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Movies Forum Index » International Movies Forum » _My Blueberry Nights_
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 Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:45 pm |
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_My Blueberry Nights_ is far from the best of Wong Kar-Wai's films,
but it still seems better than his best known _Chungking Express_.
Its visual aesthetics, informed by _Happy Together_, _In the Mood
for Love_, and _2046_, represent a significant advance over Wong's
4th film. _My Blueberry Nights_, created with long time art
director William Chang but not cinematographer Christopher Doyle,
does not break significantly new grounds, but neither did _Chungking
Express_; if the latter made a huge stir in the mid 90s and _My
Blueberry Nights_ fails to do that 12-14 years later, it can only be
attributed to a unwelcome change in frigid, overly academic
cinematic climate of today.
In style and characters, _My Blueberry Nights_ self-consciously echoes
Wong's previous films. The huge close-upshots of a napping Norah
jones, with her head horizontal and filling the screen, echos
_Days of Being Wild_'s Maggie Cheung. The oh-so-fleeting shot of
her lips curling up in a smile after an implied kiss from Jude Law is
among the most beautiful in this feature. Except that, in a film which
takes pain to frame each character in through-a-pane-of-glass
isolationi
shots, Jones' and Judge Law's heads come together in the final scene
of film, their kiss this time made explicit. Wong also shot Jones
in the classic Faye Wong pose, looking wide-eyed at her own reflection
in a window (used in _Chungking Express, and far more powerfully, in
_2046_). In all fairness, Jones hardly shows she can carry this film.
But neither could Faye Wong in _Chungking_; her mature turn in _2046_
is so much more evocative. There is hope and time for Jones yet.
Jude Law the cafe owner is a hybrid of Tony Leung in _Chungking
Express_
and the frenetic Takashi Kaneshiro in _Fallen Angels_ (down to the
sped-up/slowed down fights he is involved in). This is frankly the
first
time I admire Law as an actor; he is usually too aloof and his
characters
too narcissistic. David Straithairn's policeman (in and out of
uniform
like Tony Leung in _Chungking Express_ as someone points out) drinks
in tentalizing slow motion the way Tony Leung smokes in _In the Mood
for Love_. Alcoholism is a favorite them of American writers;
Hong Kong writers seldom consider this a disease. The fact that _My
Blueberry Nights_ has an American screenwriter (Lawrence Block, who
works in TV) is of course precisely its main problem: Straithairn's
amazing, lip-quivering drunken post-cognac binge is compromised by
the writerly, lengthy exposition about abstinence chips he has to
deliver. Wong, in his more disciplined films, would have trimmmed the
monolog, but this film is made rather quickly, just like _Chungking
Express_ (which frankly suffers from discipline problems and self-
conscious soliquoys too).
Rachel Weisz -- dishevelled dark hair swept over her brow, as
amazingly
photogenic and unforgetable as Michele Reis was in _Fallen Angels_ --
plays Straithairn's crack-head ex-wife. Her entrance scene is another
high point of the film -- short, sharp editing juxtaposing her,
Straithairn, Jones, and her new beau in the cowboy hat, impeccably
set to Soul music. The editing is as kinetic as in _Ashes of Time_,
as perfectly framed as in _2046_; Weisz brushing by Straithairn
who is then shown stopped dead in his track; Weisz and Jones almost
brushing shoulders with Jones, underscoring their opposition in
character and temperament. (The ultra-shallow focus camera work,
the focus on Weisz's shoes, at one point the use of a harmonica
version of the _In the Mood for Love_ theme, makes me pine for the
time I was totally immersed in those films.) Weisz acts her heart
out in this Memphis-set segment, but is badly let down by the script.
Her monolog is clearly meant to evoke Nastassja Kinksi's in _Paris,
Texas_;
the bar owner is name "Travis," just like Kinski's ex-husband in
Wender's film. But Wenders is a better director of actresses than
Wong
in this one case. While Kinski is heartbreakingly composed, Weisz
tries in vain to evoke a drunken abandon in every scene. Again this
is the fault of the screenwriter, although _Days of Being Wild_ is
also guilty of having actors come on screen and explode on us without
sufficient build-up. Wong's best films have calm, Zen-like centers,
usually embodied by Maggie Cheung as the elusive object of desire,
or Tony Leung (or Andy Lau) as the stoic narrator. And this film
could
use one of those.
This comparison with _Paris, Texas_ brings up all kinds of interesting
points. Both Wenders and Wong grew up with American popular culture,
and simply cannot resist making "road movies" that explore the
diversity
in space and temperament of this vast continental USA. (I just read
in the liner notes for the _Blueberry_ soundtrack that Wong
crisscrossed
the US 5 times in preparation for the film.) And the locations used
in
these road movies by foreigners (_Alices in the Cities_, _Don't Come
Knocking_ as well as _Paris, Texas_ and _My Blueberry Nights_ are
fairly
predictable: the cosmopolitan cities along the East Coast; the quirky,
almost stereotypical American South (embodied by Jazz/Soul music as
much
as by Faulkner/Tennessee Williams); the wild West and Southwest
(Nevada
in _My Blueberry Nights_. Weisz and Straithairn can escape each
other's
centrifugal pull in the death-haunted old South, while the sheer
distance
and the sun drenched desert burns away human ties in the new American
frontier, the Southwest. ButOne place that is criminally
underexplored
roadmovies, but which makes up such an integral part of the US
character,
in movies is the Midwest, its heavily populated states of Illinois,
Indiana,
Minnesota, and so on. The Midwest is the last crucial truth, secret
hidden in plain sight, about the US that outsiders get to learn about.
In fact, Tony Leung's characters in Wong's recent films would have
been
quite at home in the Midwest.
The one character in the film that has the presence and gravita of
Tony Leung in _In the Mood for Love_ and _2046_ would be Chan Marshall
(a la singer Cat Power) as Katya, Jude Law's ex-girlfriend. In a film
full of veteran actors, her brief appearance is absolutely the most
perfectly realized scene in the film. The yellow, jaundiced lighting
under the moon; her upturned face as she exhales cigeratte smoke,
the way she ends every sentence in an upward lilt, as if turning it
into a question mark; the way she utters the "sentimental"; the
lines of wisdom and experience around her eyes, so different from
Norah Jones' wide-eyed innocence ... I am still having a hopeless
crush on her even weeks after last watching the film. I hope Wong
will work with her some time soon.
Which brings us to the Nevada segment, headlined by Natalie Portman's
professional gambler character. Portman shows herself to be a
wonderful actress expressive in every muscle from her eyelash to
her calf. But the dialog is especially poor and unnecessary here.
For example, the interminable lines where Portman reveals to Jones
about her winnings can be replaced by just showing us the money.
The rookie screenwriter is just too eager to show off his dialog,
which frankly does not impress anyone other than apparently himself.
And the Nevada casinos are so generic they defeat even the
incomparable
Willian Chang's attempt to instill grace and poetry in them. But
the outdoor scenes, especially those shot in cars speeding by the
desolate desert landscape, partly atones for this segment. The
kinetic way their two cars are shot leaving on diverging courses
remind me of one of the last shots of _Happy Together_. In general,
Wong seldom allows himself the luxury of wide-angle, outdoor shots
unless he is away from Hong Kong. He is so good with those; they
almost make _My Blueberry Nights_ worthwhile all by themselves.
(The scene at dawn, showing traffic lights swaying in the wind
in downtown Memphis, also gets to me every time I see them.)
Lately Wong has become very enamored of trains, streetcars, subways.
I suspect a few of the above-ground subway trains shots are actually
shot in Hong Kong.
_My Blueberry Nights_ isn't a deep film but it isn't bad. I saw it
twice in NYC and will welcome the chance to see it again when (if) it
opens locally. It has the strengths and weaknesses of many of Wong's
other films, and is certainly a match for _Chungking Express_ and
_Fallen Angels_. I just wish our cinematic culture has not gotten
so lost that we are denying ourselves of such pure cinematic
pleasures. |
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