Wong Kar-Wai.

As a British colony until 1997 and Special Administrative Region of China, Hong Kong has created a popular culture completely unique to East Asian metropolitan living. This is demonstrated, in part, by the rich cinema tradition that has been continually exported from Hong Kong since the late 1970s, which bore films that distinctively combined East and West. While the region has produced some of the most memorable martial arts and action films of the late 20th century, the Hong Kong New Wave also witnessed the emergence of several great dramatists including Stanley Kwan, Yim Ho, Ann Hui and, of course, Wong Kar-Wai. For someone unfamiliar with Hong Kong firsthand, Wongs films provide a resonant, bewitching, perhaps even definitive portrait of the city. In his international breakthrough Chunking Express, the densely populated metropoliss kinetic movement and globalized circuits are accentuated by the films restless camera and Cranberries-infused soundtrack. In the Mood for Love stages several intimate meetings of traditional and contemporary life in the claustrophobic corners in an exponentially vertical Hong Kong. The dizzying 2046 presents a Hong Kong ever at the concurrent precipice of the past and the future. With The Grandmaster opening wide this weekend, Wongs dramas now meet with that other signature Hong Kong genre, the martial arts film, providing as good of an opportunity as any to explore what makes his work so distinctive. So heres some free advice (for fans and filmmakers alike) from the director who somehow convinced us that beauty lies in a slow shutter speed.

Finding The Film Takes Time

Wongs film shoots are notoriously long, and in the end the filmmaker rarely comes away with something strictly resembling the film he set out to shoot, especially as he rarely storyboards or employs a conventional script. For In the Mood for Love, Wong shot a love scene between the couple and an entire frame that takes place in 1990s Hong Kong with the couples elder selves. For years, Wongs fans have pondered about this footage, and what even a modern classic like In the Mood for Love could have been. But the point isnt that theres some other original vision that we arent given access to; the point is that what becomes the film itself is ultimately a set of complex and interrelated choices, not a sense of essential being. In the Mood for Love could have been any number of films; that it ended up being a rather sparse drama about a uniquely chaste affair is heavily dependent upon choices of framing not only during the shoot, but during the editing process which, as Wong attests, is a another stage of production on its own.

Perhaps The Film is of Little Importance

Even though Wongs process of making a single film is an arduous one involving years of shooting and editing, he rarely sees his completed films as discrete, bounded objects encapsulating a finalized vision. Wong continually revisits his work, and the titles that make up his filmography are deeply interrelated. A short film became an episode in My Blueberry Nights. The characters of In the Mood for Love were revisited with considerable variation in 2046. Ashes of Time (Wongs first martial-arts film) was later re-cut entirely to fit a different vision as Ashes of Time Redux. Fallen Angels emerged from an idea that was intended to structure a proposed third story for Chungking Express. In none of these examples is there an authoritative or original vision; Ashes of Time Redux is not the directors cut of Ashes of Time. In Wongs estimation, films are not sacred objects, but experiences subject to continual influence and change. After shooting, Wong is hardly finished with his improvisations. This point about Wongs work is necessary to understand his relaxed attitude to the significant differences in the US cut of The Grandmaster. In a recent interview with Drew Taylor of IndieWire, Wong had the following to say about The Weinstein Companys application of their controversial scissors: Well, we had an obligation to release the film within two hours for the United States. But, I didnt want to do it just by cutting the film shorter or do a shorter version by trimming and cutting out scenes because the structure of the original version is actually very preciseI just wanted to tell the story in a different way. So now the American version is 108 minutes, and we have 15 minutes of new scenes, and the story is more linear. So instead of a shorter version, to me its a new version. For Wong, there is no such thing as the film itself, only different possibilities therein.

Make a Portrait, Dont Film Reality

Well, people are very surprised when they come to Hong Kong after seeing my films, because my version of it is quite different than Hong Kong in reality. So my films are never about what Hong Kong is like, or anything approaching a realistic portrait, but what I think about Hong Kong and what I want it to be. In this 2001 interview with Scott Tobias AV Club in advance of the American commercial release of In the Mood for Love, Wong makes a distinction between his Hong Kong and Hong Kong itself. Perhaps its best to posit that there is no such thing as Hong Kong itself for an artist, as a city so large and diverse and changing can only be experienced through its fleeting moments, kinetic fragments, and chance encounters. In making a portrait of Hong Kong, Wong isnt attempting to define the city, but portray a particular experience of it. This is not, however to say that Wongs Hong Kong is a fantasy, bereft of an immersed relationship to his life in the city

Let the Place Guide You

At the same time that Wongs films portray a subjectively painted, rhapsodic, and even dreamlike Hong Kong, that doesnt mean that his chosen place to stage so much of his work is arbitrary. Quite the opposite. Wongs films emerge from his experience in Hong Kong his knowledge of the place, its people, their rhythms. Wongs films might not portray a reality of Hong Kong, but the action painting of a moving image portrait he ultimately constructs is a product of the life and vibes of the city itself. The city is a canvas if the filmmaker extends their tendrils and remains in touch with their surroundings.

Movies are a Collage of Traveling Influences

Rebel Without a Cause in Chinese becomes our faith, which is a term that was used very typically in the sixties about kids like James Dean, or kids who imitated James Dean. They came from rich families, had nothing to do, they werent happy with their lives and were trying to be different. It was a typical 60s symptom. In this 1998 interview with Han Ong of BOMB, Wong discusses the tangential, indirect influence of Nicholas Rays Rebel without a Cause on Days of Being Wild (the films title in China) as well as Blow Ups indirect relationship to Happy Together. For In the Mood for Love, Wong attempted to channel Hitchcocks Vertigo. Many filmmakers use their cinephilia as a guiding influence, but Wongs influences imbue the stamp of work that has circulated through culture, that has been re-framed for varying audiences and taken on particular social meanings in contexts outside of their original production. Wong does not pay homage to Rebel as much as he invokes Rebels role in early 1960s Chinese culture. This same approach is evident in Wongs musical selections. Wong uses Faye Wongs Cantonese cover of Irish band The Cranberries Dreams to illustrate her desire to travel westward (specifically to California). In the Mood for Love features several of Nat King Coles performances of Spanishlanguage songs. Even in his period pieces, Wongs cinema manifests a truly global vision of culture, one that not only admires and utilizes the rich resources of great movies and infectious pieces of music, but pays attention to the way in which the travel of movies and music creates a shared, transgressive language between consumers of popular culture.

Fall Out of Love, Get Lonely, and Read

So many of Wongs films are built collaboratively with the signature of cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who shot everything between Days of Being Wild and 2046. Here he talks about the wealth of inspiration that loneliness provides for the artist its enabling of engrossed perception, its ability to make one take time with simply being present, its revelation of profound heartbreak of being alone that is present in almost all of Wongs films. These are films built from such experiences, and so poignantly that the movies could never have been made the same way at other moments in time. You cant fake that.

What Weve Learned

Its no wonder that Wong and Doyle were such fitting collaborators on their seven films together. Both approach their art as something contextual, momentary and fluid. On the one hand, you can never go back to the moments and circumstances that informed your approach to a particular film the life of the city, the particular improvisations with the cast and crew, the emotional state that informs the work. On the other hand, a film is never a sacred object: it is something that can be found, refashioned,

selected, and even forgotten. Several critics have described Wongs work as jazz filmmaking, and I cant think of a more fitting description. While working in a medium that is essentially archival, Wong manages to somehow imbue his work with a sense of energy, timeliness, urgency, and ephemerality that so few filmmakers ever realize.

Interview: Wong Kar-Wai Talks Kung Fu, The Different 'The Grandmaster' Cuts & His Favorite Directors
Interviews by Drew Taylor August 22, 2013 3:22 PM
It's been six long years since a new Wong Kar-Wai movie graced cinema screens. The notoriously patient director behind "Chungking Express" and "In the Mood for Love" is back with "The Grandmaster," the biographical tale of Ip Man (also known as Yip Man), a true life historical figure (played in the film by the always brilliant Tony Leung) and martial arts wizard who would go on to train some kid called Bruce Lee. Harkening back to the director's earlier films, while adding a new level of expert technical precision, "The Grandmaster" is for any fan of kung fu or a devotee of KarWai's work. It's in turns epic and gorgeous, a movie that demands to be seen, just for its visual opulence, and then discussed at length afterwards. We got a chance to do just that with Wong himself, who talked about the film's somewhat tortured production, why he decided to tell this story, what's different between this version and the international cut, what it was like working with Megan Ellison and who his favorite modern filmmakers are. Of course, this being a Wong Kar-Wai movie, there is a bittersweet love story at its core, this time between Ip Man and Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), a martial artist who refuses to give up the secret to an ancient strain of the craft. Their relationship is the beating heart inside the flying fists of "The Grandmaster," and the actors are absolutely unbelievable together. There's almost as much thrilling tension in a quiet scene between the two actors as there is when Leung is getting his ass handed to him in the rain (Kar-Wai and his cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd photograph every falling water droplet in almost pornographic detail). Using truncated historical touchstones and title cards, the filmmaker gives you a wide history of the famous kung fu master's life, which was full of fights and deep wells of emotion.

So my first question is about the different cuts of the movie. What exactly did you change or

delete for this specific version? Well, we had an obligation to release the film within two hours for the United States. But, I didn't want to do it just by cutting the film shorter or do a shorter version by trimming and cutting out scenes because the structure of the original version is actually very precise...I just wanted to tell the story in a different way. So now the American version is 108 minutes, and we have 15 minutes of new scenes, and the story is more linear. So instead of a shorter version, to me it's a new version.

"The American version is 108 minutes, and we have 15 minutes of new scenes, and the story is more linear. So instead of a shorter version, to me it's a new version."
And do you think this is a version of the film that's more suited to American audiences who maybe don't know as much about this sort of thing? For me the American audience has a long history with the kung fu film, maybe besides Chinese audiences, they are the experts of this genre. So we can speak more about, for instance, the days when Ip Man arrives in Hong Kong, meeting with all these different Kung Fu masters who are in exile. It's about this life and I think for American audiences, they don't need too many build ups and they can go directly into these chapters to appreciate them. So would you ever consider releasing the other version, sort of like you did with "Ashes of Time," or are these completely separate? If one day they said, "Well, we would welcome a longer version," then of course. At the moment I think this is it. Why did it take so long for this film to come together? It's a huge project, first of all. I didn't know anything about martial arts, I'm a big fan but I never practiced martial arts. And the second thing is just time, because we divided the film into three chapters. It begins in 1936 and ends in Hong Kong in 1956, and also we had to shoot in the north and the south...so you actually need time, first of all to understand the premise and [to plan for the] shoot. For me, it took me three years, on the road, interviewing martial artists and attending demonstrations live with them. And also at the same time, you also have to have your cast to go through training because I don't think we can have just an action star to play Ip Man, because Ip Man is not just a typical fighter, he's someone from a very rich background, almost like an aristocrat in his time, so he has manners, elegance, and all these details. So it took a long time to prepare for this project. And you shot it for over a year, right? No, we shot for twenty-two months over three years. What initially drew you to this story? I was always very fascinated by the world [of] Chinese martial arts, and I always had the question, "What is so interesting about it? What's so great about Chinese martial arts?" And at the end of the film there's a kid standing outside of the school, and that kid, in the film, is Bruce Lee. And at the same time it could be me, because I was brought up on the streets outside schools but I never had the chance to practice because my parents never encouraged me to do so. Because in those days most of the martial arts schools, many of them, were associated with Triads and they are very mysterious. So in a way, through this film, I could finally walk through that door. Was there ever a thought of perhaps putting more Bruce Lee into the movie? Since that's I think where at least Western audiences know the Ip Man story. We all know, a lot of people follow Chinese martial arts through Bruce Lee. And why Bruce Lee is so iconic and so attractive [is] because not only is he a very good fighter, also he's very modern, charismatic, but most of all he's very civilized, he's well educated, he explored about his ideas and his philosophy about his gifts. In a way when you look at other books and interviews that are done by Bruce Lee you can see a lot of his inspiration is actually coming from Yip Man, the man who trained him. So when you look at the story of Yip Man it's very interesting because this guy hadn't done this kind of work before and he belonged to a certain class that is very different from our idea of a martial arts fighter. He's not a fighter, he took it as an art, so in a way, we can see, through Yip Man, where Bruce Lee got the idea. Now was the love story an actual part of Ip Man's story? Oh, no. That part of the film actually is fiction. Do you have anything planned next? There is nothing at this point, because I'm still in jet lag from 1930 to now. Are there any types of movies you'd like to make that you haven't made yet?

I don't know. There are so many different options, at this point I think I'd need a break. "In the Mood for Love" was originally supposed to be two different films the other one was called "Beijing Summer." What was that about? Is that something you would ever return to? No. I think that the reason we wanted to do that film is because it's before the handover, and we visit Beijing six months before the handover and we see there is a clock countdown at Tiananmen Square. So I think it would be interesting to make a film based on two Hong Kong couples working in Beijing, and have the story go against this chapter. And now the time is gone and I think we have to put it aside. Sometimes, it's really about the timing. Yeah, do you watch contemporary cinema? Do you have favourite filmmakers who are working now? Yes, of course. Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese of course and Quentin Tarantino, I think they are great filmmakers. And what about their films inspire you? I think each of them has their own world, it's like they are seeing things from a very specific angle, which gives you, something fascinating. I wanted to ask what it was like working with Megan Ellison? She's the most hardworking producer I have ever seen. And she let you shoot for 22 months over 3 years. Yes she did. She's great, also she's very young, but she's very committed to the film.