Chef David Chang and members of the Recipe Club sit through millions of search results to find the very best way to make the food you want to eat. Each week, they cook three recipes for the same dish, debate them, and ultimately declare the winning recipe. Check out Recipe Club on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fancy.
I'm Amanda Abbott. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Wong Kar Wai. That's right, the films of The Hong Kong Master are the focus of our conversation today. Joining us for the first time on The Big Picture to discuss the incredible body of work of one of the signature filmmakers of the past three decades is one of our favorite writers.
He esteemed Los Angeles Times critic and columnist, Justin Chang. We'll talk about Wong's movies, their style and influence, and the new set of his work issued by the Criterion Collection World of Wong Kar Wai. Amanda and I love Wong, so this is a real treat for us. But first, let's talk about the state of the movie theater business and the upcoming Academy Awards.
Amanda, we spent all of the pandemic browsing about how movie theaters died, and then movie theaters came back. They're back to life. Godzilla vs. Kong resurrected movie theaters.
What do you have to say about this? A true Easter weekend, huh? That's right. It's great.
I'm glad that people went to the movies. I hope safely and had a nice time watching a spectacularly dumb, but fun movie, in my opinion. Just like, it's like deeply, deeply stupid in the best way. Whether this is like the return of movie theaters full stop forever is something I think you and I should discuss.
Yeah, let's discuss it. So 3,000 movie theaters showed Godzilla vs. Kong this weekend. It made $48.5 million domestically.
It also has done quite well overseas. So why did that happen? What was it about this dumb, but fun movie that we talked about last week with Shay? What is it about?
Are we having a cultural, human, communal desire to get back into theaters? I know that I've been having that, and I've been talking about that for a year now. Is it just that this was a movie that was incredibly legible to the broadest number of people? Literally, it's called Godzilla vs.
Kong. These are very understood terms. What do you think accounts for this? It's a little bit of everything, I think, which is I know the boring answer.
But sure, people are like, oh, theaters are open again? They weren't in most places. Well, I shouldn't say most places. They were not in Los Angeles, where I live.
I could really only speak to my corner of the world as recently as, what, a few weeks ago. And so this is widely available. People are starting to get the vaccine. And this is an option that it was not even like three months ago, I think, for a majority of people in the United States, at least.
So that's cool to do something different. Hey, I wasn't able to do this. Now I am again. That's like an incentive.
Is that experience reputable? No, because the first time you go back to the movie theater, like that first moment of excitement is, you know, only that one time. But I think it was timed well in that sense. Also, as you said, all right there in that title, Godzilla vs.
Kong, really accessible, like really stupid and not pretending to be anything other than what it is. And I do think even within kind of like IP world, there is a relative, quote, freshness to this. Because during the pandemic, if you wanted to be in the MCU, you had WandaVision. Now you have Falcon vs.
Winter Soldier. If you wanted to be in the VCU, you had the Snyder Cut. You had, if you want to be in Star Wars, you had Mandalorian. So you could get some version of that stuff.
And that's kind of the new business model, right? Is that some of those things will always be accessible to you, which is interesting long term in terms of whether they feel like events. But anyway, I guess you couldn't really see Godzilla and Kong fighting like on screen for the last year and a half. So it's like, sure, why not?
I got two hours. It's effective. Yeah. So I think people were willing to take a chance a little.
I think also the point you made last week holds in this case, which is that you didn't have to know what happened in Mandalorian season one, episode four to understand why Godzilla and King Kong are punching each other. You know, you could just enjoy it as a purely emotional and physical experience. And it was, it was like, it clearly was redemptive. I think for some people to check this movie out.
And I also think that simultaneously this movie, a lot of people watched it on HBO Max as well. And so it does create two things, this fascinating potential future for movie release strategy, which is the dual release. Now our pal Sam Snell has been railing about this on Twitter ever since HBO Max announced their decision. He thought that this was genuinely the way forward for a lot of film releases.
A lot of people ourselves included, I think quibbled with that idea quite a bit, um, thus far he's been proven right because this seems to have worked so far and Jason Kyler and the HBO Max people who came under a lot of fire from talent and industry watchers, I think look smart right now. We'll see if that holds. I saw this morning, there was some continuing discussion about whether or not Dune will be following the same strategy and that's still about six months away. So they may not want to do things this way in the future for all films.
But I think that's, that's interesting, you know, because Godzilla versus Kong, one of the reasons I'm sure it did well is because it's worth seeing on a big screen. It's designed for a big screen. Universal released a movie, Nobody, the Bob Odenkirk, uh, sort of Liam Neeson-esque taken film. And that hasn't done so well with the box office.
It's done fine. It's made about $12 million over the first couple of weeks of its release, but it's not doing this kind of booming business. And so now, at least what I'm trying to understand is, will movies like Godzilla versus Kong be the only movies that they will want to release in movie theaters, which is something that we speculated about? Or is this just, you know, the pandemic is continuing to evolve and hopefully eventually come to an end and then we will get back to kind of where we were in 2019, 18, 17, 16.
What direction are you leaning in in terms of what the future release strategies are going to be? I don't even think about the speed of the middle is even more hollowed out than it is now. And so you'll either get Godzilla versus Kong, which is like, lol, but you know, sometimes you want to have a little experience at the movie theater, or you'll have like a highly specialized art house in the, or just like a great director films that may or may not be commuting an award season that people go to as they would go to a museum or like a concert. And the kind of the Bob Odenkirk movie in the middle that historically, you know, has been like a taken type of Liam Neeson film has been a good January box office.
A solid earner. Exactly. It just doesn't exist anymore in theaters. Yeah.
I think that that is plausible. I think I've been thinking about a lot in that respect is if that is the case, then the Netflixes and Amazons of the world need to fill in the gaps and make more of those films. And the quality of those films is not yet really up to the standards of your typical studio earner. So hopefully that's something that can continue to evolve.
We'll see. You know, Godzilla versus Kong, in addition to making a lot of money, seems to be somewhat beloved. Like the cinema score was an A, the cinema score for people under the age of 18 was an A plus. So if we're worried about the young kids telling me to be interested in movies, they check them out in droves here.
Even in Canada, this movie, which does not have HBO Max Canada, made $3 million in PVOD. So people were willing to pay a high number of dollars to watch this movie. Speaking of high number of dollars, I don't know if I talked to you about this yet, but did you get the Chris ad, the movie auction? We're doing that on this podcast.
I know. I saw it on the spreadsheet. Okay. That's how you communicate with me.
So I've learned to pick up the singles. It's fine. That's not true. Is there anything that we should be talking about between us?
Like now that we're here speaking quasi virtually in person? What do you want to say to me? No, I think it's good. I just, I want you to know that I understand that that is your preferred method of communication and I'm trying to meet you where you want, Sean.
And I think it's also a good idea. Thanks, man. I am Irish Catholic and immensely repressed. So I need documents.
I need literature to convey my message. And in this case, it's a Google document. But yeah, so one, it would be nice if American distribution companies clarified how much money they made on PVOD. Canada, just a bastion of transparency.
Really appreciate what they're doing there. I don't think we'll ever see that in the States. But also just this movie across the board is kind of really well liked. Do you think that we're going to have continued instances of this?
Do you expect in June and July we'll continue to have movie releases that are great successes? Or does this seem like that sort of like rare anomaly where there was like this tension building. People just really want to get back to a theater. They all went and now it'll recede again.
I think probably through the summer it will hold because not everybody got to have that experience of like, ooh, the novelty of going back to a theater. You and Bobby and I were talking before we started recording just about like the ways in which life is starting to go back to some pre-pandemic recognizable model, but also it's really not and it's taking some time and we're not fully vaccinated. And so I think probably a lot of people will want to have their Godzilla versus Kong experience in June or July or August and that might be Top Gun 2 or that might be for me it'll definitely be Top Gun 2. But I don't know that it'll last a year from now if that makes sense or like two years from now in terms of people being like, yeah, I got to go see everything on Wednesday night when it opens.
I did see over the weekend that you were very active on social media with the hashtag continue the monsterverse meme. So you've been pushing really hard for it. No, continue the monsterverse. Here's the thing.
Well, actually, if you can do it where I don't have to see all the movies or know anything about the monsterverse, that's fine. No homework at the movies. That is my 2021. No homework at event movies.
I think the back half of this podcast, we're going to talk about movies where I did my homework and it's really rewarding to do your homework and talk about art. But in terms of blockbusters, in terms of just dumb stuff, no homework at the movies. If that is a war you want to wage, let me tell you, you will lose because our culture is fully in homework mode. It's amazing to watch Falcon and Winter Soldier, which is a show that I think has been fun so far.
But man, there is a lot of homework. I would recommend you listen to Ringerverse because there's so much to pick up on on these shows. You assigned the homework, Sean. Why are you suddenly being like, oh my God, look at all these people making lists.
You did this, my guy. It's you. I'm pointing at you. You're right.
I accept a small, small amount of responsibility for that. It has gotten beyond me, I can see. I can see that I'm no longer in a place to be an adequate correspondent on a lot of these topics. Well, I just think it's a different way of interacting with movies.
And honestly, to me, it's as much like, what is a movie? What's not anymore? What's a TV show? What's an extended universe?
It really just fully transitioned the movies into an extension of comics, which is great. If you love those things and you love interacting that way, go for it. Have a lot of joy with it. But I'm still here just trying to watch one made-up monster, death another monster, on an aircraft carrier, and then not think about it again.
And I honor that experience, too. Yeah, honor the film, honor the monster. That's what the awards campaign will be for Godzilla vs. Kong.
I think it's a question of relative experience, too. Chris and I, I was on the watch last week when we discussed that. And it's not so much that the Falcon and the Winter Soldier exists. It's that there is not a Mad Men or Breaking Bad or even a Game of Thrones, honestly, at the moment, where there's another kind of water cooler TV show or miniseries that seems to have captured people's imaginations.
And so that it does feel like this is all that we have. It's not all that we have. There are a lot of other less popular shows just taste to stratify across the board. The thing that continues to get the most amount of people interested is the Monsterverse and Star Wars and the MCU and yada yada.
We'll continue to talk about this stuff on the show. So I'll try to lighten the homework load for you as much as possible. Maybe we'll increase the homework load on things like Wonder Why. That is, I think, a useful way to spend our time in the future.
Let's transition quickly to award season. Three weeks left. This is a deathless period of time. We're almost through it.
The SAG Awards were yesterday. Thank you to the SAG Awards for being one hour long. That was wonderful. With commercials, 43 minutes long.
That was wonderful. I guess there were a couple of surprising results out of this award show. And I don't yet know if they will have a bearing on the Academy Awards. I'm curious to know what you think about it.
So let's start with the big award, which is, of course, his best ensemble at SAG. This is a group entirely composed of actors who've won these awards. Not really. This isn't historically a hugely predictive award.
Last year it was. Parasite won. But before that, a great victory in 2018 for Black Panther. Black Panther did not win Best Picture.
Three billboards outside of Eving, Missouri. Before that, remember that movie. Hidden Figures before that. I guess Spotlight in 2015 did go on to win.
It's not unheard of, but because Nomadland isn't even in the running. This really seems like, oh, wow, there are a lot of people in that movie, including a lot of actors that I like. I would also like to use this opportunity to just shout out Michael Keaton's SAG Awards ensemble. Michael Keaton was in the center of the Zoom collage.
He was in Gallery View. They were all in Gallery View. Would you say it was Hounstooth? Hounstooth, is that correct?
It was a Czech sport coat. I don't know if it was actually Meat Hounstooth. There's like a little champagne region there that I'm, you know, is it sparkling with the champagne? I don't know.
Over a lime green sweater vest. And he was in a lovely part of the hallway in whatever home he was in with art behind him. Definitely had his dad glasses on. I'm just a huge fan of like period Michael Keaton.
I just, I really can't stress that enough. So I was happy to see him. I feel like a lot of people felt that way. And I don't really think that they'll feel that way when it comes to actual Best Picture.
I think we should also cite the fact that like, as more members have been added to the Academy, the actors branch has decreased in influence over the years. You know, speaking of Michael Keaton, he also broke a record today. He's now a member of the three-time ensemble win. He's been a member of three different ensembles that have won over the years.
No one else has that. So, Trial of Chicago 7, I gotta say, I wouldn't be shocked if it was one of those upsets. I really wouldn't. It's an incredibly accessible film for voters.
It certainly has some of the hallmarks of a Green Book's hot win, a movie that kind of makes you feel a little bit better about a traumatic period in history. It's from someone who is beloved by the Academy. I believe Aaron Sorkin has two wins and has been nominated many times. So I guess if that happens, you know, we were lukewarm on Trial.
We didn't hate it, but we were lukewarm on it. And it's definitely not Aaron Sorkin's best work, in our opinion. So it would be kind of an odd thing to discuss. I guess, in a way, it would be fitting in this very awkward and kind of dull award season for a movie that is a little bit awkward at times and doesn't always totally work.
And it has felt like this award season has not totally worked. Nomadland is something a little bit different. Nomadland feels a little bit like what the new Academy is. You know, a little bit more artful, a little bit more diverse, a little bit more expansive, and a little quieter, honestly.
A lot of films recently that have been recognized by the Academy are not quite in that Ben Hur throat-clearing era of grand moviemaking. So I don't want to read too deeply into this. We already read too deeply into awards. But seeing those two films potentially as a contrast, I thought what you said a couple of weeks ago was true, which is if we had seen a Minari win here, that might have indicated an interesting counterbalance that would have been hard to predict and understand.
This one feels a little bit more, I don't know, what's the word? Diametric. You know, they seem to be oppositional in a way in terms of form and format. But we'll see.
A couple of other surprising wins. Viola Davis won for Best Actress, which I guess in hindsight is not stunning, but it now makes me think that Best Actress is a little bit more wide open than it was. What do you make of that? I really recommend watching her reaction gif.
If you haven't seen it, she looks as surprised as everybody else. I think Carey Mulligan is not going to win, which that's the main takeaway. And you and I have been sort of predicting that at some point, like the Carey Mulligan train would arrive at the station. And on the one hand, I don't think I'm wrong.
On another hand, I really love Carey Mulligan. And I like to see her win on the third hand that I made out because I started this before I was thinking about the number of points. I don't love Promising Young Women. So I'm okay if Carey Mulligan doesn't win for this like iffy movie, which is, you know, Oscar tradition.
I hope she wins another time. I think she's got some time. So it'll be okay. But I don't know what to make of Best Actress, which is kind of what we've been asking for.
These, especially actor and actress, seem locked up like by September usually. And this one seems like a, you know, a big shrug, which maybe we can get some drama out of that. Not a shrug, a question mark. That would be nice.
I think I've been counting on Frances McDormand this whole time. And she did not win the Golden Globe. She did not win the SAG Award. And Carey Mulligan notably not nominated at BAFTA, nor is Viola Davis.
So the only two Academy Award nominees at BAFTA are Vanessa Kirby and Frances McDormand. So then Frances McDormand and Vanessa Kirby win there. Then the conversation may shift yet again. We also haven't even thought about Andre Day, who's also been recognized here and won the Golden Globe.
So it's an interesting category this year. There's a lot of confusion. Whereas Best Actress seemed a little bit more solidified a couple of weeks ago. Best Supporting Actress seemed wide open.
And now Ya Jung Yoon won last night at SAG, which was beautiful. Very exciting to see her win. I thought her speech was great. She seemed genuinely shocked, but also very ready to receive an award.
She's received many awards over the years in Korea. And now I kind of just feel like she's going to win in that category. What do you think? I think so.
And that seems great by me. I also really enjoyed her speech. I also really enjoyed her speech. And I also enjoyed the Zoom interaction between everyone.
Everyone else seems to be rooting for her in the category and was like, cool, that seems great with me that you won. So I'm good with that clarity if it winds up being the case. Did you enjoy watching the SAG Awards? Did you watch them?
I did. Well, I fast forwarded through them. I fast forwarded. You know, I think they're interesting.
They're not really interesting in any way, shape or form, except as a comparison against the Oscars who have banned Zoom ceremonies and are still hellbent on creating an in-person event, even if they'd have to do European satellites because European nominees or international satellites because international nominees can't get here and not allowing Zoom speeches. And let me tell you, I understand why. Not really the Zoom portion of the SAG Awards falls. They kept them pretty quick.
Like the best actor and actress nominees were in a Zoom together. The best supporting actor and actress nominees were in a Zoom together. They recorded, they edited. But everything else was pre-recorded.
And with the exception of a delightful four-minute Ted Lasso skit that opened the hour, which I was very, very pleased for. It was like a deathless PowerPoint presentation. And with all respects to all of the quote presenters who had filmed their, you know, bits ahead of time about what it means to be an actor and what's on their resume and yada yada. But it's like when you go to the town hall and someone's like, now we're just going to read you these slides for 45 minutes.
No, thank you. I feel like actors talking about the power of acting is on the Amanda wheel of death. Like if there were a hundred things that you had to choose from that you would want to die from, that is certainly on the wheel. And they had some good anecdotes.
Like I like these people. It was Helen Mirren was there and Mindy Kaling and it was on it and Ethan Hawke and Common and some other people that I'm forgetting. And to be fair with me. There was a lot of Josh Gad.
It was a lot of Josh Gad. Let me tell you that I fast-forwarded through that. But, you know, it was actually a little bit looser and more, let me tell you an anecdote about this edition. And with Cynthia Erivo, I believe, was another.
Stanley K. Brown. Yes, yeah. And it was way better than the typical SAG Awards thing of being like, I'm so-and-so and I'm an actor, which always makes me want to crawl under a table.
It's so awkward. But it just felt like it was admitting and broadcasting the pointlessness of the awards show. And any awards show, at least they're all pointless. They're a bunch of made-up awards that we hand out.
It's all fairytale, silly nonsense. But you've got to believe it or else I can go do something else. And this just felt like an omission of, well, we don't have any ideas and this really could just be a press release. I think for better or worse, the Academy Awards will be significantly different.
And so that will be in and of itself exciting to see and to talk about and experience. And hopefully in the same way that returning to the movie theater feels natural, it will seem somewhat natural to have a regular-ass award show, honestly. Before we go to our conversation about One Car Y, So you mentioned that you found the Ted Lasso bit delightful. Have you watched Ted Lasso?
Yeah, we love Ted Lasso. What? Really? Yeah.
You never mentioned this. When you and Zach watched a TV show, it's like, what I have to do is set a meeting with you to discuss the television series we've watched. So I'm shocked to hear this. Okay, so once again, maybe that's the appeal of Ted Lasso.
No homework in 2021. Just don't make me dissect anything. Yeah, we watched it. I mean, we were definitely really late to it.
We watched it in the last couple months. Zach in particular, just delighted by it. Just like really, I thought it was really winning. And I love this 30-minute installment of television.
Thank you. Just please make everything 30 minutes, and I'll keep watching all of them. We were very sad when it was over. They're in production, I believe, for season two right now, so they had everyone together and were able to- I assume that's how they made that segment, yeah.
They made that segment. They had a very funny joke about Jason Stacus' hoodie, and he's going through something. I should also just say that Jason Stacus did one again and accepted this time in My Body, My Choice, knit sweater, a beautiful sweater. He is an absolute lord.
Just a lord. Love that guy. It's really, really good. Yeah, I don't know.
Should I let you know that I was really into Ted Lasso? We're watching The Bureau. Just so you know, we're on that train. I heard your sub-tweet on The Watch, a podcast that I listen to, about all of them.
You were making fun of all the podcasters who are into The Bureau now. Yeah, well, here I am, and season one's great, and we're going to start season two tonight, I think, and it's wonderful, so if you want updates on that, I'll add you to the text chain. So I've actually had a thought, which is that perhaps you and I should have a text chain where we communicate. What do you think?
We've known each other for about 10 years. No, you respond, Sean. That's the other thing. I text you, and you're just like, don't respond.
I'm deeply available. Or you do save it for the pod, so I'm like, well, I'll just hear the pod. Yeah, I recommend that last time. We're not going to save our conversation about Wong Kar Wai for the pod.
We're going to do it right now, but first, let's take a break in your work. We are delighted to be joined for the first time somehow. This is only the first time. Justin Chang, welcome to the show.
Justin, how are you? Thank you so much, Sean. I'm doing great. It's great to be here.
We're excited to talk to you about Wong Kar Wai. So I want to be able to have an expansive conversation here about his films and his work, and I thought we should start with the personal, because that seems like a reasonable entryway. So, Justin, why don't we start with you? When did you first come across the work of Wong Kar Wai, and how did you respond to it?
I think the first Wong Kar Wai movie I saw was actually Happy Together. I was a teenager in high school. I was watching a ton of art and art house movies. I think Wong Kar Wai is just a great gateway drug for a lot of cinephiles or aspirants and cinephiles, and I remember watching this and thinking it was like nothing I'd ever seen.
I hadn't seen too many gay love stories, and this is, of course, Wong's only gay romance, but I also just hadn't seen any movie, any romance that looked moved like this movie, and it was both visually exhilarating and just totally depressing. I think this is a movie where Leslie Chung, the late lamented Leslie Chung, and Tony Wong, who is Wong's great, one of his many great muses and probably the actor most closely associated with him, are playing lovers on the road in Buenos Aires, and they break up, they get back together briefly, and one is nursing the other back to health. It's so, it's a great argument movie. They're just like, they just don't let up.
I found it so upsetting. I think when I look back at Wong's movie, it's just the most emotionally corrosive of his films. All of his movies, of course, deal with thwarted desire and with broken relationships, but this is the one that really cuts deep, and that was my first encounter with Wong, and for a while, and I sort of fell in love with all his movies after that. Yeah, I feel like you could safely identify each film as having a kind of subcategory, you know, that Happy Together is sort of, it's the breakup movie in a lot of ways.
It's the convulsive, you know, sort of tragic romance, but that's probably something a little bit short. Amanda, what about for you? When did you, I think you and I both had some gateway drug experiences with Wong as well. What was yours?
Sure, so mine was a little bit later. I was an aspiring cinephile, but it kind of took me until college to become an aspiring cinephile, and I'll be perfectly honest, it was from Sophia Coppola, because she has not been shy about talking about the influence that In the Mood for Love had on Lost in Translation, and Lost in Translation was a big deal for me, and she thanked Wong Kar-wai in her Oscar acceptance speech, and I was like, well, what is this, and who is this? And then I watched In the Mood for Love, and holy cow, is what I have to say, and that is also, In the Mood for Love, probably the perfect movie for Amanda, who grew up on romantic comedies and romantic tragedies, and what that movie does in that very large genre, and what it does visually and also emotionally was pretty mind-blowing, just in terms of, oh, you can really make all of the elements of a film work together in pursuit of this emotion Thank you, Sophia, I really thank you, Wong Kar-wai. Yeah, I think many people need a shepherd to Wong's work, for some people it's a video store clerk, for some people it's a friend or an older sibling, or maybe read something that somebody like you have written, Justin.
I love to read your festival missives over the years, and Wong obviously is a huge figure throughout the years as I can. For me, perhaps somewhat predictably, I have a friend Tarantino to thank for learning about Wong's work, being very interested in Clinton in the mid-90s, and he was a huge advocate, especially for Chungking Express, and he helped get Chungking Express as a broader distribution throughout the United States with his Rolling Thunder video. I don't even know what that company specifically was, aside from putting movies like Chungking Express and Switchblade Sisters in front of me in 1995, but I was very grateful for it at the time. He spoke very passionately about what Wong was doing that was different from some of his contemporaries and the way that he clearly bears this extraordinary influence on virtually every filmmaker that has come after him, but certainly in this sort of like, I guess, art house sensibility, for lack of a better phrase.
Justin, how do you describe Wong when someone asks you to talk about him? What is it that makes him a special filmmaker? What is it that makes him unique in this class? Yeah, it's so hard to answer that because his style encompasses so much, and I think that people have a very reductive view of what his style is.
You know, people who look dismissively at Wong's movies or his style liken his films to perfume commercials and this very kind of, you know, slick, hip, poser sensibility. And of course, there's no one of that, but it's so much more. And talking about expansive, I think the more you look into his movies, the more you look at those surfaces, these beautiful, gorgeous surfaces that he gives us and look beneath them, there is so much going on. For me, Wong Kar Wai's style or his cinema was so just personally groundbreaking and touching and resonant for me because encountering him at my aspiring cinephile stage, he sort of showed me what filmmaking could be when it's driven by images.
Like, and that sounds so basic, right? Because film's a visual medium, but, and he's certainly not the only director to do this. I mean, he's likened so often to new wave directors like Badar. I mean, when I saw Chunking Express for the first time, which is like my favorite long movie, and actually my favorite movie of all time, it was like, I sort of imagined this is what it was like for August's encountering Breathless for the first.
Maybe not entirely, but sort of the impact that that has where you see something that is just purely of cinema, you know, some first as opposed to being seen in a literary tradition or what have you. So that is just, that's a starting point for me. He's someone who is just led by the visual and from the visual, he goes to the emotional and in fact, they're inextricable. That's kind of the start.
I don't know if I answered the question, but yeah. So I think one of the things that makes him such a fun filmmaker to talk about is you can talk about the practical decisions that he makes, the actual hand-in-hand filmmaking choices that he makes and his collaborators and for someone like me, that's very exciting. I like to unpack all those things. I like to understand what he's doing with lighting, what he's doing with Christopher Doyle, how they're collaborating, but also as a purely emotional filmmaker, and Amanda, maybe this is part of what you are connecting to too.
Even though he is very much like a cinema of image-making as you put it, Justin, there's still something personal and emotional to connect to every time. Amanda, what do you think? How do you describe Wong's work? What Justin said, and I don't think that the wow cinema is a visual medium is a silly revelation at all.
There's a running joke on this podcast where I make fun of Sean and another friend, Chris Ryan, for just being really into shots. You know, like, ooh, what a shot. And I think film and filmmakers, but particularly film critics, can overemphasize the technical aspects of filmmaking, but they're obviously really important. And for me, part of the revelation of Wong's films is that you really do see how a shot or a framing decision or the craft actually creates the experience of emotion for you, the viewer.
And it's marrying the two things. And so obviously I think of like a sense of longing and isolation and, you know, kind of, I guess, nostalgia in a way in the sense that a lot of movies are about memory and time and the romance or lack of romance involved in those two things. And those are the themes and the feelings that are consistent, but they are all created from the sense of, okay, well, I put the camera here and then I use this color that you also saw in this other scene and you recognize this music cue and it's all kind of working together to make like a true art out of a feeling. And I think that's extraordinary.
Some people think that like mood piece is like a criticism. Are you kidding? This is like, who else can do this? Who else is in touch enough with their emotions to be able to create this?
Anyway. No, I completely relate. I think it's interesting that he is, he's very similar to a lot of filmmakers of his generation in that he does really wear his influences on his sleeve. You know, you really can see Martin Scorsese in his first movie.
You really can see Antonioni in his second movie. You really can see Godard in the French New Wave. You can see a lot of classical influences, a lot of mid-20th century influences, but also he has a very specific and special stew. You know, I think those filmmakers who emerged in the 90s were able to kind of subsume and inhale basically 75 years worth of movie history and then spit it back out again.
Justin, can you help us kind of understand where Wong comes from and what some of his life experiences were? Because, you know, I think his transition from Shanghai to Hong Kong is obviously pretty significant in terms of understanding what kind of culture he saw, what his relationships were in Hong Kong and how maybe that influenced some of his work. Yeah, he was born in Shanghai in the late 50s and moved to Hong Kong with his parents in like the early 60s. And from what I understand, like his two older siblings were left behind and so he didn't really see them for many years.
And I think that I have to admit to a personal connection here, which I discovered very late in my kind of love affair with, my ongoing love affair with Wong Kar Wai that no less made my connection to him feel even deeper in some weird ways because that trajectory kind of mirrored, you know, I don't want to be too much of it, but it sort of mirrored my own parents, such as my mom's kind of journey from the Shanghai area in the 50s to Hong Kong and so very different experiences. But it's funny if I can quickly interject too, when I had the great honor of interviewing Wong Kar Wai in 2013 on the occasion of the release of The Grandmaster, one of the many versions of The Grandmaster, I sort of mustered the courage to tell him about this and he sort of said, wow, I could be your uncle, which was really, really funny and sweet. And I think that that, you know, of course, in The Move for Love, which I adore, which is kind of the perfect ultimate Wong Kar Wai movie, really distills that experience of, you know, I sort of think that movie even though it's about adult lovers or adult or almost lovers or would-be lovers, whatever you want to call it, even though it's about these grown-ups and this brief encounter that they have, that movie feels in some weird ways almost like framed from a child's perspective. I like re-watching it recently for the umpteenth time.
I got kind of a weird Roma vibe from it almost, like Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, which is also a memory piece exactly recreated from his childhood. And even though it's a very different film, it has elements of that, that kind of obsessive recreation. This longing, I think that, I mean, there's so many kinds of longing in Wong Kar Wai's work. There's longing for that, the lover that got away.
There's longing for childhood. There's longing for just lost time, which is, of course, one of the great themes that any filmmaker can obsess over in the cinema's time, so it just lends itself to that. But I think that because Wong is so familiar with this kind of geographical and cultural dislocation, that it just permeates so many of his films in so many ways, like Days of Being Wild as well. And of course, 2046 and In the Move for Love, and the three of them, of course, compose or constitute a kind of loose trilogy.
That's one more thing. It's hard for me to talk about it without kind of getting into the personal too, but because of this kind of family connection that I feel, because of this sort of connection that I feel with him culturally, you know, I don't think it was until I saw Days of Being Wild, like at the New Art in Los Angeles years ago, that I ever heard my dialect, Shanghainese, the dialect that I grew up not really speaking very well at all, but listening to from my parents. It's the first time I ever heard it on screen. And one of the things I love about Wong's movies is he's rare among, I think, Chinese-born or Hong Kong and I just do this.
There are sometimes many different dialects interacting on screen. Like you can hear, you know, Tony Lungle, speaking cantonese and you know it's just this hodgepodge and he just acts like it's the normal thing in the world rather than say having the actors speak a language that is not their own i just find that really moving i mean there's something very representationally great about that too but it's also just like this technology that we're all just this kind of cultural and linguistic jumble and he just sort of lets that um exist on screen well i think one of the reasons that we wanted to talk about him is for me growing up trying to see his films it was not easy to see a lot of these films days of being wild for example you just mentioned in the second movie was very difficult to track down in the 1990s and and of course is it now a very important film for a variety of reasons and like frankly even after you saw it it was not necessarily easy to get context for it it was not necessarily easy for someone to get context around the fact that that film was a big flop and was in many ways rejected after as tears go by his first movie was a big success and in a way that seemed to embolden him it seemed to free him to have a flop like that and that obviously it sort of instigates his style in a lot of ways as he goes on and this becomes a signature film in that triad that you're talking about and so like you know i mean i like to joke about the sort of homework aspect of the show sometimes where we're sort of revisiting entire filmographies but i made it for you like as you were going through some of these films i assume some you had seen and had a big relationship with and maybe others you were seeing for the first time were there any sort of revelations as you went through a filmography things have been wild which i had just not been able to see because in addition to it being difficult to see i'm not the world's foremost physical media consumer as another thing that's been discussed and you know so i was a little bit beholden to whatever streaming service or and and was my homework this day i don't mean my homework but in this case i'm continuing film education which i'm entirely self-taught or not taught is the case maybe um and i was blown away by it um which obviously that's not that is not a revelation that's good because it is kind of celebrated it's like with the breakthrough and maybe the i don't want to say unheralded but the best film that most people haven't seen um you know but it is so interesting justin we talk a lot on this show about the order in which you see things and the order in which you see things both yourself but relating to you know the history of cinema and when people saw things and how influences stack up and kind of piecing those together after the fact um which can be exhilarating in this way i would say like wang's movies sort of explain all of the 90s directors that i like i'm like oh okay so this is how you guys did it and this is what like the 90s actually were i just i understand gen x more as a result but um days of being wild after seeing in the mood for love and 2046 um but also days of being wild is like a young person's film um is is really interesting and it's interesting to watch how these emotions and these recurring scenes and the sense of longing and the sense of dislocation um over time in a lifetime and over a career how they evolve and there was something i'm sort of just like i don't want to say naive or like uncomplicated about days of being wild i'm just like oh this is this is the young person's movie and that's it's interesting to see where this starts yeah it's unmannered and sort of like it's clear and it's pure in its intentions i think um i think one of the things like that film for example i've seen often compared maybe um in an overbearing way to american graffiti has sort of like a coming of age tale coming of age romance and people figuring out where they're going to go but justin for someone who is not familiar with long or maybe seen in the mood for love or 2046 and that's it like how would you recommend people engage with this film would you do it chronologically where would you start it's so funny hearing a man to talk about the order in which you see things and kind of putting this puzzle of a director's filmography together i'm just saying to i think long long's over is one of the best ones to do that with and even though there's a kind of uh logic to going in chronological order but for someone who i mean i get that's a happy to go first and then i saw chunting express uh which i think is a great place to start just because i mean it's funny because that is my favorite long movie and it is also in any ways the most accessible one because it's just pure pop sensibility it's two genres smashed together it's playful it's hilarious it's so romantic um and uh it just it's just great i mean within the gateway drug that is one guy's entire body of work that is like the gateway drug i guess um so uh but i kind of think it can't go wrong and one of the reasons i think his body of work lends itself to going anywhere and also just thinking about and re-watching endlessly is that you know it's like each film is sort of a response to the one before it i mean mostly many filmmakers work in this way of course many filmmakers have movies that are you know interwoven and sometimes they get very you know they're exasperated you try to ask how is this response to that and it's not it's not it's completely its own thing but i don't think you know in my experience talking with with director wong and with if you were to ask him i don't think how could he deny that you know of course days and in the mood for love and 2046 are a trilogy and of course this new movie that he's working on which i hope we'll see before the actual year 2046 um is again apparently by all accounts a continuation of that um and it's just you know the fact that the actors recur throughout so you actually see an entire history of tony lung and maggie chung aging on the screen if you start um characters don't even interact and i've not even seen that much to in the mood for love and then she's just like he's center state and she's now this shadow i mean he's worked with the same actors over and over again in different configurations and permutations but still sort of playing the same people um it's just so fascinating to contemplate that of course speaks in part to how much actors love working with wong kawaii despite the incredibly exasperating report you know the reports of how exasperating his style can be his very conventional methods and how you know and of course they've sort of gotten worse or better with my point of view because you know days of being wild and chugging whatever were probably you know tossed off very quickly compared to say the epically dragged out shoot 2046 so but actors get that about him now they know what they're signing up for they and they love working with him and something that's not enough to appreciate about wong kawaii is what a great what a fantastic director of actors he is he is not just you know just a stylist as if that were something to change in itself but he's an amazing phenomenal director of actors tony lung's best performances have been for wong kawaii john c's best performances uh you know it's actually kind of sheer i could go down the list uh these asian superstars who um have such a career to work with him for the first time and working with him again and again yeah he has a lot in common i think with some of those other contemporaries who return time and again to their their troop he has built a troop i do want to talk about how he makes these movies because you pointed out that um his production methods are interesting um i think there's maybe some of the hallmarks of you know the david fincher types and stanley cooper types that we talk about all the time who have long production schedules and who are quite meticulous in their approach but he is also um i don't want to use the word improvisatory but i've been having a hard time figuring out what it is that he does so justin maybe help us understand how his writing process and sort of creative process flows through his movies because um it's highly unusual sure and i i am by no means an expert in terms of how he does it i mean i i am very much a student of the results of it but and i've read about it but it's like i think i'd have to be there to actually to be able to describe it clearly but and of course this style has as i said evolved over time um starting with johnny you're very right to point to point out the sort of evolutionary leap from as tears go by two days of being wild um two really kind of wonderful films that are very very different and also very linked by in part by some of the actors again who've been in them but also you know as tears go by which was a very you know virtue to me in streets um i'm hesitant to say called conventional except in the context of long's work um by many people's standards it would seem you know somewhat miraculous but it's the one that had you know that tells a gangster story love story and that is still for the most part on the pre-linear narrative um with versus style and then days being wild which is just kind of complete you know depart a stylistic departure for him and i think it's around this time you know he goes he's actually makes the time he makes chunking express which i think took just a few weeks to shoot and which was you know done completely on the fly i think one reason i love that so much is because it i perhaps think a word other than improvisatory as well uh just you know there's kind of a perfection of that movie just a sense of just complete freedom but also the economy of that very short time frame which he shot it um fallen angels you know much the same way and then with happy together i think is the first one where he's really maybe not the first one but the one where the effects of this improvisatory method become the most pronounced where it's like he's starting with just ideas barely a script you know the actors are kind of traveling with him to argentina they don't know what's going on this becomes even more so in the mood for love where i've read that like tony long and i had no idea what the characters were and you know what they were supposed to do they were just phrases and just you know it's just and you know you know he and his production designer probably the most important collaborator william chang are just you know left to their devices and doing amazing beautiful visual stuff but nobody can make any you know head more tales of where this damn thing is going and it's you know it must be you know that was has its frustrations as as a method um it's so fascinating to dive into like the extras on in the mood for love and you find out all the different stories the different directions that that story was going to take some of which we see in 2046 which is sort of the spiritual sequel to in the mood for love but it's like oh yeah there was like oh tony long's character becomes a total jerk cat in that movie and you know it leaps forward the 70s and all this stuff you think wow i'm so glad you left that out the beautiful ending of in the mood for love which you said oh let's go shoot in cambodia because i gotta meet this damn possible deadline and it's like okay and it's kind of weird because when you think that one of the most perfect movies ever made i think uh don't forget to say it was born out of such happenstance and almost these arbitrary conditions but that is that is one's genius and i do think it's genius because i don't think any other filmmaker could i think there are very few filmmakers who could do this someone who i don't want to mention this connection but i think about turns now like a lot with regard to won car wisewood obviously their films are so different in silent field but they're after something similar which is a cinema that is liberated from you know you can call it you say something like narrative conventions but also just this idea that you find the film in the process you do not lay out within and i see the similarities absolutely with david fincher and i thought of him a lot in terms of shoots and reshoots and but i think they're after very different things um and and i that's one thing i love about long's work as we think about where people should start the one place i would say people should not start and this is related to what you were just describing i think it's fallen angels which is um probably the most um cynical and aggressive and alienating film that i think he made and it's beautiful in its way and it's very interesting and it is a film that came out of junking express and to your point it was meant to be perhaps a third part of that story that then got excised and then he moved into its own film but you know in many ways it's obnoxious to say like it's all one movie but in many ways for him it feels like it's all sort of one movie i mean i'm wondering for you like if at what point you were you gave up a ghost on linearity in viewing his movies because i know for me i am a highly organized and um type a and uh as amanda will tell you like i love my outlines and my spreadsheets and clarity and expectation are important as a movie or that does not mean i can't enjoy or understand films that do say what terrence malick does i love those films too but i almost need to be psychologically prepared and so amanda what about for you like did it snap for you instantaneously when you first started getting into his stuff well i do think i started with the most controlled at least in results of the films and in the mood for love is you know kind of just like a complete and contained masterpiece which is why it's so horrifying to me personally as a fan to click on the extras that justin was mentioning i just turn them off like i refuse to acknowledge that this world exists and when i was like absolutely not and and similarly when we just when i read about wong's working methods i just i like john i'm a hyper type a person who just likes to know what's coming i just i got stressed out when you guys were describing it i get stressed out every time and and you do hear that you know like chunking express and fallen angels like fallen angels was born out of some things that i think were filmed or ideas that couldn't quite fit in or you know wong found found the movie that was chunking express but had all these other ideas and and most films of his films have some version of that story and it's mind bending to me and how my mind works that to achieve something as precise as in the mood for love that you don't start with that level of specificity and over planning i again my anxiety rate is like spiking a little right now but that's the real genius to me right i mean like art is choice in a lot of ways and so to be able to create the circumstances for that kind of like unrehearsed free energy that justin was um referring to and and that in a lot of ways are also what the characters in his films are searching for all the time that magic moment but then to be able to find all of those moments after the fact and craft and create and edit these films that actually do hold together is astonishing it's not it's why i'm not an artist and it's like why he actually is an artist and that's a word that i try not to apply to that many people because i do think it sounds pretension but that is just sort of like a transcendent achievement it's interesting that he's been able to i think kind of render a interesting public persona that seems like it's somewhat in conflict though with that approach he is and i think for people who understand him and follow him the personification of a cool he has never seen without his sunglasses you know the aura of cigarette smoke around him and on his sets and the sense that he's kind of gliding through this artistic life is fascinating when you talk to him justin how did you find him did he live up to that billing as this icon of cinema cool did and he definitely you know was needless to say left the sunglasses on um and uh which you don't even ask about anymore um but i have to share a little story and this is an embarrassing story for me because you know um you know we were at this some you know hotel suite in beverly hills and he's like and he asked me i'm not a smoker as became painfully clear um because of course i said yes because if you take a smoking break with him of course you're gonna do it um uh i think i held the cigarette from the wrong end or something i was so nervous which i'm blaming my nervousness but i always say that like to the people that share the story without showing it i've actually shared this on twitter and i'm sharing it now with you with everyone once again um i'm just surprised that he did not end the interview right then and there because this is the avatar of you know hipster cool of international cinema someone who has elevated uh smoking to just a visual art form itself so uh he was exceedingly gracious to sort of overlook uh that and it was very funny he was very he actually was but he was also you know he's incredibly down to earth as well and he's not overly effusive about uh talking in terms of talking about his work and unpacking meanings but he's not you know cagey or enigmatic either one thing that i think is so great about him and i think both of you were speaking to this is that he just occupies this very rare middle ground because he is someone who is respected as you know one of the great authors of our time and yet his work is for the most part uh entirely accessible and to a broad you know a broad international audience and is still tethered to genre you know sometimes that's crime sometimes that's uh you know most of all it's romance and the grandmaster it's it's you know he made his own spin on a kung fu film so um he by the same token it's like he um even though he works in these very unconventional and you know some would say uncommercial methods nonetheless he has his own company he's been able to finance this career which is not easy and in part of course this is by presenting himself as a brand um and and and that that brand is very powerful even though he has not made a film in many years a new feature in many years um that you know and maybe is now more closely associated with the 90s early 2000s that brand does still persist so i think that seems like X in the end of the world successful by reconciling so many of these opposites um and you know you look at his body works just the consistent quality of it too and amanda said just the precision of in the love for example i think that precision is pretty much in effect through most of all of his movies you know i think my blue brain is kind of the one sinker of the bunch i would say um but uh other than that they're all kind of great and so for people who again kind of tend to write his style and his approach off is very indulgent i don't think the effects are indulgent at all there is a remarkable amount of discipline and thoughtfulness that is brought to bear on his work so i do want to maybe we should wrap the conversation in a bit on the last 15 or so years of the wong experience because i think it's very interesting to talk about but before we do that let's talk about the music so i'll share for you um the recent experience i had which i fired up in the mood for love over the weekend as one does probably like the 20th or 30th time i've seen the film and uh yumeji's theme starts to play and my wife skittered into the room because she knew what that sound meant you know as soon as you hear that that needle drop it's like it is a lush and romantic and big moment and for us that's one of our favorite movies um she's a huge fan of wong as well and he has a profound ability to identify the right music for his films he makes them inextricable the image and the sound um amanda for you like what are your signature musical moments with wong's movies i mean there are obviously a lot and many of them are in chunkey express but the second half in particular uh which is i think no i knew about the mom is before that but it did teach me a certain level i definitely knew about the cranberries let me tell you that was the 90s very important to me but reframe that music for me and i think my favorite in that section is the dina washington uh what if the damix cue which is like extremely on the nose like it's right there in the title of the song but i don't care um it's pretty magical and then um a newer one from days of being wild is um the perfidia um song that cue that kind of plays throughout but i of course immediately was like this is a very famous standard that has um been in a lot of films but i recognize it as the song that they danced from casablanca i was like oh my god that's the casablanca song and um and it has that kind of aching swinginess and um a reference to a to film history and i also like like a knowing melodramatic aspect of the song like when it comes on you know you're supposed to feel a certain way but man when he's standing outside the phone booth works for me every time yeah he's well known for his sort of international taste in popular music and incorporating you know jazz and rock and trip-hop and classical music and lounge music and he's so expansive justin for you you know what does the music mean his films and what are what are some of your favorite drops well i should say that my wife and i integrated two one car white musical legends into our way i'm so ridiculous now but whatever he is the most you know he's one of the most romantic filmmakers in the world it felt very fitting um i love you but we actually took my wife walked down the aisle to uh adagio from 24 six my secret garden um and yeah i was just we were going we're going to do like you know church music no let's let's go and it was you know gorgeous she was gorgeous it was it was my life um and then we we walked down we walked down the aisle after the ceremony to happy together which you know um and then so i think we found that cover it's funny because i because of the connection the connections i forward with these movies i sometimes prefer the covers in a weird way i love the originals too but um you know when i was i you know it's not just speaking about going out of order i watched as tears go by his first film uh kind of toward the end like it was one of the last ones i caught up with um and that one of course has the terrific uh cover of take my breath away um and it's just it's the cheesiest one it works so well i love that but my absolute favorite uh needle drop in a long car movie is one that amanda mentioned which is yeah the cranberries dreams in um in jumping express uh and another kind of you know canto pop cover of that song and i love it because of the montage that accompanies where fei wong is cleaning tony clinton's apartment and transforming it it's just one of the most magical sequences in movies for me because it's a kind of seduction it's kind of a meet cute by but where they are not actually interacting and it's kind of a you know a little creepy heist kind of sequence as well and it's just that was like okay this is perfect music i'm just such an unrivaled joy in making movies and making images um and it's it's just it's still maybe my favorite sequence in all of wong and my favorite musical cue as well i agree with all of those i have two more that i would share that i really love uh one that probably struck me more revisiting movies probably the second time i've seen it is fallen angels as i said the first time i saw fallen angels in like 2000 this film is not for me um and revisiting it i think obviously that that extraordinary final sequence on the motorcycle with the flying pickets cover of only you which is pretty incredible and then we mentioned this actually a couple weeks ago when we were talking about moonlight but moonlight borrows the kukuru kukuru paloma katana beloso song and that's from really maybe the most grand image in any wong film which is iguatu falls and happy together um and sort of returning to that i think two or three times in the film is is that was a moonlight thing and now it's back to being inextricable and happy together and they can they can trade places on that but you know he has this incredible um broad sense of taste you know he's not defined by just an interest in jazz or just an interest in rock or you know the fact that you don't know what's coming that sometimes it's contrasting sometimes it's meant to sort of be ironic or be sly or a commentary on what we're seeing sometimes it is wholly emotional and and romantic and sincere is is a superpower in a way you know it really makes him it makes him stand alone in terms of choosing choosing music for his films um i guess one other thing i want to hit before we get into my blueberry nights and the grandmaster whatever's coming in the future is uh you know specifically visually what he does is that makes him different i think when people think of his films they think maybe of darkness and rain they think of slow motion they sense they think maybe that blurred kind of double printed overexposed film kind of look which i think early in his career people kind of criticized as a sort of like post mtv you know you mentioned like perfume commercial style justin you know in terms of decision making like can you speak to some of the physical choices that he and christopher doyle i think all those things are absolutely true and i think that you know the fact you rattle all those off shows that there's you know more than one style you associate with with long and i think that just just incredible kinesism you know and kinetic energy and you know handled camera work is not such a remarkable thing anymore but even at the time i think the way in which long car why was showing you was taking you through his stories i felt like you were being taken through them rather than being told them um there was a radicalism to that that is now doesn't seem quite exactly more but at the time just to my eyes it really was i think it was just this feeling that there's this physicalization of time i mean it's i'm trying to unpack that in a less abstract way but it's kind of like visible palpable pursuit of a moment like that is what the movement of the camera expresses to me in long's movies um where and what i think led me to fall in love with some of his films is this idea that oh a movie doesn't actually have to be this perfectly manicured construct a movie can just a great great movie can be a series of great moments and that is i think it's reductive i think that's one thing he is after it's interesting to think too though that like in the mood for love which i should know it was partly shot by christopher doyle mostly shot but also by an equally great cinematographer mark lee bing bing who uh you know came in to kind of fill in and uh you know the summary of rock history of long's collaboration with doyle is of course uh worth making books unto itself i was rereading um john powers is a wonderful book on long kawaii integration he talks about how he got together with doyle and long and how you know it's like you know they no longer work together um you know it's like they said you know the divorce was good but the marriage was great and it was very sweet um touching um to read that but i keep running back to the mood for love because that you know which you know had more than one cinematographer's hands on it and because even though that is sort of the ultimate wong kawaii movie the most popular most successful most revered um in some ways it feels like a departure visually it's more um it's more controlled and restrained and sergium there's a double sergium quality to that movie's beauty um because it's just gorgeous outfits it has a glamour i mean there's a quality glamour to most of wong's movies but that one where it's like it's just this intoxicating level of beauty um and it's also because the character you know it's an interesting too these actors are older now it's a middle-aged person story as opposed to a useful story um so you think the actors are all you know maggie lung and her beautiful chongsam dresses uh and these characters are buttoned up and that's why that movie is so rapturous and overpoweringly sexy i mean it's one of the sexiest movies ever made and it could probably get a pg rating um also very sergium quality i think um so it's it's like i don't know it's beyond just you know the all i would say it's beyond just those things that we associate and kind of the hipster posing i think reputation that he sometimes gets for you know whirls of some cigarettes i mean that's all in there for sure but i think that his style evolves constantly uh is constantly all i'm so curious to see what his next movie would look like um and you know speaking about my blueberry nights where i think you know one reason why maybe that movie is not successful it does feel like he is maybe repeating some adjusters in a different context and you're trying you know working with a great cinematographer and jerry spongy and trying new things but um and there's absolutely moments of beauty and transporting beauty in that film for sure but um it kind of felt like maybe he hit a bit of a dead end and then i think with the grandmaster he kind of moved his way past that so i'm so curious to see what he does next because i'm first of all just what it would look like you know my experience watching his films i don't think i had necessarily the highest quality vhs cassettes that i was checking out so i don't have and i've only seen a handful of his films in theaters over the years but i don't i don't have been the same reaction i think some cinephiles had to the idea of long remastering restoring or revising some of his movies he's well known for recutting some films ashes of time famously is completely recut from the version he made in 1994 but there was like a little bit of scuttlebutt maybe just on film twitter i'm not sure justin how far beyond that you thought it got but um and i assume you're like me you only you didn't necessarily see a profound change in some of these restorations from what we watched but what is it was it different for you seeing what criterion has released hearing with long supervision for me yeah for both of you guys i know i i can't claim to have been able to compare and contrast especially because like i said i just saw days of being wild because it's hard to see it and i um i don't think i've ever seen a film of his in theaters um some of his availability which is why the criterion release is so exciting um i you made me aware of the hand-wringing which i just to me is like you know bad fans who just gotta have control over she says as she refuses to click on the extras so i can understand both sides of this but i don't know we live in the i'm in a big wolves era so i'm less blessed by it than other people and i also do think that just like the i don't even want tinkering sounds condescending but just the changing and the finding the film and seeing how these things work are so essential to his process i mean he can do whatever he wants yeah absolutely i mean it's obviously somebody continuing to have a dialogue with what they've made in the past justin you know you seem to be a little bit concerned about the green tint how did it ultimately come out the way i don't love the green tint i was watching days of being wild again in the restoration and it's like yeah this looks green but my memory of the movie is it's very green it's a very green film that was something they wanted to do consciously to start even back in 1990 and the whole movie it sort of feels like it's taking place underwater at times i mean it's just like there's a weird you know it's and which is part of the dislocating effect of the film i feel really fortunate in having gone see a lot of long's movies in theaters over the years usually in revival houses like you know they revive them for love um i did a back-to-back like double bill i think of chunking express with the umbrellas of share board which was great and um days of being wild i think it was maybe it was a mini retro long that was in town and so you know and some of the other ones like 2046 and grand master were of course easier to see but yeah i i you know agree with both of you my attitude is sort of he can do whatever he wants with it um and there are he has always trafficked in multiple versions of his films and you know different cuts of course this became controversial with you know the grand master where you know this chinese cut and then there's the you know harvey weinstein ordered u.s cut where he thought it was not just his tinkering but is he actually letting you know is the work being compromised here but i think just true to himself he kind of rolls with that and he does not have you know this is again sort of like malictu where the sense of like the movie is never finished that i i would work on these movies forever if i had the time um is only just the dictates of the industry that are forcing you to actually release these films now because they have to release them if you want to be seen but i think left to some devices he would happily tinker and fuss with them uh till from here to eternity um and uh that's something great thing about that there's also something about someone who is who's working so much about the irretrievability of the past and the unreliability of memory that these movies look a little different um but we won't if you know and if you're seeing them for the second or third time you know if it's your first encounter it's your first encounter but um i'm able to have um a former criterion collection uh dvd of in the movie for love which looks not which i do prefer um visually just for the warmth of its colors and and um the vibrancy uh visually there's only three of his films are not included in this set it's only ashes of time and i guess redux as well and my blueberry nights which you know perhaps that's the best and um and the grandmaster i'm quite fond of the grandmaster i mean i'm a huge um martial arts film fan so as a fan there are a couple of sequences in that movie that i think stand with any martial arts sequence i've ever seen the train sequence in that movie is unbelievable um but it's a movie that i think does not have perhaps the reputation that i expected it would have before it came out in fact i don't know if we've ever talked about it one of the reasons why i want to have this conversation frankly is because you know i've never got to talk about one because he hasn't made a film since that film we've only been in this pod for a few years so maybe blossoms i guess is the working title of his next film is coming this year maybe it will come sometime in the next 10 years um justin as somebody who you know has written about him and covered his work extensively what do you make of his reputation right now as a filmmaker do you think young audiences know and appreciate wong's work i think they do i mean the fact that in the move for love came in at like number 25 or something on the sign sound bowl 2012 um it's like 25 the 25th greatest of all time or whatever i know rankings are arbitrary and silly but that was amazing and i think that just shows how i mean that's just an amazing quickness of time for a filmmaker for a contemporary current filmmaker to be canonized um and i think it's a great choice um even though he is in this period of inactivity um i feel his reputation i mean the greatness of the movies is there that's not going to change um his reputation it lives on and you know to what amanda was saying about like lost in the translation the influence that you see and i think it goes beyond just mannerism there's a proof that there is something really just emotionally fertile about his style in the way that directors like barry jenkins and sofia coppola and even for the kind of last example that i love uh michael winterbottom his sci-fi movie code 46 which very few people have seen well not enough people have seen it which is one part wide of the core madman you know is totally dedicated for love and at the same time completely its own work so i think right now i'm i'm it's funny because i want to see more films by him and yet there's something kind of great about the body of work as it is like i i don't necessarily i'm not saying i'm content for this stuff but in a way there's something fitting about again someone whose work is so much about the past the fact that there's there's going to be a perfection about the body of work even with you know the steps of whatever there are you know that was and I think there are very few, actually. I kind of love that it's this thing that I can just keep exploring. That's it.
I'm totally excited to see whatever. It's funny because I know that he was working on projects and someone were impacted by COVID, of course. And so I'm hopeful about Blossoms and whatever else he may do after that. Okay, lightning round, final question for you both.
And then I'll start with you. What is your favorite performance in a Wong Kar Wai movie? Oh, I have to start? Yeah.
It's a tie. It's a tie. Come on. Okay, fine.
They won. That's so hard to do. And, you know, Man of Picks and Dream Girl arguably starts there and that's taken on a negative connotation. The way I saw Amelie before, I saw Chuck King Express, so my mind was really blown, just so you know.
But she is the original and she makes the original and sells that wonderful montage that Justin referenced. And just there's no one cooler dancing to behind the counter than Fei Wong. So, Fei Wong. Great pick.
Just for boredom's sake, I'll say Tony Leung in the movie for Love because as you mentioned at the top, Justin, he's perhaps the signal figure in all of these movies and he's an extraordinary actor. I was just thinking the other day, it's just really, really weird that Tony Leung is going to be in a Marvel movie this year. You know, that is where our culture is. Yeah, he's going to be in Shang-Chi.
I think he's the villain in Shang-Chi, actually. So anyhow, our culture continues to evolve in interesting ways. But I'm happy for Tony Leung in his bank account. Justin, what about you?
What's your favorite performance from his films? Jiang Ziyi in 2046. Great one. And I think she just, it's just, I think she's tremendously underrated as an actor in that and in The Grand Master where she is just astonishing physical performance.
She's just the martial arts part alone. But I don't think emotionally she's ever gone as deep as she has in 2046 where she's just, you know, she's crying. That one scene where she just quietly reacts to when Tony Leung gives her the money but not my only favorite one by far. Justin, this has been brilliant.
If you're not reading Dustin Chang in the LA Times, you're not a film fan. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Dustin.
Sean, it's so much fun. Thank you for having me. And it's just been a joy doing this movie. So thank you.
Thank you to the great Justin Chang. Thanks, Amanda. Thanks, Bobby Wagner. Please take her out of the big picture later this week.
I will be joined by Adam Naiman where we will be discussing one of our favorite movies in the last 12 months. We're going to be called The Empty Man. You can rent on PVOD right now. We'll also be talking about our favorite cult movies and how a movie in 2021 becomes a cult movie.
We'll see you then.