User:Loeba/sandbox

Teo argues that he is just as literary as he is visual (poetic dialogue) - teo 88
"pays as much attention to the word as as to the image" - teo 163
"the time between gunshots is filled in, lengthened, allowing for boredom, rumination (in his films, characters trade voice-overs like kicking a ball around), a sense of real time he effects by repetition or focusing the camera on what appears to be a dormant scene. In other words, he puts in what other people leave out" - Bomb

Themes

"recurrent themes of time, love and loss" - Brun xv
Perennial themes are: "the painful contradictions of love; the persistence of longing, memory, and regret; and the hopelessness of ever recapturing, modifying, or getting rid of the past." - brun 105
"refusal and acceptance, loss and gain, forgetfulness and remembrance constantly appear" - cui 4
"The psychology in the films is rarely deep, but that isn’t the point." - Bomb, in 1998, but then...
Brunette argues he has matured as a filmmaker: "these ephemeral techniques" have "been supplemented by a powerful artistic vision and a new depth of feeling" (in e.g. Happy Together & In the Mood) - Brun xiii
WKW quote: "Times goes by, people change ... but there's one thing that doesn't ever change, and that's the desire people have to communicate with each other." brun 53
"Why am I sitting here having this interview with you instead of somebody else? Why should we meet here? This is about chances, and I think all my films are about chances." WKW considers this very Chinese. - Bomb
Shamelessly romantic, but not in a cheesy way. - Bomb
existentialist - Zhang 368
In DoBW, "the relentless passage of time, which is sometimes evoked almost to the point of parody": loud ticking of a clock, hammering of rain (and more) -Brun 19
- ItMFL features lots of clocks - teo 128
"typically Wongian narrative time markers" (characters count down minutes, hours, etc) - brun 56
WKW: "memory is actually about the sense of loss—always an important element in drama." - Brun 20
Studies of modernity - Noc 342
"Wong Kar-Wai is the most modern of filmmakers, dealing with contemporary concerns like cultural dislocation and personal isolation, set against the backdrop of dizzyingly fast or disorientating worlds." - film4
Focus on "spacial dislocation", seeing things from an immigrant's perspective - Noc 337
space, time, loneliness, dislocation - Noc 341*alienation - teo 93; "people living in a dense urban environment, where everyone is physically close to each other but mentally apart" - teo 85
- monologues can enhance the sense of the characters' alienation from each other - brun 74
"the unforseen effects of large-scale migration and alienation" - string 397
political, post-colonial stuff - brun 52;
Themes of exile first becomes major in Happy Together, but an element in other early films - teo 98, 101
Time and space major/consistent themes - Noc 342
use of time - teo 63
"the heavy weight of time" - Brun 33
past and memory - teo 70
Scott Feinberg sees main themes as regret and longing. WKW says "I would say longing more than regrets. I think longing is something that keeps us going ... my films are always about hope -- longing for something better." - THR
WKW said that all his films are about rejection or fear of rejection - Teo 65

Characters

"character prevails over story" - Teo 35
His films show life from a "marginal perspective". "It is almost as if [Wong] is challenging himself to find the human connection between the ordinary citizens in the audience and the extreme outsiders he has put on screen." - Noc 343. Uses voiceover narration to help us emphasise - Noc 342.
from ATGB to FA, his characters are "chronically pathological" - teo 89
"he loves his characters and builds his films from that foundation. His men are cool, his women kooky and beautiful." - Bomb
Critic Bordwell says "Almost devoid of irony, Wong's films, like classic rock, take seriously all the crushes, the posturing, the stubborn capriciousness of young angst." Brunelle says that the angst of his films is universal of any age. - Brun 5
DoBW, CE and FA deal with "ultracool, alienated Hong Kong twentysomething heterosexuals" - Brun xvii
"malevolent and amoral protagonists" - Bet 23
"charming character observations" - Zhang 367
"sensitive dissection of fragmented and broken lives" - Zhang 368
lonely and isolated - brun 47, 53
"Wong's characters are like zombies moving around somnambulistically" - Teo 42
Monologues are one of his trademarks - teo 50
Narration: "poetic", multiple characters is unusual, "Rather than fragmenting the film's effect, however, they connect these otherwise disparate figures while articulating the film's themes" - Brun 27
- Important element of WKW films (lack of voice over in ATGB makes it feel less typical) _Chui 12
- Bordwell says narration "[pours] out across sequences to create links and symmetries, recollections and prefigurations" - Brun 27
Fragments of character - Dis 42