Moving Pictures

Before ever coming to Asia, I had a picture of it in my head courtesy of the plethora of movies from Hong Kong, Thailand, and the Philippines. I remember sneaking McDonold’s into the theater while we watched the late 90s Sundance hit, Three Seasons from Vietnam. Of these films, there were some that really stuck in my head not because they were proven to create the most realistic pictures of Asia, but because they were able to present a view that was at once attractive and gritty.
Chungking Express, Wong Kar Wei’s masterful Hong Kong new-wave film was one of these inspiring pictures. Wong owes most of his film’s visual style to Christopher Doyle, the gifted Cinematographer known for helping Wong create the neon-lit new wave noir in the 90s. Doyle is also known as the guy who was able to coax those perfect colors out of SaiGon in The Quiet American (The new one with Micheal Caine).

Doyle’s style is what a jazz riff might look like. One knows that when watching a film photographed by him, the camera could be anywhere. It is almost as if the camaera is another character. But not in music video way or even a “how clever am I” way of many indie films. Case in point is Fallen Angels in which we watch a woman eating Wantons close-up, we watch a scene end as a light is flicked off and a woman exits into the light coming from a dooway. Then there’s the scene all you teenage boys might remeber when a woman pleasures herself as the camera peaks over the edge of her bed. Or we peak through the window into a hitman’s flat as he gets ready to go to work. Watching these always interesting and often beautiful images float across the screen is akin to listening to a great jazz musician riffing or an skilled rapper free styling.

While Doyle and Wong create an noirish image of Hong Kong which might not be the best mirror on the place’s actual atmosphere, it’s energy mirrors the energy that I have experienced in certain places in Asia. Just the feeling that anything can happen at any moment, and everyone’s life is like a jazz riff.