Wong
Kar Wai’s films Fallen Angels and Happy Together contain similar themes of
missed connections and failed communication in an urban environment. However,
in many ways, they are mirrored in how they go about expressing failed
relationships. I want to share my reasoning for why I think the themes of these
two movies are related yet opposite, and to explore the similarities and
differences in the ways they project their themes to the viewer.
THE PLOT:
Happy Together, for those who are not
familiar, was a film made two years after Fallen
Angels about an on-again, off-again couple from Hong Kong who visit
Argentina to see a waterfall they are both fond of. They get stuck in Buenos
Aires when they get lost and run out of money. Their relationship is tumultuous.
Lai Yiu-Fai is stoic, serious, and in pursuit of stability. He tends towards
violent outbursts when faced with frustration—he punches and shatters mirrors,
smashes liquor and beer bottles, and throws objects at people throughout the
film. Ho Po-Wing is charismatic, a trouble-maker. He has a reputation as a
playboy with the local Argentinean men. In voiceover, Lai informs us that Ho
has a habit of returning post-breakup and using the line “let’s start over” to
sweeten Lai up. It works, every time, and the cycle continues.
This particular cycle we are
witness to begins when Ho shows up on Lai’s doorstep, bloody and with heavily
injured hands. Lai takes him in until he recovers from his wounds and cares for
him while he has limited use of his hands. Lai tries his hardest to keep Ho
physically and emotionally distant to avoid getting drawn in, but Ho is
persistent in his advances—he climbs into bed with him, tries to teach him how
to dance, and frequently invades his personal space. In a tender scene in which
they are dancing slowly in the kitchen, Lai eventually gives in to Ho’s
affection and reciprocates.
However,
it is not long until Ho’s boisterous, needy attitude grates on Lai’s nerves,
and Lai’s unaffectionate stoicism bores Ho. Lai becomes frustrated and his
violent outbursts become more frequent. Eventually, Ho’s wounds heal and he is
back to his playboy ways. Out of fear of abandonment, Lai steals Ho’s passport.
Ho demands it back and a physical struggle ensues. Ho storms out without the
passport— they have broken up yet again. Lonely and depressed, Lai seeks
friendship in a coworker, Chang. Sexual tension sizzles between them. Chang,
however, is on his way out of Buenos Aires. He wants to visit the southernmost
point of South America before returning home to Taiwan. Before leaving, he asks
Lai to leave a voice recording on a tape, in lieu of a photo. Chang departs,
after giving Lai a lingering hug.
Lai
sinks further into depression, resorting to the promiscuity he had abhorred in
Ho. During this period he finds the strength to work overtime for the money to
return home. Ho tries to get back in touch with him, but Lai understands the
cycle now. He wishes to reconcile with his family, whom he had stolen money
from before departing for Argentina. He eventually gets the means together to
return to Hong Kong. On his way back, he stops in Chang’s hometown in Taiwan.
He finds his family’s restaurant and, while he didn’t see Chang, he steals a
photo of Chang from the restaurant as remembrance. The film ends as his train
to Hong Kong pulls into the station.
MISSED CONNECTIONS AND MAGNETISM:
Both Happy Together and Fallen Angels deal with failed relationships and how the rush and
grit of an urban setting can affect this. However, while Fallen Angels deals with people who want very badly to come
together and can’t quite connect, Happy
Together shows people who can’t stay away from each other, no matter how
hard they fight, and no matter how toxic they are to each other. Both kinds of
relationships are doomed to failure, confusion, and pain. They are magnetized—
pushing against or pulling away from the other’s magnetic field.
In Fallen Angels, the characters feel lost,
floating, and isolated in the dark, busy urban life around them. The Partner
lusts after The Killer, who avoids and rejects her. The Killer gravitates
towards Blondie, who wants too much of him. The Mute falls in love with
Charlie, who is too busy chasing after her ex. He then forms a stronger
relationship with his father, who dies and leaves him all alone. The Partner
retreats into her inwardly gazing, masturbatory, emotionally guarded lifestyle.
The Killer is slain in a shootout. The Mute continues to assault people for
their money. Alone.
In Happy Together, the characters are drawn
towards each other. Every time Lai and Ho break up, happenstance brings them
back together. Hope for a fresh start makes them try again and again, even
though Lai keeps getting his heart broken and Ho keeps yearning for freedom.
Even when they are not seeking each other out, they run into each other on the
street, in bathrooms, in bars. Buenos Aires is not a small town—it seems like
something bigger is bringing them together. After Ho leaves, Lai and Chang
immediately become drawn to each other. They never tell each other about their attraction
(maybe because of the fear of coming out, maybe because they know they won’t be
in the same country for much longer), but even as they fight it, they continue
to get together, continue to engage in excessive physical contact in soccer
games, and continue to think and worry about each other. In Lai’s period of
promiscuity, he is drawn to one-night-stands with strangers, but does not feel
anything for them and therefore cannot connect with or love them. In his brief
layover in Taiwan, Lai finds Chang’s restaurant by chance. But he is still
barred from connection by Chang’s absence.
Neither
movie ends in pessimism, however. In Fallen
Angels, The Partner and The Mute find each other. He says he feels a spark,
she, warmth. Both are hopeful signs of interpersonal connection. In Happy Together, Lai seems to have
learned his lesson about Ho’s toxicity and is completely prepared to rebuild the
broken connection with his family, to repair a failed relationship. The ultimate
outcome of these endeavors is not clear in either film, but the message of hope
is there in both.
VOICE AND SPEECH:
Failed
communication is another shared theme of these two movies, and is often a cause
of the failure of relationships. Some people are unable to communicate, some
try to and fail, and others simply do not know how.
Because
of the nature of their business, The Killer and The Partner are meant to have
little to no face-to-face contact. The Partner silently sends him faxes and
expresses her affection by doing him favors, like cleaning his flat. The Killer
communicates with the Partner by leaving clues in his pockets and trash, and
through songs on the jukebox. The Mute, obviously, cannot speak at all, and is
forced to use gestures and physical force to make his desires known. His
father, though able to speak, is not talkative, and has a strong accent that
makes him hard to understand. In one section of the film, The Mute learns how
to communicate his love for his father through a camcorder. But he has no one
to show the tape to after his father’s death, so instead he carries it with him
as a memento. There is no one left to receive his message.
Throughout
the movie, we see Lai and Ho speaking Spanish (and English, in one instance) to
locals. These exchanges are not subtitled, driving home the uneasy feeling of
being in a foreign land where your means of communication are limited by a
language barrier. It is apparent from the beginning that Ho does not listen to
Lai’s words. He does not heed or respect his wishes, climbing into bed with him
when Lai is explicitly telling him not to. Their most successful exchange is
the delicate, wordless dance scene in the kitchen, in which they communicate
with their bodies, dance yielding to touch yielding to kissing. Ho frequently
becomes frustrated with Lai’s refusal to use his voice instead of violence to
express himself. Chang, however, has a special relationship with voice. He had
terrible vision when he was younger, and had to rely on sound, speech, and
vocal patterns to understand his world. Even after his vision was corrected, he
retained this habit. He seems to fall in love with the voice Lai uses to talk
to Ho over the phone long before he initiates contact with Lai himself. He is
able to sense Lai’s sadness through his voice despite his perpetually guarded
facial expression. When he leaves for the lighthouse at the end of the world,
he asks for a vocal recording of Lai instead of a photograph to remember him
by. When he listens to it, he can’t make out any words, only sobs. A message
nonetheless.
Both
movies feature long sequences of songs in English. As English-speakers, we are
able to immediately absorb the thematic importance of the lyrics in Laurie
Anderson’s “Speak My Language” or the “Happy Together” sequence at the end of
the movie that utilizes the song’s name. However, audiences watching these
films in its original state may not speak English at all. Huge conceptual
puzzle pieces of the movies’ themes are in these English language songs’
lyrics, and it is a bold move on Wong Kar Wai’s part to allow large portions of
his audience to miss out on those puzzle pieces. It is a deliberate denial of
clear communication built into the structure of the film itself.
PARALLELS:
Wong Kar Wai’s presence is clear in
both movies. In fact, it took me less than two minutes of the cinematographic
and narrative style of Fallen Angels to
realize that it shared a director with Happy
Together, which I’d watched by chance a couple weeks earlier. As a point of
interest, here are some technical and narrative parallels I noticed in these
two movies, regardless of if they are related to themes of connection/communication.
FA: Explicit, extended masturbation
scene is used to show The Partner’s state of mind.
HT: Explicit, extended sex scene is
used to show Lai and Ho’s relationship dynamic.
FA: Narration is relied upon to
allow The Killer, The Partner, and The Mute’s state of mind to be available to
the audience, since they do not or cannot speak their mind aloud.
HT: Narration is relied upon to
allow Lai’s state of mind to be available to the audience, since he does not
(often) speak his mind aloud.
FA: Everyone smokes all the fucking
time, perhaps to show self-destruction.
HT: Everyone smokes all the fucking
time, perhaps to show self-destruction.
FA: Wide-angle lenses make the
characters seem too big for the confining, crowded urban settings.
HT: Wide-angle lenses make the
characters seem too big for the confining, crowded urban settings.
FA: The relative open space of the
tunnel that The Mute drives through contrasts with the claustrophobic nature of
the rest of the shots of Hong Kong.
HT: The relative open space of the
rooftop and the alleyway where the restaurant workers play soccer contrast with
the claustrophobic nature of the rest of the shots of Buenos Aires.
FA: The Parter often cleans The
Killer’s apartment as a sign of devotion, longing, or even obsession over
feeling close to him.
HT: Ho cleans Lai’s apartment after
Lai moves out as a sign of longing to feel close to him again.
FA: Movie switches back and forth between
highly saturated color and black & white, perhaps to keep the audience
off-balance.
HT: Movie switches back and forth
between highly saturated color and black & white, perhaps to express mood.
FA: Wow this is a good movie.
HT: Wow this is a good movie.
CLIPS:
Below are the aforementioned English
language musical sequences from each film, Fallen
Angels’ “Speak My Language” and Happy
Together’s “Happy Together”. In both there are themes of isolation in urban environments while showing characters looking lost and introspective among it.
(start at 4:15)
