Released in 2000, and called the "…love story of the new millennium" (Time Out New York), In the Mood for Love (2000) is one of the best and most underrated foreign film. From its nostalgic depiction of the 1960s to its artistically appealing cinematography, this film has become a staple in the ever evolving, fast-paced film industry. Consequently, after having watched it I was in a daze for days, day dreaming about the characters, reimaging their fates, this movie could not leave me. I wouldn’t let it. Furthermore, I was more inclined to analyze In the Mood for Love after having watched another Wong Kar Wai masterpiece, Chung King Express (1994), because the resonating power both these films have had on me are immensely powerful. It is extremely rare when a filmmaker has the ability to really leave a mark on your life, twice. The film, In the Mood for Love is produced under the shroud of the Hong Kong New Wave movement (1978-2000), in particularly the Second Wave. This film movement analyzes major social issues grappling Hong Kong such as decolonization, social class, and the importance of women in a rising global economy. As a result the following analysis will chronicle the details of the Hong Kong Second Wave film movement, along with a detailed description of Wong Kar Wai’s film aesthetics, and a deep evaluation of the acclaimed movie, In the Mood for Love. Modernization in the 1980s paved the way for the Hong Kong New Wave, as the studio system set up in the 1950s was dismantled, the film industry experienced more freedom. Since decolonization was heavily present 75% of Hong Kong’s box office revenue were home grown movies, while the meager 15% was left for the foreign market. As one can see the political context of Ho... ... middle of paper ... ...rly consumed by this film. Works Cited Christie, Ian (1 August 2012). "The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute. Retrieved 12 May 2014 Christopher Doyle (Cinematographer)". In the Mood for Love official website. Archived from the original on 7 August 2010. Retrieved 09 August 2014. "Decade: Wong Kar-wai on "In The Mood For Love"." Indiewire. N.p., 7 Aug. 2013. Web. 9 May 2014. . "In the Mood for Love (2001)". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 1 May 2014. Marchetti, Gina, and Tan Kam. Hong Kong film, Hollywood and the new global cinema no film is an island. London: Routledge, 2007. Print. Zhuo, Botang. Hong Kong New Wave Cinema: 1978-2000. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2008. Print.
The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chinese culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member of the Chinese society nor the poor, we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, an American woman whom helps him write the book. When Liang Heng and Judy Shapiro fell in love in China during 1979, they weren’t just a rarity; they were both pioneers at a time when the idea of marriages between foreigners and Chinese were still unacceptable in society.
" Greatest Films - The Best Movies in Cinematic History. Tim Dirks, May 1996. Web. The Web. The Web.
Grainge, P., Jancovich, M., & Monteith, S. (2012). Film Histories; An introduction and reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Chinatown builds upon the film noir tradition of exploiting expanding social taboos. Polanski added an entirely new dimension to classic film noir by linking up its darkness with the paranoid and depressed mood of post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, thereby extending the noir sense of corruption beyond the mean urban streets and to high governmental and privileged economic places. Chinatown may be set in 1930’s L.A., but it embodies the 1970’s. The film stands as an indictment of both capitalism and patriarchy going out of control. It implies that we are powerless in the face of this evil corruption and abusive power that is capable of anything, including incest: one of the most horrible breaches of human decency and social morality imaginable.
Third Cinema is not limited to those cinemas of Latin America or Africa. It is located where challenges to Western cinematic domination and rules are played out. In China, the years following the downfall of the 10 year reign of the Cultural Revolution produced a climate ripe for a politicized revolutionary cinema. Yet, the cinema in China remains bound to censorship and banning of films. The overtly politically challenging film The Blue Kite, set in the decade leading up to the Cultural Revolution, was banned and denounced by Chinese authorities. What has emerged then is the need to create a new language for the cinema to speak with. The language of Yellow Earth draws upon Chinese art to create a new aesthetic, a Third Cinema aesthetic.
In the beginning half of the 20th century, China experienced an intellectual revolution, known as the May Fourth Movement. Among other things, May Fourth thinkers were passionate about women’s rights, and fought for equality between the sexes. Like in any school of thought, ideas about women and their roles evolved over time. In 1925, Lu Xun wrote “Regret for the Past”, a story about Shih Chuan-Sheng and Tzu-chun, a modern couple whose relationship falls apart. Ten years later, in 1935, the film “New Woman” was released. The film follows Wei Ming, a music teacher whose life begins to crumble due to the machinations of a lecherous businessman. Both Tzu-chun and Wei Ming represent a version of the “modern woman, but their similarities and differences illustrate how the idea of the modern woman changed and stayed the same over time.
Amidst the unprecedented success of the new generation of Korean filmmakers in both local and global arenas, one question remains to be investigated: how do old masters of Korean cinema define their art in this period of dynamic transition? My article addresses this vital and yet somewhat neglected issue by examining thematic and stylistic changes in recent films by Pak Ch’ôlsu (Park Chulsoo) and Im Kwônt’aek (Im Kwon-Taek), two prominent figures who began their directorial careers in earlier decades but have continued their search for their own film language to the present day. Pak’s Farewell My Darling (Haksaengbugunsinwi, 1996) and Kazoku Cinema (Kajok sinema, 1998) and Im’s Chunhyang (Ch’unhyangdyôn, 2001), while employing the conventional mode of storytelling as a structural scaffold, often break down the wall between diegesis and nondiegesis. They thereby undermine cinematic illusionism, which has long dominated Korean film. Pak continues his formal experiment in his latest work Pongja (Pongja, 2000) in which he blends social and virtual realities by means of a digital camera. In a similar spirit of border-crossing and hybridization, Im incorporates traditional Korean painting into the visual language of Painted Fire (Ch’wihwasôn, 2002). These veteran filmmakers’ playful attitudes toward the possibilities of the cinematic medium and especially their common concern with reflexivity and intertextuality reveal their changing views on life, art, and society. In light of their long contributions to the plot-driven mimetic tradition of mainstream cinema, Pak’s and Im’s innovative styles can be seen as ironic yet earnest responses to the shifting cultural milieu of today’s Korean film.
2. Feng, P. (Fall 1999). "The State of Asian American Cinema: In Search of Community". Cineaste, 24.
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
This raises a question about the viability of art cinema, independent feature films, short films, independent documentary, and other less profitable and commercial modes of filmmaking in South Korea. It may even lead some people to believe that those other modes of filmmaking are not an integral part of the new South Korean cinema success story. Yet, my third and final point will be to argue against this and for the importance of what I want to tentatively call “full service cinema,” including a full range of modes of production and consumption. In making this point, I want to challenge another very common assumption not only in South Korea but everywhere—the idea that art cinema and independent cinema are opposed to mainstream commercial cinema. While there may be an aesthetic opposition between them, it is a strategic mistake to translate this into an institutional opposition.
In Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together and In The Mood For Love, people remain obsessively undecided. In Chungking Express, cop no.223 vows to fall in love with the first woman he walks into. In a way he is going through reality the way adolescents go through computer games, detached, full of illusions, and unprepared to have real feelings. Wong shows this dynamic even in the love relationship between two men in his film Happy Together. The characters’ perpetually recurring suggestion to start their relationship from scratch is naïve abstract and innocent. Happy Together is a provocative film on many levels and perhaps can only be made by a fiercely independent director such as Wong Kar-Wai. Strangely self-contained, almost virtual and dystopian, life exists as a dreamlike experience. Perhaps all this modern confusion is why Wong looks to the past. A simpler time where identity was more of a tangible concept than it is now. His films drenched in nostalgia are perhaps his internal attempts to come to terms with modernity and ground us in the context of history and
What happens when you fall head over heels in love, but you both have spots to go? Do you pick your accomplice, or a superior life? This film has the answers. First and foremost, thank you, Mr. Mani Ratnam, for a reviving film. It's difficult to depict an affection story that begins at a route station without helping the group of onlookers remember Alaipayuthey.
"In the Mood for Love" is a 2000 film directed by Wong Kar-Wai, and made in Hong Kong. The two protagonists, Chow Mo-Wan and Su Li-Zhen, become neighbors where they soon find out their significant others have been cheating on them. Through their mutual betrayal they begin to develop an intimate bond, but fear expressing for the reason that they do not want to resemble their spouses and love in a shade of wrong. Even though Chow and Su remain moderately reserved, and physical affection is omitted, their relationship and emotions are made palpable by the filming techniques used in the film. The story behind "In the Mood for Love" comes forth more from the aesthetic elements on the screen, then from the dialogue exchanged
Since the commercialization of Chinese film market in 1997, The Dream Factory(1997) directed by Xiaogang,Feng was committed as the first commercial film in China (Mainland of China) after years of previously censored propaganda film (this refers to those films allowed to be screened during the Great Culture Revolution period). This movie was meaningful not only in terms of it leads the serious thinking about the future of Chinese entertainment movie, but also it created a new genre—New year’s celebration movie which competing with same period Hollywood blockbuster as a crucial representation of Chinese national cinema. The aim of this study is to explore how The Dream Factory was defined as the term of national cinema based on the concept of national cinema developed by Andrew Higson. This study both provided some thoughts about Chinese national cinema and thoughts about Higson’s concept of national cinema.