, Wong wanted his next feature to be a simple, invigorating experience. He decided to make an English-language film in America, later saying: "It's a new landscape. It's a new background, so it's refreshing." After hearing a radio interview with the singer Norah Jones he immediately decided to contact her, and she signed on as the lead. Wong's understanding of America was based only on short visits and what he had seen in films, but he was keen to depict the country accurately, Although he considered it a "special experience",

2008–present Wong's next film was not released for five years, as he underwent another long and difficult production on The Grandmaster (2013), a biographical film of the martial arts teacher Ip Man. The idea had occurred to him in 1999, but he did not commit to it until completing My Blueberry Nights. Described in Slant Magazine as Wong's most accessible film since his debut, The Grandmaster won 12 Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, and received two Academy Award nominations (Cinematography and Production Design). Critics approved of the film, and with a worldwide gross of US$64 million it is Wong's most lucrative film to date.

When asked about his career in 2014, Wong told The Independent, "To be honest with you, I feel I'm only halfway done." but in October 2017 he said he was no longer involved in the project. In September 2017, Amazon Video issued a straight-to-series order for Tong Wars, a television drama to be directed by Wong and focusing on the gang wars of 19th-century San Francisco. Amazon later dropped the series.

In 2019, Wong announced the 4K restoration of his entire filmography, which was released in 2021 in celebration of the 20th anniversary of In the Mood for Love. The restoration was carried out by the Cineteca di Bologna's film restoration laboratory L'Immagine Ritrovata. The Criterion Collection released Wong's restored filmography as a box set in the United States in March 2021. On 27 December 2023, Wong's first TV series, Blossoms Shanghai, based on Jin Yucheng's book of the same name, aired on CCTV-8 and Tencent Video. The series follows a businessman, A Bao (Hu Ge), through changing times in Shanghai.

Personal life In 1981, Wong met TVB program producer Esther Chen at a bar. At her suggestion, he applied for TVB's director training program. Wong's first film script, Once Upon a Rainbow, was purchased by director Agnes Ng through Chen's introduction. Chen also sold his subsequent scripts, Final Victory and Haunted Cop Shop. In 1985, Wong married Chen in Hong Kong, after which she became his producer and production partner. In 1997, Chen gave birth to their son in Hong Kong. In October 2017, while accepting the Lumière Award for lifetime achievement at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, France, Wong called his wife his muse, saying: "Of all the great female characters I have created in my films, there are always glimpses of her there. That is the reason why her name is always the first to appear onscreen in all of my films."

In 2009, Wong signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski after his arrest in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges while traveling to a film festival, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely" and could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects."

Filmmaking

Influences

Wong is wary of sharing his favourite directors, He is often compared with French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard. Wong's most direct influence was his colleague Patrick Tam, who was an important mentor and likely inspired his use of colour. Wong has called him a partner, saying, "I feel like there is a lot of things between me and Tony that is beyond words. We don't need meetings, talks, whatever, because a lot of things are understood."

Wong has said he developed notoriety for his treatment of actors since Days of Being Wild. He often gives abstract, confusing, or changeable instructions, and makes his actors repeat the same scene endlessly until emotional breakdown. Among those who have spoken publicly about their difficult experiences with him are Carina Lau, Tony Leung, Chang Chen, and Takuya Kimura. Jacky Cheung, who first became friends with Wong when Cheung worked as a screenwriter on The Haunted Cop Shop, was alienated by Wong's direction of Days of Being Wild and stopped working with him after Ashes of Time.

Leslie Cheung refused to work with Wong again after shooting Happy Together in Argentina, during which Wong's long delays jeopardized Cheung's Crossing '97 concert in Hong Kong. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle recalled that Cheung, frustrated by Wong's disregard for others' time, lost his temper and left the set despite Wong's ban, returning only after his concert. Shu Kei said Happy Together exploited Cheung's sexuality before he came out.

Wong's revisions to his films have often drawn criticism from collaborators for being obsessive or arbitrary. In addition to actors whose roles were significantly reduced without notice, those who completed filming but were entirely removed from his final cuts include Joey Wong in Ashes of Time, Shirley Kwan in Happy Together, Paulyn Sun in In the Mood for Love, Dong Jie in 2046, and Jin Jing in Blossoms Shanghai. Among films that were abandoned, sometimes due to funding breakdown or cast withdrawals caused by his delays, are Wong Gok For Chak Chi Yan (旺角火宅之人), starring Brigitte Lin, Faye Wong, and Sean Lau; The Buenos Aires Affair, adapted from the novel by Manuel Puig; Summer in Beijing, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai; and The Lady from Shanghai, starring Nicole Kidman. Wong also abandoned the first cut of Ashes of Time edited by his mentor Patrick Tam, turning instead to William Chang for a new version, leaving Tam frustrated by the wasted effort and vowing never to work with Wong again.

Legacy Wong is an important figure in contemporary cinema, regarded as one of the best filmmakers of his generation. His reputation as a maverick began early in his career: in the 1996 Encyclopedia of Chinese Film, Wong was described as having "already established a secure reputation as one of the most daring avant-garde filmmakers" of Chinese cinema. Authors Zhang and Xiao concluded that he "occupies a special place in contemporary film history", and had already "exerted a sizeable impact". With the subsequent release of Happy Together and In the Mood for Love, Wong's international standing grew, and in 2002 voters for the British Film Institute named him the third-greatest director of the previous quarter-century. In 2015, Variety named him an icon of arthouse cinema.

The East Asian scholar Daniel Martin describes Wong's output as "among the most internationally accessible and critically acclaimed Hong Kong films of all time". Because of this status abroad, Wong is seen as a pivotal figure in his local industry; Julian Stringer says he is "central to the contemporary Chinese cinema renaissance", Gary Bettinson describes him as "a beacon of Hong Kong cinema" who "has kept that industry in the public spotlight", and Film4 designate him the filmmaker from China with the greatest impact. In the 2012 Sight and Sound poll, whereby industry professionals submit ballots to determine the greatest films of all time, In the Mood for Love ranked 24th, the highest-ranked film since 1980 and the sixth-greatest film by a living director. Chungking Express and Days of Being Wild both ranked in the top 250; Happy Together and 2046 in the top 500; and Ashes of Time and As Tears Go By also featured (all but two of Wong's films at the time).

Wong's influence has impacted contemporary directors including Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Lee Myung-se, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Tom Tykwer, The Daniels, Zhang Yuan, Tsui Hark, and Barry Jenkins. In 2018, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree by Harvard University.

Filmography and awards

Wong's oeuvre consists of ten directed features, 16 films where is he credited only as screenwriter, one television series and seven films by other directors that he produced. He has also directed commercials, short films, and music videos, and contributed to two anthology films. He has received awards and nominations from organisations in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. In 2006, Wong accepted the National Order of the Legion of Honour: Knight (Lowest Degree) from the French government. In 2013, he was bestowed with the title of a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest order, by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. The International Film Festival of India gave Wong a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

+Directed features Year Title Chinese title 1988 As Tears Go By Wong gok ka moon 1990 Days of Being Wild Ah fei zing zyun 1994 Chungking Express Chung Hing sam lam Ashes of Time Dung che sai duk 1995 Fallen Angels Do lok tin si 1997 Happy Together Chun gwong cha sit 2000 In the Mood for Love Fa yeung nin wa 2004 2046 — 2007 My Blueberry Nights — 2013 The Grandmaster Yi dai zong shi +Acted features Year Title Chinese title1984 The Other Side of Gentleman Silent Romance 1988 The Haunted Cop Shop II Chaos By Design 2016 The First Monday in May —