Wong Kar-Wai and Godard

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Wong Kar-Wai's style is unusual and sometimes disorienting. Poetic albeit obscure, Kar-wai offer a refreshing, distinctive vision in an underground scene, distinguishing itself from a Hong Kong cinema that is sometimes filled recycled motifs. Unlike his contemporaries, Kar-wai breaks the mold by drawing inspiration from the French New Wave, in particular, the vibrant technicolor Godard films like 'Pierrot' and 'Contempt', or Demy's melodramatic love letters in the 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg' and the 'Sisters of Rochefort'. These films however may contain a greater senstivity to natural light and are largely in contrast with Kar-Wai's choice of multi-layered narrative loops, often taking place at night in crowded cities. Kar-Wai's work as a whole truly examines the possibility of what the New Wave would be if the style is resurrected in the present day where audiences are desiring more sophisticated shot angles, slo-motion tracking, greater color scales, and bold visceral filters. 

Kar-Wai's style acts as this 90s/2000s-version of the movement's ways in showing nonlinearity, playing with dreams and memories to add sophistication to portrait. Kar-Wai's innovation is in the manipulation of time and sequence, and how it amplifies his film's themes of solitude and love. 

Emotion is not just added to the characters, but rather, its embedded in the narrative structure, which invites viewers to contemplate and investigate what it may mean on a surface level before the plot reveals something philosophical by the films' endings. Relationships are strained by time where characters are stuck with something psychological whether its pain that results from the past or a memory that affects them in the present. Once we realize that character-action is also bathed in atmospheric color, we conclude the viewing experience may be some sort of meditation on loss or heartbreak, forcing us to prioritize the feeling over something substantive that exists in the dialogue.

Its in the lineage of Sofia Coppola or Mika Ninagawa where soundtracks combined with stylistic and colorful images produces mood and vibe.

With the exception of Yimou, Kar-Wai may be the most prominent filmmaker to arise from Hong Kong's scene in the 90's. Few have a great eye for color like he does.