Comprehending Wong Kar-wai’s Films through the Perspectives of Time

Everlasting love is purely defined and only capable of existence through the absence of the loved one. Film director Wong Kar-wai’s movies are always delineated by love and time; yet, this never mutual or impossible love is always marked by the presence of its “painful contradictions, the persistence of longing, memory, and regret; the hopelessness of ever recapturing, modifying or getting rid of the past,” ephemerality and history. But what it’s important for this paper is that all these themes are the children of time. (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 105).

Time has always been an important theme to poets, philosophers and artists; there are many different interpretations about what time means, which is why it is important to make a framework of the various interpretations of time that can be related to the movies of Wong Kar-wai. For example: The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future, regarded as a whole.” In Existentialism, “time is considered fundamental to the question of being”. Immanuel Kant thought of time as “an a priori notion that together with other a priori notions allows us to comprehend sense experience”. In the philosophy of time, “Presentism is the belief that neither the future nor the past exists; the view carries an ontological commitment to more than just the present instant or moment. The opposite of Presentism is 'Eternalism', which is a belief that things that are past and things that are yet to come to existence; the past, present and future are all equally real.” And finally, as this writer sees there is the socio-economical meaning of time; which is that every second of our lives is worth money, or as Americans love to say “time is money.”

In the social sphere China is a really interesting country, since it is the most populous country in the world, people have really short space to live in. It is like if Chinese people were supposed to be together, close and tight to each other. Also it is a country that is in constant movement, always fast; always awake, at all times running against the clock. Yet, with so many people the characters of Kar-wai’s films are always placed in situations were their love is not mutual; because the person they fall in love with is blocked with past memories of someone else, is somehow censored to love a new individual, because of the power of memory.

This is where the interpretation of time according to Eternalism and Existentialism comes in handy, because the past of these characters is always there to remind them who they are and why they are there, and to forge the future by remembering the past and acting in behalf of it in the present. A perfect example is the film 2046 which “is continuously presented not so much as a date but rather as a place that people seek to arrive by means of an ultrafast bullet train, in order to preserve or relocate their memories.” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 103).

“This film is about a man who is trying to get rid of his past; it is also about promises and the many chances all of us miss in life. About how do you deal with your past? This is the question of the film. […] This movie is about that there is a need in all of us to have a place to hide or store certain memories, thoughts, impulses, hopes, and dreams. These are parts of our lives that we can’t resolve or best not act upon but at the same time we are afraid to jettison them. For some, this is a physical place; for others is a mental space, and for a few it is neither. […] It is a film that tries to portray someone trying to get away, but the more you try to get away, the closer you come. But if you just let it go, one day the past memories may leave you.” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 102, 103, 105, 106).

In simpler and brief words, this is a film about how cowardly it is to try to run away from problems because they hurt, and how the power of our memories keep punishing us for it, until we confront them and realize that the best way is not to run away, but to confront them; because sooner or later time will make us face them. Another example of the Existentialism is in In the Mood for Love, when the frustrated pseudo lovers play to be having the affair their spouses are, and they play it by pretending to be each other’s spouses. They might do it in order to feel better, and to feel that they are being unfaithful too; as a mean of catharsis. Maybe they don’t sexually consummate their relationship because they are afraid to accept that their spouse’s are, and they are playing to have their spouses affair; they are playing the game of “being” them in that specific time.

As opposed to the Eternalism vision, there is the Presentism which only believes in the existence of the very moment. This writer believes that the example for this perspective is a little bit more metaphorical and figurative; the best example for Presentism is the visit of Mo-wan to the temple of Angkor Wat, were he whispers his secret to the wall and covers it with mud. This particular scene represents the destruction of the past and with it the possible repercussions of the forming future by acting in behalf of the past. In other words, he leaves his tormented past behind and destines himself to live day by day, second by second, to live just for the moment as the past is know gone.

In Fallen Angels, because of the fact that “loneliness is ultimately the film’s centrifugal force;” the characters have to look for “all about the ways to keep themselves happy.” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 64-70). The theme of feeling love through its absence and feeding from it; in other more allegorical words, experiencing love as a vampire’s empty existence, destined to the undying search for life in sucking blood and bringing death; knowing that this undying search is love and the blood and death are the remains with which they satisfy themselves, rather than with the actual love per se. Because of this matter of non mutual love the characters are forced to go around getting what they want. What I mean with this is: the ways in which they feel love. Here Immanuel Kant’s theory of time appears really helpful, because if time is “an a priori notion that together with other a priori notions allows us to comprehend sense experience.” Then, the relationship between the Hitman and the female dispatcher is totally seen through this perspective. More clearly, these two characters, comprehend love by each others’ experience; which is that the female dispatcher masturbates in the assassin’s bed, because in other time of the day he was there, and her a priori notion of knowing that he is there satisfies her, makes her happy. It goes the same for the bar, where they sit in the same seat in different days and different hours of the day, and listen to the same song. They are experiencing each other or sensing each others’ love because of the a priori knowledge both have, which conducts them to act in a certain time, in a certain way. In other words, what they consider real is real in its consequences, which means that, in time, their love becomes real, because they believe it real through their a priori notions of themselves which makes them act in behalf on each other and the a priori notions themselves.

Now, taking a new direction, when it comes to the socio-economical meaning of time, the best example is Mo-wan’s relationships in 2046, because of the fact that he sleeps with prostitutes and with Bai-Ling. He is always paying for their time because he does not like to be in debt to anyone; and with Bai-Ling’s case, sometimes she pays for his time. There is a scene which portrays this perspective really well, that is when, after having sex Ling tells Mo-wan that she wants him for life, to which he responds that “Retail is fine, but wholesale is out of question.” This is obviously a depiction of the expression “time is money.”

In all Wong Kar-wai’s films there always is the theme of the frustrated love which is characterized by the absence of the loved one, and always accompanied by a music that is slow paced and talks about bad loves or has a touch of sadness. In all the movies there is always an evidently strong presence and importance of time in relation with love; the past, present and future take a meaning as a whole giving each character a personality according to his or her experience in love life; which all the time is melancholic and exasperating. All these factors, remind me of an old saying people have in my country of origin which pronounces that “No matter how hard you think it is, no matter how bad you think it is, no matter how much you suffer for it; it will all go away, it will vanish like dust in the wind, because time heals all wound, and this time, time is on your side.” To reflect about this and Wong Kar-wai’s films, made me link a connection which took me to the very conclusion, that in these movies and in life, is as simple as the fact that it seems to be that “Love is a matter of timing; it is no use to meet a person sooner or later, but in the right moment, in the precise time.”