02 Dec In the Mood for Love (2000)

Repetition, Secrets, Space

Start with your typical Hong Kong Kung Fu movie. A normal director will simply film that. But not this guy.

What drives kung fu movies is not the bozos doing the fighting, but the masters behind them who use them as surrogates. But then, what drives the kung fu masters? The fellow writing the story, that’s who.

That’s where this kung fu movie starts. The central figure is the writer of a successful martial arts series. But it is even more abstract: the film is about what creates him.

It is half about his space. every shot starts or finishes on the surrounding space, very close, confining. That space includes his neighbour, who is thrust into his life by proximity and indirect relationship.

I choose to think that the relationship between the spouses is imagined, part of an extended role playing activity which forms the core of the film. That’s what we see: a story about the creation of a story (the relationship) which results in the story (the martial arts series).

All the mechanics are meditative, repetitive. We see countless small acts, the movements of people interacting with their environments. Lot’s of close space, smoke, crimped walking, unsaid comments. The music recurs. Everything repeats. All the major acts are relived or anticipated in practice.

Finally, the environment, hence the story unravels as the space changes, first as he gets a space in which to write, then moves to Singapore. Finally, he whispers the story into a hole in a ruin in Cambodia. Along the way we are transported to an abstract world of human causality.

This is great. In my rating system, for every high mark I give, I have to balance it with a low mark. Now I can watch a 2.

Posted in 2001

Ted’s Evaluation — 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

IMDB