The Big Picture - Five Reasons Movie Theaters Are ... Back?! Plus, the World of Wong Kar-Wai.

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

Sean and Amanda dive into the return of the box office after ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ earned nearly $50 million over the holiday weekend. Are movie theaters back for good? Then, they discuss the results of the SAG Awards and what they mean for up-in-the-air Oscar races, including Best Actress and maybe Best Picture (0:30). Then, they’re joined by L.A. Times film critic Justin Chang to discuss the incredible body of work of Wong Kar-Wai, one of the signature filmmakers of the past three decades and the subject of a breathtaking new box set from the Criterion Collection (25:43). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Justin Chang Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chef David Chang and the members of The Recipe Club sift through millions of search results to find the very best way to make the food you want to eat. Each week, they cook three recipes for the same dish, debate them, and ultimately declare the winning recipe. Check out Recipe Club on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Phenasy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Wong Kar-wai.

That's right. The films of The Hong Kong Master are the focus of our conversation today. Joining us for the first time on The Big Picture to discuss the incredible body of work of one of the signature filmmakers of the past three decades is one of our favorite writers, the esteemed Los Angeles Times critic and columnist Justin Chang. We'll talk about Wong's movies, their style and influence, and the new set of his work issued by the Criterion Collection World of Wong Kar Wai. Amanda and I love Wong, so this is a real treat for us. But first, let's talk about the state of the movie theater business and the upcoming Academy Awards. Amanda, we spent all of the pandemic grousing about how movie theaters died. And then movie theaters came back.

They're back. They're back to life. Godzilla versus Kong resurrected movie theaters. What do you have to say about this? A true Easter weekend, huh? That's right. It's great. I'm glad that people went to the movies.

I hope safely and had a nice time watching the spectacularly dumb, but hope safely, and had a nice time watching a spectacularly dumb but fun movie, in my opinion. Just like deeply, deeply stupid in the best way. Whether this is like the return of movie theaters full stop forever is something I think you and I should discuss. Yeah, let's discuss it. So 3,000 movie theaters showed Godzilla vs. Kong this weekend. It made $48.5 million domestically. It also has done quite well overseas. So why did that happen? What was it about this dumb but fun movie that we talked about last week with Shay? What is it about? Are we having a cultural, human, communal desire to get back into theaters? I know that I have been having that, and I've been talking about that for a year now. Is it just that this was a movie that was incredibly legible to the broadest

number of people? Literally, it's called Godzilla versus Kong. These are very understood terms. What do you think accounts for this? It's a little bit of everything, I think, which is I know the boring answer. But sure, people are like, oh, theaters are open again. They weren't in most places. Well, I shouldn't say in most places they were not in Los Angeles where I live. I can really only speak to my corner of the world as recently as what a few weeks ago. And so this is widely available. People are starting to get the vaccine and this is an option that it was not even like three months ago, I think for a majority of people in the United States, at least. So that's cool. Just doing something different. Hey, I wasn't able to do this. Now I am again. That's like an incentive.

Is that experience reputable? No, because the first time you go back to the movie theater, like that first moment of excitement is, you know, only that one time. But I think it was timed well in that sense. Also, as you said, all right there in that title, Godzilla versus Kong, really accessible, like really stupid and not pretending to be anything other than what it is. And I do think even within kind of like IP world, there is a relative quote freshness to this because during the pandemic, if you wanted to be in the MCU, you had WandaVision. Now you have Falcon versus Winter Soldier. If you wanted to be in the DCU, you have the Snyder Cut. You had, if you wanted to be in Star Wars, you had Mandalorian. So you could get some version of that stuff and that's kind of the new business model right is

that some of those things will always be accessible to you which is interesting long term in terms of whether they feel like events but anyway I guess you couldn't really see Godzilla and Kong fighting like on your small screen for the last year and a half so it's like sure why not I got two hours like and I also think just an exceptionally well done trailer. I don't want to say good trailer. Enticing, enticing. Effective. Yeah. So I think people were willing to take a chance a little. I think also the point that you made last week holds in this case, which is that you didn't have to know what happened in Mandalorian season one, episode four, to understand why Godzilla and King Kong are punching each other. You know, you could just enjoy it as a purely emotional and physical experience.

And it was it was like, yeah, it clearly was redemptive, I think, for some people to check this movie out. And I also think that simultaneously, this movie, a lot of people watched it on HBO Max as well. And so it does create two things, this fascinating potential future for movie release strategy, which is the dual release. Now, our pal Sam Esmail has been railing about this on Twitter ever since HBO Max announced their decision. He thought that this was genuinely the way forward for a lot of film releases. A lot of people, ourselves included, I think quibbled with that idea quite a bit. Thus far, he's been proven right because this seems to have worked so far. And Jason Kyler and the HBO Max people who came under a lot of fire from talent and industry watchers, I think look smart right now. We'll see if that holds. I saw this morning there

was some continuing discussion about whether or not Dune will be following this same strategy and that's still about six months away so they may not want to do things this way

in the future for all films but I think that that's interesting you know because Godzilla vs. Kong one of the reasons I'm sure it did well

is because it's worth seeing on a big screen. It's designed for a big screen. Universal released a movie, Nobody, the Bob Odenkirk, sort of Liam Neeson-esque Taken film, and that hasn't done so well at the box office.

It's done fine. It's made about $12 million over the first couple of weeks of its release, but it's not doing this kind of booming business. And so now, at least what I'm trying to understand is, will movies like Godzilla vs. Kong be the only movies that they will want to release in movie theaters, which is something that we speculated about? Or is this just, you know, the pandemic is continuing to evolve and hopefully eventually come to an end and then we will get back to kind of where we were in 2019, 18, 17, 16?

What direction are you leaning in in terms of like what the future release strategies are going to be? Don't you think it'll just be that the middle is even more hollowed out than it is now and so you'll either get godzilla versus kong which like lol but you know sometimes you want to have a lol experience at the movie theater or you'll have like the highly specialized art house indie or just like the grade director films um may that may or may not be commuting an award season that people go to as they would go to a museum or a like a concert and the kind of the bob odenkirk movie in the middle that historically you know has been like a taken type liam neeson film has been a good january like. A solid earner. Exactly.

It just doesn't exist anymore in theaters. Yeah, I think that that is plausible. The thing that I've been thinking about a lot in that respect is, if that is the case, then the Netflixes and Amazons of the world need to fill in the gaps and make more of those films. And the quality of those films is not yet really up to the standards of your typical studio earner. So hopefully that's something that can continue to evolve. We'll see. You know,

Godzilla vs. Kong, in addition to making a lot of money, seems to be somewhat beloved. Like the cinema score was an A. The cinema score for people under the age of 18 was an A+. So if we're worried about the young kids still being interested in movies, they checked them out in droves here. Even in Canada, this movie, which does not have HBO Max Canada, made $3 million in PVOD. So people were willing to pay a high number of dollars to watch this movie. Speaking of high number of dollars, I don't know if I've talked to you about this yet, but the idea that Chris had, the movie auction, we're doing that on this podcast. I know. I saw it on the spreadsheet.

Okay. That's how you communicate with me. So I've learned to pick up the signals. It's fine. That's not true. Type it in. Is there anything that we should be talking about between us like now that we are here speaking quasi virtually in person? What do you want to say to me?

No, I think it's good. I just I want you to know that I understand that that is your preferred method of communication, and I'm trying to meet you where you are, Sean. And I't it be nice if American distribution companies clarified how much money they made on PVOD? Canada, just a bastion of transparency. Really appreciate what they're doing there. I don't think we'll ever see that in the that are great successes? Or does this seem like that sort of like rare anomaly where there was like this tension building and people just really wanted to get back to a theater? They all went and now it'll recede again. I think probably through the summer it will hold because not everybody got to have that experience of like, ooh, the novelty of going back to a theater. You and Bobby and I were talking before we started recording just about like the ways in which life is starting to go back to some pre pandemic recognizable model, but also it's like really not. And it's taking some time and you know, we're not fully vaccinated. And so I think probably a lot of people will want

to have their Godzilla versus Kong experience in June or July or August. And that might be Top Gun 2 or that might be for me, it'll definitely be Top Gun 2. But I don't know that it'll last a year from now, if that makes any sense, or like two years from now in terms of people being like, i gotta go see everything on wednesday night when it opens i did see over the weekend that you were very active on social media with the hashtag continue the monster verse meme so you've been pushing really hard continue the monster verse here's the thing okay well that's actually if you can do it where I don't have to see all the movies or know anything about the Monsterverse, that's fine. No homework at the movies. That is my 2021.

No homework at event movies. I think the back half of this podcast, we're going to talk about movies where we, like, I did my homework and it's really rewarding to do your homework and talk about art. But in terms of blockbusters, in terms of just dumb stuff no homework at the movies uh if that is a war you want to wage let me tell you you will lose because that our culture is fully in homework mode it's amazing to watch falcon and winter soldier which is a show that i think has been fun so far but man there is a lot of homework i would recommend you listen to ringer verse because you need there's so much to pick up on on these shows.

You assigned the homework, Sean. Why are you suddenly being like, oh my God, look at all these people making lists. You did this, my guy. It's you. I'm pointing at you. You're right. I accept a small, small amount of responsibility for that.

It has gotten beyond me, I can see. I can see that I am no longer in a place to be an adequate correspondent on a lot of these topics. Well, I just think it's a different way of interacting with, with movies. And honestly, to me, it's as much like, what is a movie? What's not anymore? What's a TV show? What's an extended universe. They've really just like fully transitioned the movies into an extension of comics, which is great. If you love those things and you love interacting that way, like that, go for it, have a lot of joy with it. But I'm still here just trying to watch one made up monster deck, another monster on an aircraft

carrier, and then not think about it again, you know, and that I honor that experience too. Yeah. Honor the film, honor the monster. That's the, that's what the awards campaign will be for Godzilla vs. Kong I think it's all it's a question of relative experience to Chris and I I was on the watch last week and we discussed that and it's not so much that the Falcon and the Winter Soldier exists it's that there is not a Mad Men or Breaking Bad or even a Game of Thrones honestly at the moment where there's another kind of water cooler TV show or miniseries that seems to have captured people's imaginations. And so that it does feel like this is all that we have.

It's not all that we have. There are a lot of other less popular shows. Just taste is stratified across the board. The thing that continues to get the most amount of people interested is the Monsterverse and Star Wars and the MCU and yada yada. We'll continue to talk about that stuff on this show. I'll try to lighten the homework load for you as much as possible maybe we'll increase the homework load on things like long car why that is a i think a useful way to spend our time in the future um let's transition quickly to award season three weeks left this is a deathless period of time we're almost through it

the sag awards were yesterday thank you to SAG Awards for being one hour long. That was wonderful. With commercials 43 minutes long, that was wonderful. I guess there were a couple of surprising results out of this award show, and I don't yet know if they will have a bearing on the Academy Awards. I'm curious to know what you think about it. So let's start with the big award, which is, of course, his best ensemble at SAG.

This is a group entirely composed of actors who vote on these awards. And Trial of the Chicago 7 won. Now, Nomadland was not nominated for this award because it does not have a sprawling cast of well-known actors. In fact, many of the actors are non-professionals in the film, and it's largely oriented around Francis McDormand's work. So Trial won. Do you think that Trial, because of of this win will challenge Nomadland,

the 800 pound Kong gorilla of the award season so far? Not really. This isn't historically a hugely predictive award. Last year it was Parasite one. But before that, a great victory in 2018 for Black Panther. Black Panther did not win Best Picture. Three billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri, before that. Remember that movie?

Hidden Figures before that. I guess Spotlight in 2015 did go on to win. It's not unheard of, but because Nomadland isn't even in the running, and it's just, this really seems like, oh, wow, there are a lot of people in that movie, including a lot of actors that I like. I would also like to use this opportunity to just shout out Michael Keaton's SAG Awards ensemble Michael Keaton was in the center of the zoom collage he was in gallery view and they were all in gallery view and it was a

was it would you say it was houndstooth is that correct it was a checked sport coat I don't know if it was actually meets houndstooth there's like a little like champagne region there that I'm, you know, is it, is it sparkling as a champagne? I don't know. Um, over a lime green sweater vest. And he was in a lovely part of the hallway and whatever home he was in with art behind him, definitely had his dad glasses on. I'm just a huge fan of late period Michael Keaton. I just, I really can't stress that enough. So was happy to see him. I feel like a lot of people felt that way. And I don't really think that they'll feel that way when it comes to actual best picture. I think we should also cite the fact that like, as more members have been added to the Academy, the actors branch has decreased in influence over the years. So these are important, but not definitive.

That's right. The actors represent, I believe, 14% of the Academy now, which is a lower number than it has been in the past. Speaking of Michael Keaton, he also broke a record today. He is now a member of the three-time ensemble win. He's been a member of three different ensembles that have won over the years. No one else has that. So Trial of Chicago 7, I got to say, I wouldn't be shocked if it was one of those upsets. I really wouldn't. It's an incredibly accessible film for voters. It certainly has some of the hallmarks of a Green Book style win, a movie that kind of makes you feel a little bit better about a traumatic period in history. It's from someone who is beloved by the Academy. I believe Aaron Sorkin has two wins and has been nominated many times. So I guess if that happens, we were lukewarm on trial. We didn't hate it,

but we were lukewarm on it. And it's definitely not Aaron Sorkin's best work in our opinion. And so it would be kind of an odd thing to discuss. I guess in a way it would be fitting in this very awkward and kind of dull award season for a movie that is a little bit awkward at times and doesn't always totally work. And it has felt like this award season has not totally worked. Nomadland is something a little bit different. Nomadland feels a little bit like what the new Academy is. You know, a little bit more artful,

a little bit more diverse, a little bit more expansive, and a little quieter, honestly. A lot of films recently that have been recognized by the Academy are not quite in that Ben-Hur throat-clearing era of grand movie-making. So I don't want to read too deeply into this. We already read too deeply into awards. But seeing those two films potentially as a contrast, I thought what you said a couple of weeks ago was

true, which is that if we had seen a Minari win here, that might have indicated an interesting counterbalance that would have been hard to predict and understand. This one feels a little bit more, I don't know, what's the word? Diametric. They seem to be oppositional in a way in terms of form and format, but we'll see. A couple of other surprising wins. Viola Davis won for Best Actress, which I guess in hindsight is not stunning, but it now makes me think that Best Actress is a little bit more wide open than it was. What'd you make of that? I really recommend watching her reaction gif. If you haven't seen it, she looks as surprised as everybody else. I think Carey Mulligan is not going to win, which that's the main takeaway.

And you and I have been sort of predicting that at some point, like the Carey Mulligan train would arrive at the station. And on the one hand, I don't like being wrong. On another hand, I really love Carey Mulligan, and I like to see her win. And on the third hand that I made up because I started this before I was thinking about the number of points,

I don't love Promising Young Woman. So I'm okay if Carey Mulligan doesn't win for this iffy movie, which is Oscar you know, Oscar tradition. I hope she wins another time. I think she's got some time, so it'll be okay. But I don't know what to make of best actress, which is kind of what we've been asking for. These, especially actor and actress seem locked up like by September usually. And this one seems like a, you know, a big shrug, which maybe we can get some drama out of that. Not a shrug,

a question mark. That would be nice. I think I, I think I've been counting on Francis McDormand this whole time and she did not win the golden globe and she did not win the SAG award and Carrie Mulligan, notably not nominated at BAFTA, nor is Viola Davis.

So the only two Academy award nominees at bafta are vanessa kirby and francis mcdormand so then if francis mcdormand or vanessa kirby win there then then the conversation may shift yet again we also haven't even thought about andre day who's also been recognized here and won the golden globe so it's a it's an interesting category this year there's a lot of confusion. Whereas Best Actress seemed a little bit more solidified a couple of weeks ago, Best Supporting Actress seemed wide open. And now, Yaa Jung-yoon won last night at SAG, which was beautiful. Very exciting to see her win. I thought her speech was great. She seemed genuinely shocked, but also very

ready to receive an award. She's received many awards over the years in Korea. And now I kind of just feel like she's going to win in that category. What do you think? I think so. And that seems great by me. I also really enjoyed her speech. And I also really enjoyed her speech. And I also enjoyed the Zoom interaction between everyone. Everyone else seemed to be rooting for her in the category and was like, cool, that seems great with me that you won. So I'm good with that clarity if it winds up being the case. Did you enjoy watching the SAG Awards?

Did you watch them? I did. Well, I fast forwarded through them. I DVR'd them. I fast forwarded. They're not really interesting in any way, shape or form, except as a comparison against the Oscars who have banned Zoom ceremonies and are still hell bent on creating an in-person event, even if they have to do European satellites because European nominees or international satellites because international nominees can't get here and not allowing Zoom speeches. And let me tell you, I understand why. Not really the Zoom portion of the SAG Awards fault. They kept them pretty quick.

Like the best actor and actress nominees were in a Zoom together. The best supporting actor and actress nominees were in a Zoom together. They recorded, they edited, but everything else was prerecorded. And with the exception of a delightful four minute Ted Lasso skit that opened the hour,

which I was very, very pleased for. It was like a deathless PowerPoint presentation. I, and I, with all respect to all of the quote presenters who had filmed their, you know, bits ahead of time about what it means to be an actor and what's on their resume and yada yada.

But it's like when you go to the town hall and someone's like, now we're just going to read you these slides for 45 minutes. I, no, thank you. I feel like actors talking about the power of acting is on the Amanda wheel of death. Like if there were a hundred things that you had to choose from that you would want to die from, that is certainly on the wheel. And they had some good anecdotes.

Like I like these people. It was Helen Mirren was there and Mindy Kaling and Riz Ahmed and Ethan Hawk and common and some other people that I'm forgetting. And, um, there's a lot of Josh Gad. It was a lot. Let me tell you that I fast forwarded through that.

But, you know, it was actually a little bit looser and more. Let me tell you an anecdote about this edition. And was in the Erivo, I believe, was another of the presenters. Sterling K. Brown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were some cool people.

And it was way better than the typical SAG award thing of being like, I'm so-and-so and I'm an actor, which is always makes me want to crawl under a table. It's so awkward, but it just felt like it was admitting and broadcasting the pointlessness of the awards show and any award show. Listen, they're all pointless. They're a bunch of made up awards that we hand out. It's all fairytale, silly nonsense.

But you got to believe it or else I can go do something else. And this just felt like an admission of, well, we don't have any ideas and this really could just be a press release. I think for better or worse, the Academy Awards will be significantly different.

And so that will be in and of itself exciting to see and to talk about and experience. And hopefully in the same way that returning to the movie theater feels natural, it will seem somewhat natural to have a regular ass award show, honestly, before we go to our conversation about Wong Kar Wai. So you mentioned that you found the Ted Lasso bit delightful. Have you watched Ted Lasso? Oh yeah, we love Ted Lasso. Tore through it. What? Really?

Yeah. You never mentioned this. I feel like when you and Zach watch a TV show, it's like what I have to do is set a meeting with you to discuss this television series we've watched. So I'm shocked to hear this. Okay. So once again, maybe that's the appeal of Ted Lasso.

No homework in 2021. Just don't make me dissect anything. Yeah, we watched it. I mean, we were definitely really late to it. We've watched it in the last couple of months. Zach in particular, just delighted by it. Just like really chuckling. I thought it was really winning and I'd love a 30 minute installment of television. Thank you. Just please make everything 30 minutes and I'll keep watching all of them we were very sad when it was over they're up there in production i believe for season two right now so they had everyone together and we're able that's how they made that segment yeah to me that's that man it had a very funny joke about jason sudeikis's hoodie

and he's going through something i should also just say that jason sudeikis did win again and accepted this time in a My Body, My Choice knit sweater, a beautiful sweater. So shout out to Jason Sudeikis. It's really, really good. Yeah, I don't know. Should I have let you know that I was really into Ted Lasso? We're watching the Bureau, just so you know.

We're on that train. I heard your subtweet on The Watch, a podcast that I listen to about all the... You were making fun of all the podcasters who are into the Bureau now. Yeah. Well, here I am. And season one's great. And we're going to start season two tonight, I think. And it's wonderful.

So if you want updates on that, I'll add you to the text chain. So I've actually had a thought, which is that perhaps you and I should have a text chain where we communicate. What do you think? We've known each other for about 10 years. It's probably time. Will you respond, Sean? That's the other thing. I text you and you just don't respond.

I'm deeply available. Or you do save it for the pod. So I'm like, well, I'll just save it for the pod. I recommend Ted Lasso. We're not going to save our conversation about Wong Kar Wai for the pod. We're going to do it right now. But first, let's take a break to hear a word from our sponsor. Say hello to Tim Selects, tim's everyday value menu enjoy the new spinach and feta savory egg

pastry or our roasted red pepper and swiss pinwheel starting at only 2.99 plus tax try one or try our full tim selects lineup terms apply prices may vary at participating restaurants in canada it's time for tim's we are delighted to be joined for the first time somehow. This is only the first time. Justin Chang, welcome to the show. Justin, how are you? Thank you so much, Sean. I'm doing great. It's great to be here.

We're excited to talk to you about Wong Kar Wai. So I want to be able to have an expansive conversation here about his films and his work. And I thought we should start with the personal because that seems like a reasonable entryway. So, Justin, why don't we start with you? When did you first come across the work of Wong Kar Wai, and how did you respond to it? I think the first Wong Kar Wai movie I saw was actually Happy Together. I was a teenager in high school. I was watching a ton of art and arthouse movies. And I think Wong Kar Wai is just a great gateway drug for a lot of cinephiles or aspiring cinephiles. And I remember watching this and thinking it was like nothing I'd ever seen.

I hadn't seen too many gay love stories. And this is, of course, Wong's only gay romance. But I also just hadn't seen any movie any romance that looked moved um like this movie and it was both visually exhilarating and just totally depressing i mean this is a movie where you know where leslie chung um late uh lamented leslie chung and uh tony leung who is wong's great you know one of his many great muses and probably the actor most closely associated with him uh are playing lovers on the road in buenos aires and it's they are they they break up they get back together briefly

when he's when one is nursing the other back to health and it's so it's it's it's a the argument it's it's a great you know argument movie i mean they're just like they just don't let up i mean it's just i found it so upsetting it's and i think when i look back at wong's movie that's just the most emotionally corrosive of his films i mean all his of course, deal with thwarted desire and with broken relationships, but this is the one that really cuts deep. And that was my first encounter with Wong for a while. And then I went back to him and I sort of fell in love with all his movies after that. Yeah, I feel like you could safely identify each film as having a kind of subcategory, you know, that happy together is sort of it's the breakup movie in a lot of ways. It's

the convulsive, you know, sort of tragic romance, but that's probably selling them a little bit short. Amanda, what about for you? When did you I think you and I both had some some gateway drug experiences with Wong as well. What was yours? Sure. So mine was a little bit later. I was an aspiring cinephile, but it kind of took me until college to become an aspiring cinephile. And I'll be perfectly honest. It was from Sofia Coppola because she has not been shy about talking about the influence that In the Mood for Love had on Lost in Translation. And Lost in Translation was a big deal for me. And she thanked Wong Kar Wai in her Oscar acceptance speech. And I was like, well, what is this? And who is this? And then I watched In the Mood for Love and

holy cow, is what I have to say. And, you know, and that is also in the oeuvre, probably like the perfect movie for Amanda who grew up on romantic comedies and romantic tragedies and what that movie does in that like very large genre but um and what it does visually and also emotionally was pretty mind-blowing um just in terms of oh this you can you can really make all of the elements of a film work together in pursuit of this emotion or this like dopamine hit that i've been chasing my entire life um and make it like totally beautiful so so you know i guess thank you sophia but really thank you on car why yeah i think i think many people need a shepherd to Wong's work. For some people, it's a video store clerk.

For some people, it's a friend or an older sibling, or maybe you read something that somebody like you have written, Justin. I love to read your festival missives over the years, and Wong obviously is a huge figure throughout the years at Cannes. For me, perhaps somewhat predictably, I have Quentin Tarantino to thank for learning

about Wong's work, being very interested in Quentin in the mid-90s. And he was a huge advocate, especially for Chungking Express. And he helped get Chungking Express a sort of broader distribution throughout the United States with his Rolling Thunder video. I don't even know what that company specifically was, aside from putting movies like Chungking Express and Switchblade Sisters in front of me in 1995. But I was very grateful for it at the time. And he spoke very passionately about what Wong was doing that was different from some of his contemporaries in the way that, I mean, he clearly bears this extraordinary influence on virtually every filmmaker that has come after him. But certainly in this sort of like, I guess, arthouse sensibility, for lack of a better phrase.

Justin, how do you describe Wong when someone asks you to talk about him? You know, what is it that makes him a special filmmaker? What is it that makes him unique in this class? Yeah, it's so hard to answer that because his style encompasses so much. And I think that people have a very reductive view of what his style is. You know, people who look dismissively at Wong's movies or his style liken his films to, you know,

perfume commercials and this very kind of, you know, slick, hip, poser sensibility. And of course there's an element of that, but it's so much more and talking about expansive i think the more you look into his movies and the more you look at those surfaces these beautiful gorgeous surfaces that he gives us and look beneath them there is so much going on for me wong kar wai's style or his his his cinema was so just sort of personally groundbreaking and touching and resonant for me. Because encountering him at my aspiring cinephile stage, he sort of showed me what filmmaking could be when it's driven by images.

And that sounds so basic, right? Because film is a visual medium. And he's certainly not the only director to do this i mean he is likened so often to new wave directors like uh like godard i mean encountering i mean when i saw chunking express for the first time sean which is and amanda which is like my favorite long movie and actually my favorite movie of all time um it was like, I sort of imagined, is this what it was like for audiences encountering breathless for the first time?

Not maybe not entirely, but, but sort of the impact that that has where you see something that is just purely of cinema, you know, cinema first, as opposed to being steeped in a, in a more literary tradition or what have you.

So that is just, that's a starting point for me. He's someone who is just led by the visual and um and from the visual he goes to the emotional and um and in fact they're they're inextricable that's kind of a start i don't know if i've answered the question but yeah so i think one of the things that makes him such a fun filmmaker to talk about is you can talk about the practical decisions that he makes the actual hand-in-hand filmmaking choices that he makes and his collaborators and for someone like me that's very exciting i like to unpack all those things i like

to understand what he's doing with lighting what he's doing with christopher doyle how they're collaborating but also as a purely emotional filmmaker and amanda maybe this is part of what you are connecting to too he um even though it is very much like a cinema of image making, medium is a silly revelation at all there's a running joke on this podcast where I make fun of Sean and another friend um Chris Ryan for just like being really into shots you know like oh what a shot and I think film and and filmmakers but particularly film critics can overemphasize the technical aspects of filmmaking but they're obviously really important and for me part of the aspects of filmmaking, but they're obviously really important. And for me, part of the revelation of Wong's films is that you really do see how a shot

or a framing decision or the craft actually creates the experience of the emotion for you, the viewer, and it's marrying the two things. And so obviously I think of the sense of longing and isolation and, you know, kind of, I guess, nostalgia in a way, in the sense that a lot of the movies are about memory and time and the romance or lack of romance involved in those two things. Um,

and those, those are the themes and the feelings that are consistent, but they are all created from the sense of, okay, well, I put the camera here and then I used this color that you also saw in this other scene. And you recognize this music cue and it's all kind of working together to make like a true art out of a feeling. And I think that's extraordinary. Some people think that like mood piece is like a criticism. Are you kidding? This is, it's like, who else can do this? Who else is in touch enough with their emotions to be able to create this anyway? No, I completely relate. I think it's interesting that he is, he's very similar to a lot of filmmakers of his generation in that

he does really wear his influences on his sleeve. You know, you really can see Martin Scorsese in his first movie. You really can see Antonioni in his second movie. You really can see Godard in the French New Wave. You can see a lot of classical influences, a lot of mid-20th century influences. But also, he has a very specific and special stew. You know, I think those filmmakers who emerged in the 90s were able to kind of subsume and inhale basically 75 years worth of movie history and then spit it back out again. Justin, can you help us kind of understand like where Wong comes from and what his life,

some of his life experiences were? Because, you know, I think his transition from Shanghai to Hong Kong is obviously pretty significant in terms of understanding, you know, what kind of culture he saw, what his relationships were in Hong Kong, and how maybe that influenced some of his work. Yeah, he was born in Shanghai in the late 50s and moved to Hong Kong with his parents in uh, in like the early sixties. And from what I understand, like his two older siblings were left behind. Um, and so he didn't, and he didn't really, uh, see them for really for many years. And I think that it's kind of, I have to admit to a personal connection here,

which I discovered very late in my kind of love affair with my ongoing love affair with long car. Why, um, that no less made my connection to him feel even deeper in some weird ways because that trajectory kind of mirrored, you know, I don't want to make too much of it,

but it's sort of mirrored my own parents, especially my mom's kind of journey from, you know, the Shanghai area in the 50s to Hong Kong. And so very, very different experiences. But it's funny if I can quickly interject too, when I had the great honor of interviewing Wong Kar-wai in 2013, on the occasion of the release of The Grandmaster, one of the many versions of the Grandmaster. I sort of mustered up the courage to tell him about this. And he sort of said, wow, I could be your uncle, which was

really, really funny and sweet. And I think that that, you know, of course, you know, In the Mood for Love, which I adore, and it was, which is kind of the perfect ultimate Wong Kar Wai movie, really distills that experience of, you know, I sort of think of that movie, even though it's about adult lovers or adult or almost lovers or would be lovers, whatever you want to call it. Even though it's about these grownups and this brief encounter that they have, that movie feels in some weird ways,

almost like framed from a child's perspective. I like on rewatching it recently for the umpteenth time, in some weird ways, almost framed from a child's perspective. I liked re-watching it recently for the umpteenth time. I got kind of a weird Roma vibe from it, almost, like Alfonso Cuaron's Roma, which is also a memory piece exactingly recreated

from his childhood. And even though In the Middle of Love is a very different film, it has elements of that, that kind of obsessive recreation. This longing, I think, I mean, there's so many different kinds of longing in Wong Kar-wai's work. There's longing for the lover that got away. There's longing for childhood. There's longing for just lost time, which is, of course, one of the great themes that any filmmaker can obsess over.

And because cinema is time, so it just lends itself to that but i think that because wong is so familiar with this kind of geographical and cultural dislocation um that it it just permeates so many of his films in so many ways like days of being wild as well um and and of course 2046 and in the mood for love and the three of them of course compose or constitute a kind of loose trilogy i'll just say one more thing and i it's it's hard for me to talk about it without kind of getting into the personal too but you know because of this kind of family connection that i feel that's overstating because of this sort of connection that i feel with him culturally, I don't think it was until I saw Days of Being Wild at the New Art in Los Angeles years ago that I ever heard my dialect, Shanghainese, the dialect that I grew up not really speaking very well at all but listening to from my parents it's the first time i ever heard it on screen and one of the things i love about long's movies is he's rare among i think chinese uh born or hong kong filmmakers who do this there are sometimes many different

dialects interacting on screen like you can hear you know tony lung will be speaking cantonese and you know maybe john c will be speaking mandarin it's just there and he just it's this hodgepodge of dialects and he just acts like it's the most normal thing in the world rather than say, having the actors speak a language that is not their own. I just find that really moving. I mean, there's something very representationally great about that too, but it's also just like this acknowledgement that we're all just this,

this kind of cultural and linguistic jumble. And he's just sort of lets that exist on screen. I think one of the reasons that we wanted to talk about him is for me, growing up, trying to see his films, it was not easy to see a lot of these films. Days of being wild. For example,

you just mentioned that his second movie was very difficult to track down in the 1990s. And of course, is it now a very important film for a variety of reasons. And frankly, even if after you saw it, it was not necessarily easy to get context for it. It was not necessarily easy for someone like me to get context around the fact that that film was a big flop and was in many ways rejected after, as tears go by, his first movie was a big success. And in a way, that seemed to embolden him it

seemed to free him to have had a flop like that and that obviously it sort of instigates his style in a lot of ways as he goes on to make his other films and this becomes a signature film in that triad that you're talking about and so like you know amanda and i like to joke about the sort of homework aspect of this show sometimes where we're sort of revisiting entire filmographies. But Amanda, for you, like as you were going through some of these films, I assume some you had seen and had a big relationship with and maybe others you were seeing for the first time. Were there any sort of revelations as you went through his filmography? Days of Being Wild, which I had just not been able to see because in addition to it being difficult to see, I'm not the world's foremost physical media consumer as another thing that's been discussed. And, you know, so I was a little

bit beholden to whatever streaming service or, and, and was my homework this day. And I don't mean my homework, but in this case, my continuing film education, which I'm entirely self-taught or not taught as the case may be. Um, and I was by it, which, which obviously is, that's not, that is not a revelation that it's good because it is kind of celebrated as like both the breakthrough and maybe the, I don't want to say unheralded, but the, the best film that most people haven't seen. You know, but it is so interesting. Justin,

we talk a lot on this show about the order in which you see things and the order in which you see things both yourself, but relating to, you know, the history of cinema and when people saw things and how influences stack up and, and kind of piecing those together after the fact, um, which can be exhilarating in this way. I would say like Wong's movies sort of explain all of the 90s directors that I like. I'm like, oh, okay. So this is how you guys did it. And this is what like the 90s actually were.

I just, I understand Gen X more as a result. But Days of Being Wild after seeing In the Mood for Love and 2046, but also Days of Being Wild as like a young person's film is really interesting. And it's interesting to watch how these emotions and these recurring themes and the sense of longing and the sense of dislocation over time in a lifetime and over a career, how they evolve. And there was something sort of just like, I don't want to say naive or like uncomplicated about Days of Being Wild, but I'm just like, oh, this is the young person's movie.

And it's interesting to see where this starts. Yeah, it's unmannered and sort of like, it's clear and it's pure in its intentions, I think. I think one of the things that's like that film, for example, I've seen often compared maybe in an overbearing way to American Graffiti as a sort of like a coming of age tale, a coming of age romance

and people figuring out where they're going to go. But Justin, for someone who is not familiar with Wong or has maybe seen In the Mood for Love or 2046 and That's It, how would you recommend people engage with his films? Would you do it chronologically? Where would you start? It's so funny in hearing Amanda talk about the order in which you see things

and kind of putting this puzzle of a director's filmography together. And I would just say to, I think Wong's over is one of the best ones to do that with and even though there's a kind of uh logic to going in chronological order but for someone who i mean i you know i saw happy together first and then i saw chunking express uh which i think is a great place to start just because i mean it's funny because that is my favorite long movie and it is also in many ways the most accessible one because it's just pure pop sensibility it's two genres smashed together it's playful it's hilarious it's so romantic um and uh it just it's it's just a great i mean within the gateway drug that is Wong Kar-wai's entire body of work, that is like the gateway drug

for the gateway drug, I guess. But I kind of think you can't go wrong. And one of the reasons I think his body of work lends itself to going in any order and also just thinking about and re-watching endlessly is that, you know,

it's like each film is sort of a response to the one before it. I mean, most, you know, many filmmakers work in this way, of course. I mean, many filmmakers have movies that are, you know, interwoven and sometimes they get very, you know, very exasperated if you try to ask, how is this a response to that? And it's like, it's not, it's not, it's completely its own thing. But with, I don't think, you you know in my experience talking with with director wong and with if if you were to ask him i don't think he would you know how could he deny that you know of course days and in the mood for love and 2046 are a trilogy and of course this new movie that he's working on which i hope we'll see

before the actual year 2046 um is again, apparently, by all accounts, a continuation of that. And it's just the fact that the actors recur throughout. So you actually see an entire history of Tony Leung and Maggie Chung aging on screen if you start with

Days of Being Wild, where the characters don't even interact and are, in fact, not even seen that much in The Mood for Love, and then in 2046,46 where she's just like he's center stage and she's now this shadow i mean he's the fact that he's worked with the same actors over and over again in different configurations and permutations but still sort of playing the same people um it's just so fascinating to contemplate and that that, of course, speaks in part to how much actors love working with Wong Kar-wai, despite the incredibly exasperating report,

you know, the reports of how exasperating his style can be and his very unconventional methods and how, you know, and of course they've, you know, they've sort of gotten worse or better with time, depending on your point of view, because, you know, Days of Being Wild and Shocking Express, whatever, were probably, you know, tossed off very quickly compared to, say,

the epically dragged-out shoot of 2046. But actors get that about him now. They know what they're signing up for, and they love working with him. Something that is not often appreciated about Wong Kar-wai is what a great, what a fantastic director of actors

he is. He is not just a stylist, as if fantastic director of actors he is. He is not just, you know, just a stylist, as if that were something to be ashamed of in itself, but he is an amazing, phenomenal director of actors. Tony Leung's best performances have been for Wong Kar-wai. John See's best performances. You know, Takeshi Kaneshiro. I could go down the list.

These Asian superstars who owe so much of their careers to having worked with him for the first time and working with him again and again. Yeah, he has a lot in common, I think, with some of those other contemporaries who return time and again to their their troop. He built he has built a troop. I do want to talk about how he makes these movies because you pointed out that his his production methods are interesting. I think he bears maybe some of the hallmarks of, you know, the David Fincher types and the Stanley Kubrick types that we talk about all the time who have long production schedules and who are quite meticulous in their approach. But he is also, I don't want to use the word improvisatory, but I've been having a hard time figuring out what it is that he does. So Justin, maybe you can help us understand how his writing process and sort of creative process flows through his movies because it's highly unusual. Sure. And I am by no means an expert in terms of how he does it. I mean, I am very much a student

of the results of it, and I've read about it, but I think I would have to be there to actually be able to even describe it coherently. And of course, this style has, as I said, evolved over time, starting with, I mean, Sean, I think you're very right to point out the sort of evolutionary leap from As Tears Go By to Days of Being Wild. Two really kind of wonderful films and they're that are very very different and yet also very linked by in part by

some of the actors again who have been in them but also you know as tears go by which was a very you know very much indebted to mean streets um i would hesitate to say can call it conventional except in the context of wong's work um by many people's standards it would seem you know somewhat more radical but it's it's the one that had you know that tells a gangster story a love story and that is still for the most part telling a pretty linear narrative um with with bursts of style and then days of being wild which is just kind of a complete, you know, a stylistic departure for him. And I think it's around this time, you know, he makes Ashes of Time, he makes Chungking Express,

which I think took just a few weeks to shoot and which was, you know, done completely on the fly. I think one of the reasons I love that so much is because I'm hard-pressed to think of a word other than improvisatory as well uh just you know and there there's kind of a perfection to that movie just a sense of just complete freedom but also the economy of that very short time frame in which he shot it um fallen angels you know much the same way and then with happy together i I think is the first one where he's really,

maybe not the first one, but the one where the effects of this improvisatory method become even the most pronounced where it's like, he's starting with just ideas, barely a script, you know, the actors are kind of, you know,

they're traveling with him to Argentina. They don't know what's going on. This, this becomes even more so in the mood for love where I'm totally, I've read that like Tony Leung and Maggie Chung, you know, had no know what's going on. This becomes even more so in In the Mood for Love, where I've read that Tony Leung and Maggie Chung had no idea what their characters were, and what they were supposed to be doing. They were given just phrases, and

he and his production designer, probably his most important collaborator, William Chang, are just left to their own devices and doing amazing, beautiful visual stuff, but nobody can make any head nor tails of where this damn thing is going and it's you know it must be you know it doubtless has its frustrations as as a method um it's so fascinating to dive into like the extras on in the mood for love and you find out about all the different stories, the different directions that that story

was going to take, some of which we see in 2046, which is sort of the spiritual sequel to In the Mood for Love, but it's like, oh yeah, there was like, oh, Tony Leung's character becomes a total jerk cad in that movie, and, you know, it leaps forward

to the 70s, and all the stuff that you think, wow, I'm so glad he left that out. The beautiful ending of In the Mood for Love, which he just said, oh, let's go shoot in Cambodia because I got to meet this Cannes Film Festival deadline. And it's like, okay.

And it's kind of weird because when you think that one of the most perfect movies ever made, I think, I don't think it's overstating it to say it, was born out of such happenstance and almost these arbitrary conditions. But that is Wong's genius. And I do think it's genius because I don't think any other filmmaker could... I think there are very few other filmmakers who could do this. Someone who...

I don't want to make too much of this connection, but I think about Terrence Malick a lot with regard to Wong Kar-wai's work. Obviously, their films are so different in style and feel, but they're after something similar, which is a cinema that is liberated from, you know, you could call it, say something like narrative conventions, but also just this idea that you find the film in the process. You do not lay out,

and in this, I see the similarities absolutely with David Fin fincher and i thought of him a lot in terms of shoots and reshoots and but but i think they're after very different things um and and i that's one thing i love about many things i love about long's work as we as we think about where people should start the one place i would say people should not start and this is related to what you were just describing, Justin, I think it's fallen angels, which is probably the most cynical and aggressive and alienating film that I think he made and is, is beautiful in its way and is very interesting.

And it is a film that came out of chunking express. And to your point, it was meant to be perhaps a third part of that story that then got excised. And then he moved into its own film. But, you know, in many ways, it's obnoxious to say like it's all one movie. But in many ways for him, it feels like it's all sort of one movie. Amanda, I'm wondering for you, like if at what point you were you gave up the ghost on linearity and in viewing his movies because i know for me i i am a highly organized and um type a and uh as amanda will tell you like i i love my outlines and my spreadsheets

and clarity and expectation are important to me as a movie goer that does not mean i i can't enjoy or understand films that that do say what Terrence Malick does. I love those films too, but I almost need to be psychologically prepared. And so Amanda, what about for you? Did it snap for you instantaneously when you first started getting into his stuff? Well, I do think I started with the most controlled, at least in result of the films. And In the Mood for Love is kind of just like a complete and contained masterpiece, which is why it's so horrifying to me personally, as a fan to click on the extras that Justin was mentioning, I just turned them off. Like I refuse to acknowledge that this world

exists. And when I was like, absolutely not. And, and similarly, when we just, when I read about Wong's working methods and I just, I like Sean, I'm a hyper type A person who just likes to know what's coming. I just, I got stressed out when you guys were describing it. I get stressed out every time. And, and you do hear that, you know, like Chunking Express and Fallen Angels, like Fallen Angels was born out of some things that I think were filmed or ideas that couldn't quite fit in or, you know, Wong found the movie that was Chunking Express, but had all these other ideas and most film of his films have some version of that story. And it's mind bending to me and how my mind works that to achieve something as precise as in the mood for love, that you don't

start with that level of specificity and over planning. I, again, I, my anxiety rate is like spiking a little right now, but that's the real genius to me. Right. I mean, art, like art is choice in a lot of ways. And so to be able to create the circumstances for that kind of like unrehearsed free energy that Justin was referring to and, and that in a lot of ways are also what the characters in his films are searching for all of the time, that magic moment, but then to be able to find all of those moments after the fact and craft and create and edit these films that actually do hold together is astonishing it's not it's why I'm not an artist and it's like why he actually is an artist and that's a word that I try not to

apply to that many people because I do think it sounds pretension, but that is just sort of like a transcendent achievement. It's interesting that he's been able to, I think, kind of render a interesting public persona that seems like it's somewhat in conflict though with that approach. He is, I think for people who understand him and follow him, the personification of a cool. He is never seen without his sunglasses you know the the aura of cigarette smoke around him and on his sets and the sense that he is kind of gliding through this artistic life is fascinating when you talk to him justin how did you find him did he live up to that billing as this icon of cinema cool did and he definitely you, as needless to say, left the sunglasses on. And which, you know, nobody even asks him about that anymore. But I have to share a little another little story. And this is an embarrassing story for me, because, you know, Wong Kar Wai asked me if, you know, we were at this some, you know, hotel suite in a in a in beverly hills and he was like step out on the balcony i want to smoke a cigarette and he asked me do you want to smoke and i said i am not a smoker as became painfully clear when i um because of course i said yes because sure if one car

offers to you to you to take a smoking break with him of course you're going to do it um uh and i think i held the cigarette from the wrong end or something i was so nervous which i'm blaming my nervousness but i i always say that like to the few people that i've shared the story with although i'm not sharing it i've actually shared this on twitter and i'm sharing it now with you with everyone once again um i'm just surprised that he did not end the interview right then and there because this is the avatar of you know hipster cool of international cinema someone who has elevated uh smoking to just a visual art form in itself so uh he was exceedingly gracious to sort of overlook uh that and it was very funny he was

very it was he absolutely was but he was also know, he's incredibly down to very rare middle ground because he is someone who is respected as you know one of the great auteurs of our time and yet his work is for the most part uh entirely accessible and to a to, you know, a broad international audience and is in fact still tethered to genre. You know, sometimes that's crime, some crime thrillers. Sometimes that's, uh,

you know, most of all it's romance and in the grandmaster it's, it's, you know, he made his own spin on, on a Kung Fu film. So, um,

he, by the same token, it's like he, um, even though he works in these very unconventional and, you know, some would say uncommercial methods, nonetheless, he has his own company. He's been able to finance this career, which is not easy. And in part, of course, this is by presenting himself as a brand. And that brand is very powerful. And even though he has not made a film in many years, a new feature in many years, and maybe is now more closely associated with the 90s and early 2000s, that brand just still persists.

So I think that he's been able to be successful by reconciling so many of these opposites. And you look at his body of work to just the consistent quality of it too. And Amanda said, just the precision of In the Mood for Love, for example, I think that precision is pretty much in effect through most and even all of his movies. You know, I think My Blueberry Nights is kind of the one stinker of the bunch, I would say. But other than that, they're all kind of great. And so for people who, again, kind of tend to write his style and his approach off as very indulgent, I don't think the effects are indulgent at all. There is a remarkable amount of discipline and thoughtfulness that

is brought to bear on his work. So I do want to, maybe we should wrap the conversation in a bit on the last 15 or so years of the Wong experience, because I think it's very interesting to talk about. starts to play and my wife skittered into the room because she knew what that sound meant. You know, as soon as you hear that, that needle drop, it's like, it is a lush and romantic and big moment. And for us, that's one of our favorite movies. Um, she is a huge fan of Wong as well. And he has a profound ability to identify the right music for his films. He makes them inextricable, the image and the sound. Amanda,

for you, like what are your signature musical moments with Wong's movies? I mean, there are obviously a lot and many of them are in Chunking Express, but the second half in particular, which is, I think, no, I knew about the mamas and the papas before that, but is, I think, no,

I knew about the mamas and the papas before that, but it did teach me a certain level. I definitely knew about the cranberries. Let me tell you, that was the nineties. Very important to me, but reframed that music for me. And,

and I think my favorite in that section is the, the Dina Washington. What a difference a day makes Q, which is like extremely on the nose like right it's right there in the title of the song but i don't care um it's pretty magical and then um a newer one from days of being wild is um the perfidia um song that q that kind of plays throughout but i of course immediately was like this is a very famous standard that has um been in a lot of films but i recognize it as the song that they

dance to in casablanca i was like oh my god that's the casablanca song and um and it has that kind of aching swooniness and um a reference to a to film history. And I also believe shows up in 2046. And just like a knowing melodramatic aspect of the song, like when it comes on, you know you're supposed to feel a certain way. But man, when he's standing outside the phone booth, it works for me every time. Yeah, he's well known for his sort of international taste in popular music and incorporating jazz and rock and trip-hop and classical music and lounge music. And he's so expansive. Justin, for you, what does the music mean to his films and what are some of your favorite drops? Well, I should say that my wife and I integrated two Wong Kar-wai musical selections into our wedding.

Wow! I'm so ridiculous now, but whatever. I mean, he is the most, you know, he is one of the most romantic filmmakers in the world. It felt very fitting. I love, who doesn't love Yumeji's theme, but we actually took, my wife walked down the aisle to Adagio

from 2046 by Secret Garden. Um, and yeah, which just, we were going and we were going, should we do like, you know, churchy music or no, let's, let's, no, we're going to go with Adagio by secret garden. And it was, you know, it was gorgeous. She was gorgeous. It was, it was one of the great moments of my life. Um, and then we, we walked down, we walked down the aisle after the ceremony to Happy Together, which, you know, self-explanatory. And that's a great choice. And I think we found that cover. I was going to say, did you do the original Turtles or the cover?

Good. The cover. And it's funny because of the connections I forge with those movies, I sometimes prefer the covers in a weird way i mean i love the originals too but um you know when i was i you know it's funny because speaking about going out of order i watched as tears go by his first film uh kind of toward the end like that was one of the last ones i caught up with um and that one of course has the terrific uh cover a sandy lamb cover of take my breath away um and it's just it's the cheesiest moment and it works so well i love that but my absolute favorite uh needle drop in a long car why movie is one that amanda mentioned which is yeah the cranberries dreams in um in chunking express uh and another kind you know, canto pop cover of that song.

And I love it because of the montage that it accompanies where Faye Wong is cleaning Tony Williams apartment and transforming it. It's just one of the most magical sequences in movies for me, because it's a kind of seduction. It's kind of a meet cute by, but where they are not actually interacting. And it's kind of a, you know, a where they are not actually interacting and it's kind of a, you know,

a little creepy heist kind of sequence as well. And it's just, that was like, okay, this is perfect music. I'm just such a, just an unbridled joy in, in making movies and making images.

And, and it's, it's just, it's still maybe my favorite sequence in all of long and my favorite musical cue as well i agree with all of those i have two more that i would share that i really love the one that probably struck me more revisiting this movie it's probably only the second time i've seen it is fallen angels as i said the first time i saw fallen angels in like 2000 i was like this film is not for me um and in revisiting it i think obviously that that

extraordinary final sequence on the motorcycle with the flying pickets cover of only you which is pretty incredible and then we mentioned this actually a couple weeks ago amanda when we were talking about moonlight but moonlight borrows the kukuru kuku paloma keitano veloso song and that's from really maybe the most grand image in any Wong film, which is Iguazu Falls and Happy Together. And sort of returning to that, I think two or three times in the film, Nat was a moonlight thing

and now is back to being inextricable from Happy Together. And they can trade places on that. But he has this incredible broad sense of taste. He is not defined by just an interest in jazz or just an interest in rock or the fact that you don't know what's coming and that sometimes it's contrasting. Sometimes it's meant to sort of be ironic

or be sly or a commentary on what we're seeing. And sometimes it is wholly emotional and romantic and sincere is a superpower in a way. You know what I mean? It really makes him stand alone in terms of choosing music for his films. I guess one other thing I want to hit before we get into My Blueberry Nights

and The Grandmaster and whatever is coming in the future is specifically visually what he does that makes him different. I think when people think of his films, they think maybe of darkness and rain. They think of slow motion. They think of maybe that blurred, kind of double-printed,

overexposed film kind of look, which I think early in his career, people kind of criticized as a sort of like post-MTV, you know, you mentioned like perfume commercial style, Justin. You know, in terms of decision-making, can you speak to some of the physical choices that he and Christopher Doyle and William Chang have made? I think all of those things are absolutely true. And I, but I think that, you know, just the fact that you rattle

all those off shows that there is, you know, more than one style we associate with with wong and i think that just just an incredible kineticism you know and a kinetic energy uh and you know you know handheld camera work is not such a remarkable thing anymore but even at the time i think the way in which wong karwai was showing you was taking you through his stories and it felt like you were being taken through them rather than being told them. There was a radicalism to that that is now, doesn't seem quite so radical anymore, but at the time, just to my eyes, it really was.

I think it was just this feeling that there's this physicalization of time. I mean, that's, I'm trying to unpack that in a, in a less abstract way, but just, it's kind of like visible,

palpable pursuit of a moment. Like that is what the movement of the camera expresses to me in Wong's movies. Where it, and what I think led me to fall in love with so many of his films is this idea that oh, a movie doesn't actually have to be this perfectly manicured

construct. A movie can just a great, great movie can be a series of great moments. And that is, I think, it's reductive, but I think that is one thing he is after. It's interesting to think, too, though, that In the Mood for Love, which I think that is one thing he is after. It's interesting to think too, though,

that like in the mood for love, which I should know was only partly shot by Christopher Doyle, mostly shot, but also by an equally great cinematographer, Mark Lee, Ping Bing, who, you know,

who came in to kind of fill in and, you know, the somewhat, you know, fraught history of Wong's collaboration with Doyle is of course, worth, worth many books unto itself. A whole other pod. The Chris Doy unto itself. A whole other pod.

The Chris Doyle experience is a whole other pod. I was rereading John Powers' wonderful book on Wong Kar-wai in preparation, and he talks about how he got together with Doyle and Wong and how it's like, even though they no longer work together, it's like they said, you know, the divorce

was good, but the marriage was great. It's very sweet and touching to read that but it i keep coming back to in the mood for love because that you know which you know again had more than one cinematographer's hands on it and because even though that is sort of the ultimate one car by movie the most popular the most successful the most revered um in some ways it feels like a departure visually it's more um it's more controlled and restrained and circian there's a douglas circian quality to that movie's beauty um because it's just gorgeous outfits it's it's it has a glamour i mean there's a there's a quality of glamour to all to most of wong's movies but that one where it's like it's just this intoxicating level

of beauty. And it's also because the character, you know, it's an age thing too. These actors are older now. It's a middle-aged person's story as opposed to a youthful story. So the actors are all, you know, Maggie Leung in her beautiful Cheongsam dresses.

And these characters are buttoned up. And that is why that movie is so rapturous and overpoweringly sexy I mean I think it is one of the sexiest movies ever made and it could probably get a PG rating also a very Cirquean quality I think so it's

like I don't know it's beyond just you know it's beyond just those things that we associate and kind of the hipster posing, I think, reputation that he sometimes gets for, you know, worlds of cinema, cigarette smoke. I mean, that's all in there for sure. But I think that his style evolves constantly, is constantly evolving. I'm so curious to see what his next movie would look like. And, you know, speaking of something like My Blueberry Nights, where I think one reason why maybe that movie is not as successful, it does feel like he is maybe repeating some gestures in a different context and trying, you know, working with a great cinematographer, again, Darius Kanji, and trying new things.

There's absolute moments of beauty and transporting beauty in that film, for sure. But it kind of felt like maybe he'd hit a bit of a dead end, and then I think with The Grandmaster he kind of moved his way past that. So I'm so curious to see what he does next, just because I'm, first and foremost, just what it would look like. My experience watching his films,

I don't think I had necessarily the highest quality VHS cassettes that I was checking out, so I don't have as, and I highest quality VHS cassettes that I was checking out. So I don't have as, and I've only seen a handful of his films in theaters over the years, but I don't, I don't have, didn't have the same reaction that I think some cinephiles had to the idea of Wong remastering, restoring or revising some of his movies. He's well known for recutting some films. Ashes of Time famously is completely recut from the version that he made in 1994. But there was like a little bit of

scuttlebutt, maybe just on film Twitter. I'm not sure, Justin, how far beyond that you thought it got. And Amanda, I assume you're like me. You only, you didn't necessarily see a profound change in some of these restorations from what we watched. But what is it, was it different for you seeing what

Criterion has released here with Wong's supervision? For me? Yeah, for both of you guys. No, I can't claim to have been able to compare and contrast, especially because, like I said, I just saw Days of Being Wild because it was hard to see it. And I don't think I've ever seen a film of his in theaters.

Some of it's just like availability which is why the Criterion release is so exciting. You made me aware of the hand-wringing which I just, to me is like, you know, bad fans who just gotta have control over everything. She says

as she refuses to click on the extras for In the Mood for Love so I can understand both sides of this. But I don't know. We live in the I'm gonna fix wolves era. So I'm less flustered by it than other people. And I also do think that just like, I don't even want tinkering sounds condescending,

but just the changing and the finding the film and seeing how these things work are so essential to his process i mean he can do whatever he wants yeah absolutely i mean it's obviously somebody continuing to have a dialogue with what they've made in the past justin you know you seem to be a little bit concerned about the green tint how did it ultimately come out in the wash i don't love the green tint on in the mood for love and some of the others i mean i i was watching days of being wild again in the restoration and it's like yeah this looks green but my memory of the movie is it's very

green it's a very green film that was something they wanted to do consciously to start even back in 1990 i feel very what has that amazing shot right of the jungle the sort of top line image of yeah yeah totally and the whole movie it sort of feels like it's taking place underwater at times i mean it's just like there's a you know, it's, which is part of the dislocating effect of the film. I feel really fortunate in having gone to see a lot of Wong's movies in theaters over the years, usually in revival houses, like, you know, they revived in the mood for love. I did a back-to-back like double bill, I think of Chunking Express with the umbrellas of Cherbourg one year, which was great. And Days of Being Wild,

I just happened to see. I think there was maybe there was like a mini retro of Long that was in town. And so, you know, and some of the other ones, the later ones like 2046 and Grand Master were, of course, easier to see. But yeah, I, you know, agree with both of you. I mean, my attitude is sort of he can do whatever he wants with it. And there are he has always trafficked in multiple versions of his films and different cuts. And of course, this became controversial with the Grandmaster, where there's the Chinese cut, and then there's the Harvey Weinstein-ordered US cut, where he felt that it was not just his tinkering but is he actually letting you know is the work being

compromised here but i think just true to himself he kind of rolls with that and he does not have you know and this is again sort of like malik too where this sense of like the movie is never finished the i i would work on these movies forever if i had the time um it is only just dictates of the industry that are forcing me to actually release these films now because they have to be released and you want them to be seen. But I think left to his own devices, he would happily tinker and futz with them from here to eternity. And so there's something very fitting about that there's also something fitting about someone who is whose work is so much about the irretrievability of the past and the unreliability of memory that these movies would look a little different um when we if what you know and if you're seeing them for the second or third time you know if it's your first encounter this is your first encounter but um i

am grateful to have um an a former criterion collection DVD of In the Mood for Love, which I do prefer visually just for the warmth of its colors and the vibrancy visually of it. There's only three of his films are not included in this set. It's only Ashes of Time and I guess Redux as well. And My Blueberry Nights, which perhaps you know, perhaps that's for the best. And The Grandmaster. I'm quite fond of The Grandmaster. I mean, I'm a huge martial arts film fan. And so as a fan,

there are a couple of sequences in that movie that I think stand with any martial arts sequence I've ever seen. The train sequence in that movie is unbelievable. But it's a movie that I think does not have perhaps the reputation

that I expected it would have before it came out. In fact, I don't know if we've ever talked about it. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation, frankly, is because Amanda and I have never gotten to talk about Wong

because he hasn't made a film since that film. We've only been doing this pod for a few years. So maybe Blossoms, I guess, is the working title of his next film is coming this year. Maybe it will come sometime in the next 10 years.

Justin, as somebody who has written about him and covered his work extensively, what do you make of his reputation right now as a filmmaker? Do you think young audiences know and appreciate Wong's work? I think they do. I mean, the fact that in the mood for love came in at like number 25 or something on the site and sound poll recent, uh, 2012, um, it's like 25,

the 25th greatest film of all time or whatever. And I know rankings are arbitrary and silly, but that was amazing. And I think that just shows how, I mean, that's just an amazing quickness of time for a filmmaker, for a contemporary current filmmaker, living filmmaker to be canonized. And I think it's a great choice. So even though he is in this period of inactivity, I feel that his reputation, I mean, the greatness of the movies is there.

That's not going to change. His reputation lives on. And to what Amanda was saying about Lost in Translation, the influence that you see, and I think it goes beyond just mannerism. There is a proof that there is something really just emotionally fertile about his style and the way that directors like barry jenkins and sophia coppola and even for me kind of a lesser known example that i love uh michael winterbottom in his sci-fi movie code 46 which very few people have seen well not enough people have seen it which is long carlyle to the core mad men you know is totally indebted to In the Mid for Love and at the same time completely its own work. So I think right now I'm

it's funny because I want to see more films by him and yet there's something kind of great about the body of work as it is. I don't necessarily I'm not saying I'm content for him to stop but in a way there's something fitting about

again someone whose work is so much about the past the fact that there's kind of for me a perfection about the body of work even with you know the missteps or whatever there are you know and I think there are very few actually I kind of love that it's this thing that I can just

keep exploring that's that I'm totally excited to see whatever he does next and I do hope we'll see it's you that it's this thing that I can just keep exploring. That's it. I'm totally excited to see whatever he does next. And I do hope we'll see it's, you know, it's, it's funny because I know that he was, you know, working on projects and some of them were impacted by,

by COVID of course. And so I, I'm hopeful about blossoms and, and whatever else he may do after that. Okay. Lightning round. Final question for you both. Amanda,

I'll start with you. What is your favorite performance in a Wong Kar-wai movie? Oh, I have to start? Yeah. It's a tie. It's a tie between... Come on. Okay, fine.

Fei Wong in Chungking Express. That's so hard to do. That's great. And, you know, manic pixie dream girl arguably starts there and that's taken on a negative connotation. By the way, I saw Amelie before I saw a chunking express. So my mind was really blown just so you know,

but I, she is the original and she makes it original and, um, and, and sells that, that wonderful montage that Justin referenced. And just, there's no one cooler dancing behind the counter than Fei Wang. So, Fei Wang.

Great pick. Just for boredom's sake, I'll say Tony Leung in The Mood for Love because as you mentioned at the top, Justin, he's perhaps the signal figure in all of these movies and is an extraordinary actor. I was just thinking the other day, it's just really, really weird that Tony Leung is going to be in a Marvel movie this year. You know, that is where our culture is. Did you know that?

I didn't know this. Yeah, he's going to be in Shang-Chi. I think he's the villain in Shang-Chi, actually. So anyhow, our culture continues to devolve in interesting ways but I'm happy for Tony along in his bank account Justin what about you what's your favorite performance from his films Jiang Ziyi in 2046

great one and I think she just it's just I think she is tremendously underrated as an actor in that and in the Grandmaster where she is just astonishing physical performance you know just the martial arts part underrated as an actor um in that and in the grandmaster where she is just it's astonishing physical performance you know she has to you know just the martial arts part alone but i think i

don't think emotionally she's ever gone as deep as she has in 2046 where she is just you know whether she's crying that one scene where like she's just quietly reacts to when you know tony lung gives her the money and it's something that she thought was really profound turns out to have been purely transactional for him it's just and she barely acknowledges it but you just feel her pain in your just on a molecular level that's my favorite performance in all his movies but not my only favorite one by far yeah justin this has been brilliant. If you're not reading Justin Chang in the LA Times, you're not a film fan. Thank you so much for doing this.

Really appreciate it. Yes, thank you, Justin. Sean, Amanda, it's been so much fun. Thank you for having me. And it's just been a joy doing this with you. So thank you. Thank you to the great Justin Chang. Thanks, Amanda.

Thanks, Bobby Wagner. Please stick around to The Big Picture later this week. I will be joined by Adam Naiman, where we will be discussing one of our favorite movies of the last 12 months. It's a little movie called The Empty Man that you can rent on PVOD right now. And also we'll be talking about our favorite cult movies

and how a movie in 2021 becomes a cult movie. We'll see you then.