In the Mood for Love came out in the year 2000; it was written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. As with all of the movies of Kar-wai this one was screened in Hong Kong, but “in terms of setting, we are back in the historically re-created Hong Kong of the 1960s last seen in Days of Being Wild, but now, as Wong has stressed in interviews, we are dealing with mature married people. He has also said that the earlier film was “a very personal reinvention of the ‘60s,” but in the new film “we consistently tried to recreate the actuality…” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 86). “Wong said that he focused in this date because the film is “about the end of a period. The year 1966 marks a turning point in Hong Kong’s history. The Cultural Revolution in the mainland had lots of knock-on effects, and forced Hong Kong people to think hard about their future. So 1966 is the end of something and the beginning of something else.” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 99).
Politically the year is really important since “a poetic intertitle, meaning different things on both the personal and the political levels, tells us, “That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 99). Socially, the message sent is that “the stifling conformity and hypocrisy of this society is everywhere evident” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 88). In other words the movie is set in a world that is changing from old fashion values and traditions to a whole new different thing, perhaps a more North American imperialized culture.
The main idea of the film is to revel that “in its hopeless, languorous exploration of all the ways that love can be at once glorious and frustrating. […] The romantic poets, after all, were able to find an ambivalent solace in the deliciousness of lovelorn suffering and melancholia, and it is that feeling that predominates in In the Mood. […] Tony Rayns has poetically described the interviewing of these themes as “a gorgeously sensual valse triste that circles the themes of fidelity and sincerity in relationships before resolving itself into a requiem for a lost time in its values”. But even more interesting than that is the fact that this film treats a really profound sociological problem, which is the identity and the playing of the roles in society, and it does it by making us ask ourselves: “Just who are we, after all, and do we ever have the possibility of saying things to each other that aren’t already lines of dialogue, scripted by our culture or society? Tony Rayns insists that Wong is always expressing “primary emotions” rather than, in a more postmodern fashion, mere signs or “cultural gestures”. (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 89, 90, 96). Finally the purpose of the film is to make us aware that “individuals have always suffered, and they always will”; that “life always goes on, beyond any individual life.” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 100). In other words, the film treats themes of sociological concern such as the identity, the role, and the social control mechanisms of society, the definition of us and the eternal struggle in life to beat society without letting anyone to know it. Also the theme of feeling love through its absence and feeding from it, in other words experiencing love as a vampire’s empty existence and undying search for life in blood and death.
Politically the year is really important since “a poetic intertitle, meaning different things on both the personal and the political levels, tells us, “That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 99). Socially, the message sent is that “the stifling conformity and hypocrisy of this society is everywhere evident” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 88). In other words the movie is set in a world that is changing from old fashion values and traditions to a whole new different thing, perhaps a more North American imperialized culture.
The main idea of the film is to revel that “in its hopeless, languorous exploration of all the ways that love can be at once glorious and frustrating. […] The romantic poets, after all, were able to find an ambivalent solace in the deliciousness of lovelorn suffering and melancholia, and it is that feeling that predominates in In the Mood. […] Tony Rayns has poetically described the interviewing of these themes as “a gorgeously sensual valse triste that circles the themes of fidelity and sincerity in relationships before resolving itself into a requiem for a lost time in its values”. But even more interesting than that is the fact that this film treats a really profound sociological problem, which is the identity and the playing of the roles in society, and it does it by making us ask ourselves: “Just who are we, after all, and do we ever have the possibility of saying things to each other that aren’t already lines of dialogue, scripted by our culture or society? Tony Rayns insists that Wong is always expressing “primary emotions” rather than, in a more postmodern fashion, mere signs or “cultural gestures”. (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 89, 90, 96). Finally the purpose of the film is to make us aware that “individuals have always suffered, and they always will”; that “life always goes on, beyond any individual life.” (Contemporary Film Directors: Wong Kar-wai, 2005, 100). In other words, the film treats themes of sociological concern such as the identity, the role, and the social control mechanisms of society, the definition of us and the eternal struggle in life to beat society without letting anyone to know it. Also the theme of feeling love through its absence and feeding from it, in other words experiencing love as a vampire’s empty existence and undying search for life in blood and death.
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