Movies on a Plane

I was in London over spring break and saw three movies on the flight back to DC - romance being a recurring theme. Pride and Prejudice, Walk the Line, Elizabethtown - mostly poppy, easy-on-the-eyes films, quite unlike what we've been watching in this class, which will be an interesting change.
I'd already lost my heart to Pride and Prejudice; how can you not? Aside from some obvious, girly-reaction reasons to why it kicked the BBC version's ass on several levels - Matthew Macfadyen had me going Colin who? the moment he appeared on screen - in terms of mise-en-scenes, I've never seen so many so beautifully melded together, each one like a painting in itself.

One of my favorite examples would be in this shot from the Netherfield ball. Conflict ensues in all directions. Darcy and Elizabeth in the center, exchanging verbal barbs entirely incongruous with their enchantingly harmonious dancing. In the foreground we can see a soldier in uniform, an allusion to Wickham, the figure who serves as the symbol of Elizabeth's prejudice against Darcy whom she already has a poor impression of. In the background, Elizabeth's sister Jane dances too - a symbol of Darcy's unjust pride in his parting her from his friend Bingley for the same reason he fights falling for Elizabeth. The rightness of his reasoning, however, is embodied in their younger sister Lydia, who we can just make out to the left of the shot, flirtatious smirk apparent, the symbol of the Bennetts' embarrassingly clear lack of propriety that turns Darcy against them in the first place.

In the Mood for Love

It's visually stunning. There is no denying Wong Kar Wai's masterful eye for color and pattern with creation of one painting-like mise en scene after another. The style reminded me of 18th century engraver Hogarth, actually, whose speciality was to create stories through his paintings and imagine the canvas to be a stage.

Setting as well as the choice to never reveal the spouses' faces to the audience highlight the film's self-enclosure and single-minded focus on the two main characters' stirring chemistry. In the first half of the film, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan squeeze past each other in the apartment's tiny halls, smiling, making neighborly small talk, never quite finding the time for proper conversation until their spouses' infidelity throws them together. In one early scene where the two move into their rooms on the same day and various personal items get mixed up, we receive telling hints of two lives that will be inevitably intertwined, almost forcibly so due to physical proximity.

Notably, Mrs. Chan is a distancer. She repeatedly, politely refuses her host's invitations to share meals, only for solitary ventures to buy noodles - we see her return to the apartment, lunchbox in hand, in slow motion and frozen loneliness, again and again. Why? She turns down Chow, who is visibly enamored with her. Why?

Did she love Chow? She breaks down when they "rehearse" their separation. Yet we have to return to the title and how she is in the mood for love - but only the highest, most idealized kind. She turns down Chow due to the unflattering circumstances leading up to his affections, won't cook for herself when her husband is away in defiance of the family dinner table she cannot have. Yet it is impossible to identify her true feelings. She is beautifully impermeable. This is what makes the film so frustrating although I found its relentlessly realistic portrayal of misdirected love incredibly moving.

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A note on the title

It appears that I was wrong (sorry Neil) about Hua Yang Nian Hua (this is the Mandarin hanyu pinyin, or spelling) not being the actual title of the film - it is. However, there is a short film on the DVD called Hua Yang De Nian Hua which is something entirely different, a short film also by Wong that consists of a montage of scenes from vintage Chinese films set to a song from the In the Mood for Love soundtrack.

A more direct translation of Hua Yang Nian Hua would be "Flowers like Years" (Hong Kong working English title), although the most accurate translation would be along the lines of "Variety of Years" (since the Chinese term for flower - hua - can have different meanings when paired with other terms; hua yang is literally "different kinds").

I think Wong acknowledged the difficulty of direct translation by choosing an English title with an entirely different meaning but one just as appropriate. Apparently, it was inspired by the British art-rock group Roxy Music's "I'm in the Mood for Love".

Dracula

Talk to Her

This was my first Pedro Almodovar film and it proved perplexing to watch and dissect. Despite the central tragedy - by the end of the film two key characters have committed suicide, one impaled by a bull's horns, the other taking an overdose of pills to join the love of his life he believes to be dead - there is a serene, almost tepid air in the film. It is as if the characters know they are on a path towards destruction but won't remove themselves from what is set up to be inevitable. Marco's stifled early years of staying at home looking after an invalid mother seem to pave the way for his dangerous obsession with Alicia and eventual crime.

The opening sequence of the play - a man runs around knocking chairs out of the path of a sleepwalking woman - seems to echo the self-destructiveness of the characters in the film. Benigno carries Lydia by protecting and supporting her, but avoids confrontation of any kinks in their relationship. As a result he allows her to crumple into self-doubt and infidelity. He also decides to hide the truth about Alicia from Marco, resulting in his giving in to despair as well.

When examined in this light, the film does remind me of movies such as Closer (two men and two women engage in a seemingly pointless web of romance and betrayal that becomes so tangled that its clearest motive would be to depict man's base tendency towards obsessive possession) and Mystic River (three childhood friends react in separate and disturbing manners to a death, the mood is thick with mistrust and implies that this dark climax is inextricably tied up with an incident of rape that involved the three to different extents when they were children).

Yet we can't cleanly examine parallels between these movies because of Almodovar's choice to not approach any theme directly, but insists on coming at it from the side. As we discussed in class, Marco is placed in an innocent light - we are treated to shot after shot of his reverent and gentle treatment of Alicia's comatose, often naked body - such that it is difficult for us to condemn him entirely even when it becomes clear that he is the one guilty of raping her. And of course there is the ambiguous ending where Benigno and Alicia exchange an enigmatic smile. The film doesn't end on a neat, Oscar-friendly note - rather than a winding up of the terrible events they've experienced, we receive a hint of a happy ending (the remaining pair end up together?) that is at the same time rather disturbing and a trifle forced. But this does seem to be Almodovar's speciality.