Perhaps the only fixed points around which everything revolves are
nostalgia and memory: this guardian of emotions. By directing the
endless adventures of the heart, the convulsions of a love which
is often extinguished before it is even born, Wong Kar-wai talks
in a fundamental way about the individualÕs relation to experience,
about the domination of the past over the present, about the "elimination"
of identity, about intimacy through distance (the distance of the
gaze), about memory (as stationary time) and about time (as a continuous
flow), about the weight of memory and catharsis, and about liberation
from the bonds of the past.
An event (experience) and its reverberations, and its reflections in
a person's memory: it is nostalgia which Wong is filming and it is
from its domino that the film's heroes are called upon to escape. As
they sink into a deeply subjective universe, where the experience and
the memory of nostalgia imprisons their existence, they struggle to
express their emotions as clearly as they can, externalizing all the
tempests, all the troubles of the heart, and confessing the passions
of the soul. It is not surprising therefore, that each of Wong's films
invariably ends in a confession. The character who, almost silent throughout
the film, has suffered the torments and suffering of love, is now freed
through the act of confession: Maggie Cheung as Peach Blossom (in Ashes
of Time) gazes sadly at the sea, filled with nostalgia for her
lost love; the weeping of Lai Yu-fai (in Happy Together) heard
on a cassette-player at the end of the earth; Chow Mo-wan's whispering
at the wall of the
ancient temple (in In the Mood for Love), are unique and unprecedented
moments of liberation.
Dimitris Babas
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