Essay Question: What is the specialty of Wong Kar-wai and his auteur films? How can we assess his films?.
INTRODUCTION.
Wong Kar-wai, a Hong Kong film auteur, has an exceptional style in that he creates highly individual art films in a very commercial market. His working style is so freshly innovative that in Ashes of Time every actor received their own scripts a few hours before each day's filming. In Fallen Angels, for example, Takeshi Kaneshiro had to massage a pig's carcass without knowing why whilst playing this difficult role (Hansen, 2000, p.44). Likewise, Guan Shuyi spent several arduous months in Buenos Aires playing the leading actress in Happy Together, but unfortunately this talented leading actress existed only in Wong's mind every scene of hers were subsequently cut, and she does not appear even for one second in the final version of the film. Despite that, there are still many Hong Kong superstars lining up to play even limited roles in Wong's films, partly because playing in his films often leads to the opportunity to be nominated for awards. Following his second film, Days of Being Wild (1991), all of his later films, Ashes of Time (1994), Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Happy Together (1997), and In the Mood for Love (2000) were collectively appreciated by critics at film festivals in Hong Kong, Taiwan, even Europe, and have won numerous awards and brought fame to the Hong Kong film industry, although the majority of them actually failed at the box office and did not even recover the initial investment. His works are regarded by some film critics as having links with realism, postmodernism, stream of consciousness or constructivism and at the same time are collected and admired by enthusiastic fans. Professional filmmakers' may say that his films are full of some very strange and innovative skills, such as MTV camera style and continuously shaking images.