Chungking Express: Theatricality and Time-Space Manipulation in Mise-èn-scene
- Thi Chu
- Mar 3, 2022
- 6 min read
Introducing Chungking Express based on the situation that Wong Kar-wai shot it during a break from the making of Ashes of Time (1994), Quentin Tarantino referred it as “a fun cool quick rock and roll style film”. However, digging deeper into this film’s mise-en-scène entails much more sophisticated process and thinking than the “quick” it seems to be. Through a formal analysis of the film’s exploitation of locations, setting, décor and eventually kinesis, haunting themes of isolation, loneliness and longing can be found saturated ubiquitously. By integrating many different catalysts onto the mise-en-scène such as space and time manipulation, action-based film plot maneuver or theatricality, the fragmented love stories portrayed in the movie becomes a new ideology of romance, abandonment, hopes and changes in the contemporary frenzied urban life.
Rather than solely for the purpose of realism, the intention of shooting on-location in Hong Kong, Wong’s familiar hometown, seems to serve more to the sentimental theme of Chungking Express. As the matter of fact, Wong was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong at five-year-old. Growing up in a hectic cosmopolitan city with a father as a nightclub manager made him know the city, especially at night, like the back of his hand. Instead of glamorous skyscrapers or expensive malls, the movie takes place in Chungking Mansions – “Hong Kong’s favorite ghetto”, Midnight Express – a late-night snack bar, local pubs, convenient store, night market, subways, and Indians’ slum, mostly at night – portraying a dark, hidden city view that cannot be seen by tourists. This effect of setting gets rid of voyeuristic view and brings the audience closer, if not too close, to the residents’ stories – the underground life of working-class people - through Wong – an insider himself -’s perspective. These people have not just lived there but been attached, tied, and unconsciously “trapped” in this place for their entire life. Perhaps, the “contradictory resemblance” between Wong’s childhood experience of leaving home (from Shanghai) and the dependent attachment of these people mutually contributes to form the isolation, exile and nostalgia theme in the movie. They know the city, but the city doesn’t empathize with them; they blend in the city but do not belong to it.
In the first story, He Zhiwu appears in a chaotic crowd moving fast from many directions. However, he is the only one who almost-clearly stands out while the rest of the crowd become a matte background of light streaks and motion blurs.
This special effect gives the audience an optical illusion of framing. While this is supposed to be an open frame where the protagonist is chasing after a criminal, the overwhelming, blended surrounding turns it into a closed frame, keeping Zhiwu “stuck” in the center as if he is struggling in the hustle and bustle “swamp”. He’s running without purpose, heading nowhere in this boisterous pace of life. By detaching him as a separate individual from the crowd, this effect also indicates his misfit in his own society. He is left behind in love, in time and in the oblivion of his own life.
Not just with Zhiwu, there’s one scene of Cop 663 and Faye sitting silently with each other beside the snack bar, frontally viewed through a busy crowd, that adopts the similar effect. The chaos of people, instead of background, becomes a curtain in front of the audience’s eyes, leaving the protagonists at the back completely separated.
In such an overflowing spot where anything could happen in just 0.01 centimeters of distance, why could there be a spot for two figures to step aside from the rest like this? While most of the times hidden behind the silhouettes of fast-moving pedestrians, under a deeming fluorescent light from the snack bar, these two still stand out, sinking in their own slow-moving thoughts. From two distant sides of the bar, Faye may be looking at Cop 663, but he is not – they, too, are only present in their own “zone”.
The use of lighting and special composition forms the detaching effect again. It draws a borderline isolating the characters from the rest of the society, pushes them away from each other. This implementation of space manipulation is also inextricably intertwined with the time manipulation as well to enhance the solitary theme – Whether they are too slow to catch up with this hectic pace of life, or this hustle culture is too fast for them to even catch up with themselves? – either way, they are abandoned in this frantic cityscape.
Notwithstanding coming home does not make the characters any better either, shedding light on their houses brings a more in-depth view onto exploring their deepest sorrow - loneliness and the latent desire to escape. Zhiwu and Cop 663’s small, dilapidated and cramped apartments emerge as private spheres of internal conversations in the lonely nights. Both are laden with old, torn, expired items as the men themselves are with long-gone memories, clinging to the past. Loneliness haunts the houses where the dog is Zhiwu’s only best friend, and familiar household items as Cop 663’s “roommates”. Wong Kar-wai once said in an interview, “Nowadays people are more likely to talk to themselves than to others.” – they are talking to the household items or they are talking to themselves – it must be them that the loneliness is haunting. On another spectrum, this cabin-fever, untidiness can be understood as the neglect of their own living conditions – the houses are not their “home” and they themselves are merely spiritless body. Being able to fill up the emptiness of the room, yet they fail to do the same with themselves.
However, this claustrophobic effect is not an intentional trap keeping them still forever, even though it has done it for a long time, but a booster to set them free. It urges Zhiwu to leave for the bar, running away from his own pathetic sadness and Cop 663 to let the past go and move on, as the house is renovated, cleaned and ready for his/ its new life. Once again, in a new form, the background-detached effect occurs. With such industrialized, densely populated Hongkong-signature apartment design, these setting accentuates the utter desolation in these men’s life while acting as a metaphor for their personal development in the movie. Utilizing the manipulation of space by showing the contrast between a location’s trait (open, closed) and the character’s ensuing feelings (trapped, unsettling) and consequential behaviors (struggle, escape), Wong attempts to push the unsettlement of these lonely urban humans to the climax.
Knowing that Wong’s films are more “artsy” and experimental than common narrative Hollywood structure, it’s expectable to see the characters’ kinesis so theatrical. The clearest example of character who adopts this motion style is Faye, played by Faye Wong. Whenever Faye appears, she is dancing to the music, or at least everything she does looks like dancing. Her moves do not follow any particular style, as if she is “sleepwalking” like her cousin says. They are subtle, natural, naïve and has the typical quirky vibe of a manic pixie dream girl figure – as she is in Cop 663’s life. The dull ordinariness surrounding her becomes merely a dull background to her performance.
However, Faye lives freely in her own world, but that world is not free. By the fact that she always dances in such a confined space like behind the snack bar or in the cop’s jammed room and is frequently interrupted by “the reality” – her cousin’ turning off the radio or Cop 663 returning home - she, too, is haunted by this busy but mundane society. With that being said, she keeps moving around, forward, deliberately, determinedly, with her “California dreaming”. Following her, either with such kinetic motion-scene like mischievously invading Cop 663’s house or still scene like the dazed, longing stare at the rainy window in the end, the audience can barely tell how long time has passed. She propels Cop 663’s through his sluggish life, and the film plot unfolds following her steps and gestures as well. Inferred from this, Faye is not the only one who leads the plot by her movements.
The similar effect can be seen on Zhiwu’s theory of running: He starts the movie with purposeless running, setting the theme to Lost and Hustle, encounters his love by running over the mysterious girl, finishes his story with a more determined running before it’s transformed to Faye’s dancing. In short, the theatrical kinesis in Chungking Express is beyond merely serving characters’ articulation. It becomes a distinct emotional stream maneuvering the film plot. Perhaps, the Express in Chungking Express lies here, when “people are more likely to talk to themselves than to others”, actions take place, navigating themselves through the journey of life, of love.
Pushing every single mise-en-scène element to their furthest boundaries, the movie doesn’t just project Wong’s cinema perspective in front of his audience but really brings them inside his world. By experimenting and understanding the use of setting, décors and locations, Wong utilizes the space and time manipulation capability of cinema to efficiently blend the movie themes in every detail on screen. With kinesis elements consecutively connected, the movie becomes a tight-knit entity, circulating a subtle yet powerful underlying idea of falling in love, letting go and moving on. With that being said, it is impossible to discuss separate use of each mise-en-scène elements in Chungking Express because of its undetachable correlation to each other to achieve the wholeness of emotions.
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