Online Review: Chungking Express – A Mirror of Hong Kong

Online Review: Chungking Express – A Mirror of Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a city was annexed to British after the Opium War then returned to China in 1997 (Fu & Desser, p.13). Hong Kong as a British colonial-state which contains rich British culture, meanwhile, the culture and control of mainland China are washing away the ‘afterglow’ of British gradually. Before1997, Hongkongers was afraid changes as they did not know what would happen in the future. Therefore, Hongkongers resisted the Chinese nationality and their identity is culturally fragmented all the time.

Caldwell (2005, p.13) pointed out the importance of mise-en-scène, “Mise-en-scène usually works subtly on audience’s responses without us consciously noticing how this is done. Hence, by learning to look at a film text analytically, we can see how each element can be used by the filmmaker to position us in understanding the text”. We can analyze the mise-en-scène of Chungking Express in order to further understand the Hongkongers in director Wong Kar-wai’s eyes and he used refined mise-en-scène to tell us story.

At the beginning of the Chungking Express, there is a chasing scene of a woman in blonde wig and an Indian. The appearance of that location in this film is totally different from the international image of Hong Kong, it looks dirty, dark and messy. In fact, this is the actual looks of Hong Kong. Moreover, the Cop 223 (He Qiwu) and Cop 663 both live alone, renting very small and old apartments and sometimes eat take-away food from the Midnight Express. Their living patterns and environment in the film are extremely similar with Hongkongers in reality and successfully indicate the characteristics of Hong Kong society – disposable, transient.

Secondly, the mysterious woman in a blonde wig and sunglasses says ‘Whenever I put on a raincoat, I put on sunglasses as well. You never know when it will rain and when it will be sunny.’ This mysterious woman with no name wants to hide her identity and emotions, as well as to avoid the effects of change via cover herself with wig, sunglasses and raincoat. We feel strange when we look at this woman but in fact, we are as strange as her since we are also avoiding changes, covering our national identity and emotions but in different ways.

Thirdly, the voice overs in the film, especially by Cop 663, plus he talks to domestic objects, such as soap and towel, these monologue conversations represent the loneliness, introversion and silence of Hongkongers. Moreover, another character Faye loves loud music and dreaming. In one of the scenes, Cop 663 talks to her but she cannot hear as she is playing music loudly. This funny character also reflects Hongkongers avoid communicate with other, love hiding their emotions and enjoy staying in their own world.

We sometime lose sight of our surroundings. Space, things and objects around the foreground and background merge and blend with each other (Tong, J 2003, p. 51). Fortunately, Wong masterly captured the ambiguity of Hongkongers, created a mirror of Hong Kong so that he guided our way when we get lost in a concrete jungle and let us see ourselves through the flawless mise-en-scène in Chungking Express.

References

Caldwell, T 2005, Film Analysis Handbook, Insight, Australia.

Fu, PS & Desser, D 2000, The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, Canbridge, UK.

Tong, J 2003, ‘Chungking Express: Time and its Displacements’ in Chinese Film in Focus: 25 new takes, eds C Berry, BFI Pub, London, pp. 47-55.

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