By the end of this retrospective, I am even more enraptured by Wong Kar Wai’s world. I have found immense value in viewing his work together through a retrospective, seeing his development in chronology, whilst observing patterns and common strands. His work will always be plagued with chronic loneliness. Through the cinematic form, Wong expresses poignant reflections on the innate paradox between torment and salvation in love. Charming characters are entangled into simultaneously rapturous and devastating experiences as they are haunted by lust, loss, and regret.
Wong’s films are embellished by ambiguous non-linear narrative streams that are rhythmically grounded in sultry soundtracks. His imagery and soundtracks are unapologetically cinematic, romantic, and glamorous. The variety of Western and Chinese references continue to have an enduring appeal to Chinese diaspora all over the world. To me, Wong is both style and substance. His personal affectations are evoked through his fixations that inform a larger pattern of recurring details within his cinematic world.
He truly is an auteur in a sense that his distinct works are inadvertently tied together by little details and elusive characters, creating a broader universe of stories. Time and space are both elusive and intoxicating—the omnipotent presence of memory pervades. Wong presents dreamscapes marked by transience, where fleeting moments and split-second encounters mean everything. Wong has a striking authorial vision for what is timeless within the quotidian.
Watching Wong Kar Wai’s work is a bit like being at a shop that sells hand-made woven baskets. A dizzying and overwhelming array of beautiful works that enchant you even if you are not an avid fan of baskets. Each basket is a basket, right? But at the same time, each basket has a unique weave that differs slightly from the rest. Each basket was painstakingly woven—requiring great skill and expertise. In the end, everyone is going to be drawn to a different basket, and if not, they can at least appreciate the complex weaving and the work that went into making each unique basket.
I really adore each of the baskets for their own reasons, or if we’re using the tea metaphor, Wong Kar Wai is really just my cup of tea. As I have written earlier, “Love & Neon” is an extremely fitting name for the retrospective—but you will come to realise that the two elements are not the extent of Wong’s expansive and nuanced work.
Bonnie Huang