Hello,

First off, congratulations to Todd and the crew for geting things back in order so quickly. It seems that everyone has been keeping busy with their stack of movies during the interim. For those of you who have seen "2046" (or those of you who are simply keen on catching it soon), here are some tantalising press clippings. If you are in London, it's closing out the London Film Festval next week. Tickets shouldn't be that bad either; from past experience, London is viewer-friendly like Telluride, Tornoto, and Venice.

Start here:

Q: ...

WKW: The people at Samsung invited me up to their office yesterday to show me a film and it was like a remake of "Chungking Express" meets "Fallen Angels." You know, there are now Korean Wong Kar-wais and Japanese Wong Kar-wais and Taiwanese Wong Kar-wais. It's time to move on, I think.

[Interview with Nick Roddick before the Cannes premiere of "Happy Together." N.b. Wow, what obvious product placement in "2046" to boot. Life is Good at Samsung!]


Q: Despite the contemporary feeling of "Chungking Express" and "Fallen Angels," I think your movies are sort of old-fashioned. They're really about people just looking to connect in a hyper-speeded-up modern world.

WKW: Yes. People have said, "You're the hippest director in the world," and I say, "I'm not hip." I, too, think I'm very old-fashioned.

[Interview with Elizabeth Weitzman after the limited American realease of "Fallen Angels."]


Q: Why did you shoot a story about the sixties at the end of the century?

WKW: This is one of the benefits of being a director. If you want to visit someplace or some era, you can go there. In the movie I was extremely interested in taking the era and looking at the way people lived and the environment of interpersonal relationships among passing neighbors. Because from the very start I told them [the actors and crew] that this movie is a little bit different from my previous films. This movie has a lot of neighbors because I wanted to film neighbors. A lot of people have said, your movies always have only two or three characters. I told our people that his time there would be a lot of people in the movie and that that era was something from my childhood, thus I feel quite fond of it.

Q: Are you not fond of the present?

WKW: Probably looking back after twenty years I think I could be fairly fond of the present. In your memories, everything is a little bit better.

***

Q: If Wong Kar-wai were a famous brand, what do you think it ought to say under the trademark: "Made in Hong Kong" or "Made in Shanghai"?

WKW: "Made in Hong Kong and Shanghai!" Raw materials from Shanghai, labour in Hong Kong.

[Translated from a TV appearence on "Dialogue," a CCTV talkshow after the Beijing premiere of "In the Mood for Love." Can be listened to online using RealAudio Player.]


Q: In the film you show a story and its main characters who seem pre-destined, melancholy, and have difficulty communicating directly. Do you have any particular thoughts on your characters?

WKW: It takes courage to change. But because I wrote about falling in love and then out of love, they [Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung's characters] had to change. When most people see the movie they say: "Your movie, it's too direct, too cruel. Those two should end up together." The way I see it, would they actually be happy if the movie concluded with them being with one another? I don't believe so. The very start of their relationship was a mistake. Because of this process, the weight of their past lives would impact their future. I don't think they could be happy. At the end of the picture we can see that the female protagonist has her job, a young child, [she's] relatively independent, [her] personality is more or less complete. From the perspective of the characters, they've all met with relatively good ends. In the future there is the possibility they could meet or not. Their memomory [of their time together], however, will be preserved forever.

Q: In the movie the two leads retreat a room numbered "2046." Is their any significance to using this number?

WKW: While I was in Thailand, we were basically shooting two movies simultaneously. That was incredibly difficult. One was about 50 years ago, one was about 50 years later. Together they spanned a century; one person simultaneously loving two different people, uncertain of whom [he loved more]. At the end I thought, it would be best to put them together to make one movie but split into two parts. Thus, I hope in "2046" [people] can see the movie "In the Mood for Love" and from "In the Mood for Love" see things in "2046."

[Translated from the Beijing Film Academy interview conducted by Zhang Huijun held on November 24, 2000 and published as "Discussing 'In the Mood for Love' with Wong Kar-wai" in _Motion Picture Arts_ 2001, issue 1, pp 43-6.]


Q: Maggie [Cheung] told me you were conservative. What did she mean by that?

WKW: I don't know.

Q: How would you describe Maggie?

WKW: Conservative. More conservative than Wong Kar-Wai.

***

Q: ...

WKW: I think that's one of the advantages of being a filmmaker; you can travel and you can travel in time also. You can go back to 1962 or you can go to 2046. You can make 10 seconds last forever or you can make 10 years in one second.

[Interview with Claudine Ko for "Mr Wong Kar-wai" in _Giant Robot_, issue 21 after the US release of "In the Mood For Love."]


Q: Your other films, they haven't been black and white or show that "this is what happened," or "this is how this person feels" in the end.

WKW: Normally, I think for me, the ending, because the film is about a period that has been lost, and I think we have to show the end of the chapters and not only what happens to these two persons and also about other things that are happening in that period.

We go through all this history and events happening in Cambodia in 1966. The biggest thing is De Gaulle visiting Cambodia, and what he said in Cambodia is outrageous, it is extremely colonial. Nobody will take that now, so I think that belongs to that part of history. And for me it's not an open ending... it's a very positive ending because people said it's a sad story, but to me it's not so sad because I don't think [the characters] would be very happy if they left together. For me I think the two characters in the film actually have become more independent and more complete and they can do something that they like.

Like [Tony Leung's character], he becomes a journalist, and he works outside Hong Kong and he does something that he thinks is very important to him. And also for Maggie, she lives by herself with her kid, and she has a job, and I think these are very positive things, and they might meet each other but that is another story.

***

Q: Do you have this as a technique where you use the same songs over and over again in your films, which works really politically. For example in "Chungking Express," did you scheme the movie visually based on "California Dreaming"?

WKW: Because we want to create the routine for these two persons, and most of our stories are about people who try to break away from the routine or a certain orbit in their life, because we always have our habits and we always follow our habits, and some days we feel something's wrong and we are not happy with our lives and we want to do something.

But we need something to push us out of these things, and mostly in my films it is because of love or because of being out of love. And we want to see the changes through the unchanged, because we keep seeing these two persons walking the same corridors, working in the same space, and we have the music always repeating itself. But actually we can see the changes because we can see during the films that these two persons are actually changing.

[Interview with Wendy Chan for AsianConnections.com after the US release of "In the Mood for Love."]


Q: The costume design [for "In the Mood for Love"] is also very important. Maggie changes constantly.

WKW: In fact, we had 20-25 dresses for Maggie for the whole film. Because we cut the film short, it becomes like a fashion show; she changes all the time. My purpose at first was to try to show the film in a repetitious way. Like, we repeat the music, the angle of a location, always the clock, always the corridor, always the staircase. Because I want to show nothing changes, except the emotions of these two persons.

***

Q: Can you talk about your next film, "2046"?

WKW: The film is about promise. In 1997, China's government promised 50 years of change. And I think, well, I should make a film about promises. Have things really changed in 50 years? So the film is set in the year 2046; it is a futuristic film, but it's not a science fiction film. It's not like "The 5th Element." It has three stories, and each one is adapted from a Western Opera, Madame Butterfly, Carmen, and Tanhausan.

[Interview with indieWIRE.com dated Feb 2, 2001.]


Q: You shot "2046" looking back at 1997, writing the script in 1999. Of the two dates, one is Hong Kong "returning" to China, the other the "end of the century." What sort of significance does this have for you?

WKW: Actually, the reason why I looked back at 1997 was because I had just finished shooting "Happy Together" then. At that time right after the handover, everybody was talking about [Deng Xiaoping's promise of] "no changes for fifty years." Thinking about this question I wondered "is there anything in this world that doesn’t change?" I'm not talking about a political story here. From 1997 to 2046--these two dates--made me think about using them to show a love story that could be extremely intriguing. Because in the process of being in love, everyone always focuses on this point--"What have we promised? Do you love me? Do I love you? Is [our love] eternal? Right now we're together and that’s alright and if it were to last forever, well, that's even better." However, in the end could love truly be forever? I started from here; from this one point I developed the entire story.

[Translated from an appearence on CCTV at the Shanghai premiere of "2046." Transcribed in the story "Wong Kar-wai talks about '2046': I don't want others to see the complete script."]


The title "2046" is more than a room number or the year in which Chow's sci-fi novel is set. "Hong Kong went back to China in 1997," says Wong. "The Chinese government promised Hong Kong 50 years without change; 2046 would be the last year of this promise. Will there be change?" He is quick, however, to note his priorities. "It was never my intention to make a film about politics. I'm interested in people. This is a film about someone who wants to change." That someone is Chow. "He's trying to forget about his past. The problem is, the more he wants to do that, the more he realises he remembers. Things just keep coming back. He's made a lot of mistakes. The only thing left is memory."

[Article by Howard Fernstein in "It was like being in jail," _The Guardian_ dated Tuesday September 21, 2004.]


Q: In the movie "2046" isn’t just a number. If "2046" can be said to represent the past, what meaning does "2047" hold?

WKW: "2046" is an unattainable ideal. An expectation and an ideal. "2047," however, represents reality.

***

Q: I noticed that "2046" was different from your previous pictures. There were more asides and title cards this time.

WKW: Actually in my previous films the voiceovers always felt like internal dialogues with oneself, whereas this time their deployment is a little more obvious. The obvious reason you ask? He [Tony Leung’s character] has many more conversation partners [in "2046."] From the beginning of the film, it’s all Chow Mo-wan talking to himself. He's got a lot of asides, he's a writer, the basic idea is that writers are characters that talk to themselves. But haven't you noticed that in the Zhang Ziyi segment there isn’t a single aside comment? When the Zhang Ziyi story is over, he reverts to internalising his thoughts.

Q: Why is love in you movies always "elusive"?

WKW: Actually if you take a look at things from a different angle, my movies constantly show people "finding" love. Love is something that repeatedly emerges in the twinkling of an eye. Stirring passions, moving people. You'll never forget it--it's something that you certainly pass through, therefore, something that has been in fact "obtained."

[Translated from an extended interview with the Chinese press dated 10:00pm on September 20, 2004 or the Shanghai premiere of "2046." Published in the newspaper _Southern Capital_ dated September 23. N.b. this is actually a wonderful long article of about 8000-words that presents a synpotic review of Wong's work with penetrating questions from the reporter and equally incisive answers from the director. It can be viewed in its entirety at Sina.com, Sohu.com, and 163.net on their homepages for the film under the title "Wong Kar-wai: '2046' is an unattainable expectation and ideal."]

Thank you for the clippings. Much appreciated.

Very Good! I hadn't read any of these before. Thanks for helping bide my time while my DVD is shipped. BTW - Anyone know why the first DVD is PAL?! And also, as far as I can tell, there's really no difference betwen the box and the disc, except a booklet and, duh, the giant box a la HERO. Is the box from Guang Dong and the regular disc from HK / Kowloon?

Thanks !
John

It's PAL because most of the mainland releases are primarily for domestic consumption. If it's from Guangdong Face then both versions are from the mainland. I'm assuming that's what you're referring to. I believe those are the only current legit releases of 2046 available. I think it also has the Face watermark previously seen on the extended version of Hero, so I'll be waiting for the HK release.

Ew, hadn't thought about the watermark. Oh well, I GOT to see this! So, sorry, yes, it is the Face version. But I'm confused - I thought both mainland and HK were NTSC. I bought a bunch of DVDs in Guangzhou and they were all NTSC. What gives?
Thanks!
John

Hong Kong and China both use PAL standard for TV broadcasts. Multistandard sets are common everywhere but the US it seems. As to DVDs, NTSC is standard for HK and PAL releases outnumber NTSC from China from what I've seen, though I have both. Again, it may depend on the intended market. Which titles do you have in NTSC? Myself, I lose track, most of my players are NTSC/PAL so it's transparent. And on a pc, I guess it doesn't matter either.

Wow! I feel so ignorant. I had no idea. VCDs, DVDs, PAL, NTSC: It's a big ol' country.
Also, my machines play both (with varying degrees of success) so maybe I didn't notice. A couple titles I got there (2 years ago) were MILLINIUM MAMBO, CHINESE ODDYSEY 2001. and some crappy bootlegs of Hollywood stuff for the fun of it; eg-STAR WARS II: THE BATTLE OF HOTH (!?). Strange that the Face HERO is NTSC, yet their 2046 is PAL. Guess I need to do my homework.

Thanks for the info Dennis