A Critical Appreciation of Wong Kar Wai's 'Happy Together' Movie

This essay provides a critical appreciation of Wong Kar Wai's 1997 film, 'Happy Together'. It examines the director's distinctive style, which breaks conventional filmmaking norms through nonlinear narratives, atmospheric music, and vivid cinematography. The essay highlights how Wong Kar Wai's work, influenced by various international directors and writers, contributes to building a strong image for Hong Kong cinema within World Cinema. The analysis focuses on the movie's unique storytelling, the use of fragmented images, and the portrayal of a dysfunctional homosexual relationship. It also discusses the mixed critical reception, the use of black-and-white and color, and the film's anticipation of its time due to its unconventional approach to filmmaking. The essay concludes by emphasizing the director's skill in reflecting the complexities of relationships and breaking cinematic conventions.

Running head: CRITICAL APPRECEIATION OF MOVIE
CRITICAL APPRECEIATION OF MOVIE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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The paper seeks to find out how Hong Kong directors are contributing to build up a
solid image in the World Cinema. This paper is mainly going to focus on how director Wong
Kar Wai is an amazing gift to the history of Hong Kong cinema as well as World Cinema.
The paper does not really deal with the whole range of his movies rather it focuses
particularly on one movie that is going to talk about how this movie has a distinctive style of
building up the story and reaching it to the audience while breaking the convention of movie
making. Although the most talked about movie of him is “Chungking Express” yet this paper
has chosen to specifically deal with the movie that has been released in 1997 with its unusual
style of storytelling and an unconventional way of reaching the audience. The paper finally
talks about how this movie maker stands apart with the extraordinary capability of the
director.
The director is different from that of his contemporaries because he has been
constantly showing through his movies that the stories can be told in a completely new way
using the nonlinear motif of narrative involving atmospheric music. He is considered to have
paved the path for his contemporaries and the directors yet to be born and already working.
He uses vivid detail in cinematography and paints every frame with bold yet saturated shades
which signifies the symbolism of his story accurately. The way he approaches his movies are
not very familiar because he has invented the terminologies and the ideas with which the
movies can be looked at. Although he started his career not as a director and he used to write
screenplay for different soap operas yet he did not take much time to become a director and
came up with “As Tears Go By” in the year 1988.
Wong Kar Wai is kind of a director who has nurtured him with multiple sources that
have constantly influenced him to grow as a better director and look at life in an entirely
different way. He has invested a lot of time in watching several national films belonging to
different genres as well as many European films that have collectively helped to form unique

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and individualistic ideas about movies. The movies that he has seen from his childhood have
been the part of his journey of learning every little detail about life and movies. He has not
only been influenced by tremendous energy of Hong Kong movies but also by the
phenomenon international directors like Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo
Antonioni and Bernardo Bertolucci (Yue 240).
Although his contemporaries but he still feels equally inspired by the detailed works
of Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino. Jean-Luc Godard is considered to be the God of
film making. He is believed to have started the revolution of incorporating art of life and
amalgamation of the abstract into the sphere of film making. Wong is such a talented movie
maker that his works and the distinctive style that he has chosen is often compared to that of
Godard’s. Since Wong is largely popular for using different shades vehemently the style can
be traced back to one of his closest colleagues from whom he has acquired the skill of using
them cleverly in proper frames.
Not only from the source of movies has he been influenced but also he has drawn his
influence from some contemporary writers. He is especially moved by Latin American
writers with which he has successfully been able to create the fragmented style to evoke
uniqueness into his films. The writers for instance are Manuel Puig and Julio Cortazar who
have constantly provoked him to delve deeper into the inner psyche of human mind. He has
confessed that he is strongly influenced by the channel MTV that had entered the Hong Kong
in the eighties. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami has been one of the greatest
influences upon his creation of Liu Yichang.
As it is said that his style is so different that he keeps on breaking the norms and
conventions every time he steps into a new movie. According to Stephen Teo his movie is a
cornucopia which is loaded with multiple layers of stories, fibers of expression, equipped

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with meanings and scope of expressions revealing identities which is the symbolic
representation of colors and multiple identities. The movies that he has made are structured in
a disjointed way. They have resemblance with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan which
is a fragmented part of a distorted and incomplete dream. The narratives are mostly nonlinear
and connected with each other and get revealed as the stories unfolded slowly (Rojas 508).
The critics are somewhat at denial about the deficiency of a well structured plot because the
narrative is not found to be very chronological which affects the storytelling technique. That
eventually leads to disjointed functionalities of the plot. Every director is up for telling their
stories in a concerned way that no hint and suggestion is missed by the audience. However in
case of his movies the narrative is disjointed and the connection has to be found with deeper
analysis.
“Happy Together” is hopelessly romantic story of breaking the convention of all
stereotype definition of romance. The movie has been such successful initiation in the
filmmaking that it has brought critical acclamation and a huge number of fame, recognition
along with multiple awards. The movie is been able to successfully express the intimacy that
can creep into the psyche of two different individuals. The movie talks about two lovers who
are trying hard to save their befallen relationship and reconcile the dilapidated condition of
their love story (Abbas 131). They have moved to Argentina with the hope of surviving with
dying relationship and get back to life with normalcy. They abuse each other as real couples
do in reality. They have breakups and traumatic experience with each other but they are
hopeful about their relationship. Iguazu waterfalls have been utilized to emphasize on the
leitmotif in the entire plot.
The movie is replete with mixed reactions because some critics are really baffled with
the vague story line because nothing happens and nothing really arrives at the end of the day.
The story is turbulent and it portrays the picture of a claustrophobic reality. The story deals

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with hostility in human relationship. The couple is struggling enough to get back to
everything that seems to be normal but they understand how miserably stuck they are with
each other. They need to reach the falls but before reaching the falls they are separated once
again. The falls that has been the visual representation of happiness and brightness is not
reached by the characters and the characters got estranged from each other even before
reaching the light (Quero). The couples are so intricately connected with each other yet they
have a spontaneous and inharmonious association with each other.
The way he has used the fragmented images and broken pictures to draw a subtle
collage of life in Chungking Express in the year 1994 which is considered to be one of the
best creations from his bucket, is the same technique that he has dragged to join different
parts of different pictures altogether to make something new and so real that reality becomes
scary and unrecognizable. Wong uses antithesis to make a clear point that life cannot be a bed
of roses. It on the one hand is decorated with joy, triumph and happiness while on the other it
offers thorns and bitterness from all around. He with his unique style of rupturing audience’s
attention has created ‘Happy Together” flawlessly (Bettinson).
The couple is placed inside the arrangement of hall of mirror where two people are
living with each other out of addiction and there is no joy and fervent in the relationship
rather they stay with each other out of habit and they cannot come out of it so uncannily as if
they are in love with intoxicate adjustments. He skillfully crafts their sex to be the
manifestation of intoxicated violation of conventional intercourse which for them is nothing
but a practice and a regular act of ritual. The couple moves on to continue the cycle by
carrying along the emotional baggage (Chung). The story suggests that they are constantly at
struggle with each other as well as they are fighting within as individuals. They are peripheral
manifestation of jealousy and impulsiveness that they have raised within them.

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The topic that has been highlighted in the movie is a homosexual relationship that the
rising conflict dwells inside the heart of the couple. The initial twenty minutes are shot in
black-and-white frame to show the extreme tussle between the couple to emphasize upon the
dysfunctional relationship between the protagonists. Ho Po Wing is the person who is
extremely spoiled and narcissist who loves to run away from the responsibilities he should
come up with whereas the partner, Lai Yiu Fai is way too responsible and extremely caring.
The movie is slowly built depending on the interior monologue which is reflective of the
emotional responses. The movie is different because it plays really ugly with the chronology
and the use of colors in the individual frames.
It has to be remembered that the movie has bagged multiple awards however it has
faced tremendous criticisms. According to the critics the conversation between Ho and Lai
are excessively repetitive and there is no suggestion of any progression because they are
stuck in the eternal maze as if they are pushed to the extreme corner of the maze that too
blind-folded so that they are caught and lost in the maze forever (Nochimson). The
progression of the movie can be compared to that of the slow movement of Waiting for Godot
and Endgame by Samuel Beckett. Nothing happens in the entire movie even though multiple
events take place that ultimately results in making no sense because the plot does not really
lead anywhere.
The camera done by Christopher Doyle has left frames which are moving deliriously.
This strange movement of the camera is shown to probably have captured the internal and
external conflict going on within the characters however some decline the concept by
considering it to be mechanical and less touching unlike his other works (Restivo 135). For
some critics the changing of the colors in different frame did not really work because it failed
to represent the meaning but for some, it seemed to be the beautiful and smooth
transportation from the lap of darkness to the light and sometimes confining the selves into

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darkness again. The shot that is taken by aiming the camera to the sun might be an effort to
recapture the moment under the sun but it fails to capture the exact shot that is intended to
leave the impression. Sometimes the movie fails to grasp the feminine component and the
starting of the movie is the portrayal of two men making love with as much aggression as
they can leads the movie to something really dark and painful.
Therefore it can be concluded that the movie is shot in different style which
segregates this very movie from the others because the unique use of frames and colors make
it stand apart. The director has been skillful enough to reflect the idea of a fighting and
broken relationship which needs to be reconciled yet nothing can be done. The way the
director has chosen to portray a violent and homosexual relationship is compensated with the
change of color from black-and-white and coming back to color again. The movie therefore is
ahead of its time due to the way it is been able to break the convention of movie making.

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References
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Nochimson, Martha P., ed. A Companion to Wong Kar-wai. Vol. 13. John Wiley & Sons,
2015.
Quero, Hugo Córdova. "Queer (N) Asian Im/Migrants’ Connectedness: An Inter-Contextual
Decolonial Reading of Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together." Decolonial Horizons 2
(2016): 107-139.
Restivo, Angelo. "Wong Kar-wai." A Companion to Wong Kar-wai (2016): 135.
Rojas, Carlos. "Queer Utopias in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together." A Companion to (2016):
508.
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