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+---- Thread: Days of Being Wild (1990) by Wong Kar Wai (/showthread.php?tid=7145)
Days of Being Wild (1990) by Wong Kar Wai - cranefly - 08-01-2022
This falls into a gray area where I suspected I'd seen it but was not sure. I've started watching other movies recently that I realized I'd seen before. It's maddening. With so much stuff out there to see...
But I hadn't seen this before, and even if I had, I probably couldn't have turned it off--what with Wong Kar Wai's direction and Christopher Doyle as cinematographer. And a cast of Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau, Jackie Cheung, Tony Leung...
As Criterion describes it, the first full flowering of Wong Kar Wai's swooning signature style.
I'd seen In the Mood for Love and one or two others, but not this one. Everyone's so young, so melancholy... Tony Leung is handsome here; it predates his thinner hard-angled features that led him into villainous roles. Maggie is ... unearthly.
RE: Days of Being Wild (1990) by Wong Kar Wai - Drunk Monk - 08-01-2022
I keep meaning to delve into Criterion's WKW collection and refresh my memory of his work. I only remember that they were such sumptious films but I don't quite remember what they were about...
RE: Days of Being Wild (1990) by Wong Kar Wai - cranefly - 08-01-2022
My comment regarding Tony Leung being handsome herein before his features took on hard angles and relegated him to villainous roles was in error. I meant Andy Lau. Years ago I got the names mixed up, and it looks like I'll continue to do so forever.
RE: Days of Being Wild (1990) by Wong Kar Wai - Drunk Monk - 12-14-2022
I started this but I remember now that criterion doesn’t play well on my Chromebook. Often it stutters for a second every 10 seconds or so. I watch a bit until I can’t stand it anymore and bail. I’ll comeback to this on my surface pro where criterion plays smoothly.
RE: Days of Being Wild (1990) by Wong Kar Wai - Drunk Monk - 01-10-2023
Again, I'm seeing WKW with new more mature (older) eyes and his work makes more sense to me now. Sumptuous is the perfect adjective. I'm astonished how much heat he could generate using predominantly green light. It's like watching it through a nightscope but this was made before those really existed, maybe. It makes the reds pop like a pumped shotgun, especially those fingernails.
cf is totally on point about seeing these actors young. Maggie is so alluring, so vulnerable. Andy is dashing and aloof. Carina is brassy yet soft. Jackie goes from goofy to suave. And Leslie - he just nails Yuddy. It's especially poignant now knowing Leslie's fate in life. I was near Shaolin when news of him jumping off the roof reached PRC. Given his real life persona, Yuddy works on an entirely different level.
But that WKW style, the ticking clocks, the yearning, the contrast of such beautiful actors against all that Hong Kong and Phillipine squalor. His world is so run down, fading tunes of times gone by, chipping paint, rusty pipes, fading... and yet so colorful. His sense of compositon is such an atmosphere.
And really? That's the kind of cheesy line that wins and breaks Maggie's heart? I guess if I looked like a young Leslie, I could've made that work.
I had no memory of this film until the fight scene. Then I remembered seeing this when I was young and thinking 'finally some action'. Most of the end of the film I remembered. The train scene. I didn't have a sense about this films true power and thought WKW was overrated.
I get the connection between DoBW and ItMfL now. It's about unrequited love in an existential world.
I must see 2046 now. I don't believe I've ever seen that before. Might have to drop the coin and rent it because I don't see it anywhere on any of my streamers...