A look inside Wong Kar-wai's film world
- By Zhang Rui
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Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai shares his secrets in filmmaking at the China Film Archive in Beijing, Dec. 8, 2014. [China.org.cn] |
Wong Kar-wai also remembered his early movies which defined his style. He said when he was making his first movie "As Tears Go By" (1988), he was inspired by John Woo's "A Better Tomorrow," and then when he made his second movie "Days of Being Wild" (1990), he was inspired by the Nobel Prize in Literature winner Gabriel García Márquez's novel "Love in the Time of Cholera." "He showed me how to tell a story in a different way," Wong said.
The director said his next films "Chungking Express" (1994), "Fallen Angels"(1995) and "Happy Together" (1997) described all of his feelings for modern Hong Kong, then he found other directors were using his approaches to make similar films. So he went back in time to find another path to make "In the Mood for Love" (2000) and "The Grandmaster" (2013), which tell stories about how Hong Kong has become what it is today.
"I don't have any big secrets to make oriental films loved by the whole world," Wong said. "A mature movie can go further and beyond and will be understood by many. Chinese literature was once a rural literature in the 1940s - 1950s. Then foreign-influenced culture appeared and it gave birth to urban literature. Hong Kong movies at that time are basically about urban stories. I believe nowadays, Shanghai is more or less the same as New York and Paris and many other metropolises. In those places, people may have common problems and issues. "
Wong said he didn't like to "keep a Hong Kong movie style" when making Hong Kong and mainland co-productions, because "the times are changing every day, you have to change and improve yourself too," he said,
"When I shot 'Ashes of Time' in 1992, it was the first co-production I made with the mainland. After all these years, I can see my fellow mainland filmmakers are progressing in every aspect in their ideas, technologies and visions. They don't have to 'keep' to certain things and they are getting closer to their audiences. In filmmaking, you have to have the nerve to face the new world but you have to keep your own soul."
Wong Kar-wai also revealed that he was expecting to make an Indian-styled movie, "I have so many types of films and subjects to try in the future. But recently I went to India and saw movies there. Their singing and dancing scenes interested me. There are not many movies like that in China, so I hope I can try to make such a movie in the future."
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