The Aesthetic Amalgam

Is it in the name? Yes it is. Wong Kar Wai came up with the name “In the mood for love” in a hurried response to a passing Cannes submission deadline. Nothing could better capture the essence of the film than this candid title. Wong Kar Wai is notorious for his unorthodox filming style where he circumvents conventional narrative film-making and trots in the annals of iconoclast filmmakers. Mr. Wai is undoubtedly the Grand master of Cinematic Innovation, his experimentation with sequences of different frames per second, improvisation of dialogue and story right on the sets, combined with the evocative lighting and camerawork from cinematographer Mark Li Ping-bin and the most sensuous sets and costumes by art director William Chang make this film an ode to the pain that comes with love. The two actors; Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung embellish this artistic crew with their indelibly dramatic performances. Juxtaposed with Goethe’s “Sorrows of Young Werther”, the film seems to be the penultimate lament to the infanticide of passion.

Wong takes away all the complexity from the story and relies solely on character exposition. The film is a simple story where neighbors Mr. Chow and So-Li-Zhen find out through circumstance and instinct that their respective spouses are having an affair. Initially stunned but not surprised, the neighbors comfort each other as friends, but their mutual sympathy swiftly chauffeurs them to each others’ lonely hearts as lovers. The two decide that they won’t engage in marital deceit like their spouses, which ultimately culminates to an emotional implosion. This simple storyline, even though ninety-eight minutes in totality, feels like a slow boil where Mr. Kar Wai steadily ingratiates a pastiche of passion-evoking aesthetics.

“It is a Restless moment” The title line that prologues the film unconsciously stirs a tempestuous feeling in the audience. The audience is pitched in the 1960’s Hong Kong scenario where two different people are moving in a packed apartment complex. The director’s obsession with confining space and surface is alluded in the ambience of the many melancholic colors of the sets. One can see jailed bars throughout the residential surroundings, which literally refer to the prison that society is. The two characters are repeatedly pitted against each other in the closed-quarters where they are forced to adhere to social norms of marital reserve, but the inevitability of their spiritual union is hinted in the many eye contacts they make during their cyclical visits of the crowded Hong Kong food bazaars.

The introspective visuals of the characters are painted with colors of loneliness, isolation and longing. The vibrant color scheme, props and costumes compliment the intricate gazes into the characters desires and changing moods. Every artistic detail camouflages metaphors for unconsummated passion muffled by the sanctimony of an intrusive society. The director is known for his exclusion of the outside world, even though the film exposits on troubled love in a judging society, the central characters are consciously led away from the treadmill of urban existence. Even though on a different track, the characters’ actions are ultimately motivated by society.

The repetitive musical themes elucidate the avoidant personality of the characters. The music also evokes a nostalgic sense of surrounding within the film. From the funereal Yumeji’s theme to the soulful Spanish crooning of Nat King Cole and the spiritually haunting encore of the Angkor Wat theme by composer Michael Galasso, the musical framework shapes and lures the audience’s emotional response to the zenith of melancholy.
Time as a cinematic concept has never been so exploited as it is in this film. From the very first second, till the end, the transformational property of passing time has been shown as the winner above all else, maybe even death. The film unknowingly pays homage to the Greek Philosopher Heraclitus, who said -; “"You cannot step twice into the same river”, alluding to the sense of passing time with a flowing river; every single moment tangents in a line that represents “what once was will never be again”.

The film is riddled with poetry, from the many voice over’s and symbolisms, the audience is obliquely led to visualize loss; when a secret is whispered in a hole in the ruined monastery of Angkor Wat, Mr. Chow is discarding the pain of his unconsummated love by transferring the unborn “fetus” into the ever welcoming womb of Mother earth.

In the mood for love is a spiritual boxing match between platonic and sensual love, the latter winning in the end. The film’s aesthetic vigor and tamed visual complexities channel emotional suffering with an uncontrollable restraint; a confession about the cravings of the spirit freed from the prison of civilization.