Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai
obviously knows what it is to yearn. Be it a longing for someone or something,
or even the wish to be free from such an unbearable desire, Wong’s films are
infused with a melancholy ache that other filmmakers don’t convey nearly as
well. And movies like that are my kryptonite.
1991’s stunning Days of Being Wild (Saturday, March 5, 8 p.m., Dryden Theatre, 271-4090) is Wong’s
second feature (the first being 1988’s As
Tears Go By). Days made a killing
at the Hong Kong Film Awards the year it was released, with its French New Wave
sensibility and its future Who’s Who of Asian Cinema cast, but its few initial
American screenings were hampered by jarringly awful subtitling, which have
been spruced up for its recent reissue.
Like Wong’s most recent (and
best-known) film, In the Mood for Love,
Days is set in the lush Hong Kong of
the early ’60s. Yuddy (the late Leslie Cheung) is a two-bit hood with the face
of a matinee idol and the attention span of a five-year-old boy. And like any
five-year-old, he wants what he can’t have, and once he’s gotten it, he covets
something else. This is best embodied by Yuddy’s relationships with the fairer
sex, starting with the quiet Lizhen (Maggie Cheung, Hero), then the shrill showgirl Mimi (Carina Lau). The root of his
problems is undoubtedly the love-hate bond with his adoptive mother (Rebecca
Pan), an alcoholic dragon lady clichรฉ who bankrolls him but refuses him what he
most wants: The identity of his birth mother.
The devastated Lizhen is befriended
by a cop called Tide (Andy Lau, House of
Flying Daggers) as she wanders around near Yuddy’s flat, unable to cope
with their breakup. And Yuddy and Tide will later meet as the cop changes
careers and Yuddy forsakes all the women in his life — including the spiteful
Mimi — and hits the Philippines in search of his mom.
Cinematographer Christopher Doyle has
captured movies as diverse as Zhang Yimou’s Hero,
Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights, and
Gus Van Sant’s Psycho, but his style
is a hallmark of every one of Wong’s films. In Days he showcases a Hong Kong bathed in neon and rain and employs
some inventive point-of-view depictions as well as a great tracking shot into a
seedy Filipino club and an exquisite frame of Yuddy and Lizhen tangled in
sheets as they discuss their relationship. Doyle’s images are perfectly complemented
by the twangy tropical guitar score.
Leslie Cheung would go on to star in
two more films for Wong Kar-wai (Ashes of
Time, Happy Together) and was
ostensibly his on-screen alter ego (he would be replaced by Hero‘s Tony Leung, who has a tiny part
in Days). Cheung also worked with
John Woo (A Better Tomorrow, Once a Thief) and was probably the only
man beautiful enough to distract the viewer from Gong Li (Temptress Moon; Farewell, My
Concubine). Sadly, Cheung took his own life in April of 2003, but Days fortunately memorializes this
dazzling talent at the peak of his powers.
Wanting
something can lead to some irrational actions. But feeling as though you
deserve it can incorporate resentment into that view of entitlement and often
adds a level of desperation to already rash behavior. In the
inspired-by-a-true-story The Assassination of Richard Nixon (opens
at the Little Theatre on Friday, March 4), Sam Bicke (Sean Penn) is the kind of
man whose frustration with life comes from the fact that what he feels should
be coming to him just won’t.
It’s 1974, and Bicke is embarking on
a new career as an unsuccessful salesman with a ball-busting boss (the
underused Australian character actor Jack Thompson). Bicke has entrepreneurial
dreams of his own in the form of a tire store on wheels that he hopes to open
with his pal Bonny (go-to guy Don Cheadle). Bicke is also dealing with his
failed marriage to Marie (Naomi Watts), a waitress whose patience with him is
wearing thin.
As these pressures compound —
trouble at work, red tape for the business loan, the arrival of his divorce
decree — Bicke starts to crack, questioning why a decent man like himself
can’t catch a break. He directs his rage at our 37th president, whom his boss
calls “the greatest salesman” in light of the fact that Nixon got re-elected by
vowing to end the war in Vietnam — the same promise he made the first time.
In Bicke’s eyes, Nixon typifies the man who gets what he clearly doesn’t
deserve, so he makes plans to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House.
Through no fault of the
always-capable Sean Penn, our hero is surprisingly underdeveloped. It’s
difficult to sympathize with a person whose logic is so misguided, and this
adversely affects the rest of the movie. But Assassination does feature a nearly unrecognizable Michael Wincott,
who normally uses his gravelly voice to play bad guys, as Julius, Bicke’s
Orthodox brother, as well as Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump, TV’s Boomtown),
playing the local Black Panther leader to whom Bicke suggests a name change to
the Black Zebras in order to increase enrollment.
My rational mind knows that no matter
what I say to a character in a movie, he’s not going to revamp his thinking. In
real life you might have a shot at counseling someone who is behaving
strangely, but watching this movie has driven home the point that reasoning
with people on the big screen is futile.
This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2005.
