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Song : Roll Deep (ft. Ilhoon)

Artist : HyunA

Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together is released in 1997, two decades before Hollywood making Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name, the movie transcends time as it is one of a kind. By following the relationship between two men, the movie is labeled as homo flick. However, Wong Kar Wai’s approach doesn’t like other gay films that stress on gender preference, and with no women as main characters, the film is in a way unisex. Happy Together digs deep into the emotions of two people in love and it is purely an exploration of love.

Lai Yiu-Fai (Tony Leung) and Ho Po-Weng (Leslie Cheung), a couple has been broken up and reconciled several times before heading to Argentina for a long trip. Ho is the one who always initiates separation and also asks “can we start over again?”. When they get lost when driving to Iguazu Falls during the trip, they quarrel and separate again. As the movie, narrated by Lai Yiu-Fai, the more introspective of the two, follows Lai around the city, the cacophonous urbanity serves as a mood-enhancing stimulant only underscores his alienation and melancholy.

After breaking up, Lai takes a job as a doorman in a tango club. One night, Ho, who has been hustling for a living, appears with a client whose stolen watch he gives Lai to help pay his air fare home. Lai is livid. But after Ho is seriously beaten up by the client, Lai allows Ho to recuperate in his shabby rooming house and nurses Ho back to health. 

Then the movie switches from black-and white to full colour. He takes care of him well and he is in love again, he is even happy at work now. There are sweet moments such as sharing the same cigarette as Ho’s hands are injured, staring at each other closely at sleep, lying on the same bed, dancing and kissing passionately in the kitchen. I’m starting not to care that it is a gay relationship, it is just two people who are madly in love. 

Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung are two huge actors in Hong Kong cinema, they portrays the characters with raw intensity. Tony’s Lai Yiu-Fai is caring and fully committed to his partner. Even then, Ho behaves like a spoiled dictatorial brat, demanding that his lover, stricken with the flu, leave his sick bed to cook for him. Looking back later, Lai moons about how the period of Ho’s recovery was one of the couple’s happiest. He loves him, so he falls for him every time Ho wants to reunite. While Leslie’s Ho Po-Weng is romantic, saying words that melts Lai’s heart and teaching to him to dance, but he is a recklessly free spirit and his wanton promiscuity is a bone of contention. 

They had been happy together, but not for long. Quarrels arises when possessiveness and jealousy which are driven from love are intruding their relationship. Ho finds out that Lai has taken his passport, and Ho gets furious. When Ho gets to know about Lai’s male colleague, he becomes inquisitive about their relationship, Lai lies about it to make him jealous.

It’s hard to watch when you see that they are in love, but they don’t understand each other’s intention, and they do things that will erode the love. Lai stocks cigarettes just because he doesn’t want Ho to go out at night. Ho is pissed as he always wants to be free, but Ho doesn’t know his personality has given Lai insecurity. 

They have stuck in the loop of separation and reconciliation. Is it because they lack understanding and they are not willing to compromise? Both characters are flawed as they are human, they are in love and they selfishly want to hold each other in their own way. Perhaps the problem is because their personalities are incompatible to begin with, but they fall in love. It’s piercingly sad to see Lai eventually visit the fall alone as the pathos deepens, and in the meantime, Ho gets back to the empty apartment with packs of cigarettes, the scars left by love is evocative no matter how many times I have watched. 

Wong Kar Wai wins the best director prize at Cannes. Happy Together is stylish and powerfully moody, the sense of acute isolation while in transit is seeping through the film with the exhilarated, brooding tango music. Wong’s composition of scenes and jazzy technique capture the jumbled lives of his characters.

The cinematography of the director’s longtime collaborator, Christopher Doyle, lends the streets, alleys and bars of Buenos Aires a fizzing candy-coloured glow. Every so often, the camera momentarily draws back for a street-scene overview in which the blinking signs, traffic and clouds accelerate into a breathless sensory rush. These moments are contrasted with 10 blue-tinted shots of Iguazu Falls, which serve as a spiritual magnet for the bickering lovers. Twice in the film, the camera surveys this phenomenon in lingering, breathtaking aerial shots which seems to suck you into the emotions of the characters. 

Wong Kar Wai has revealed that the depiction of a“non-accepted” relationship is inspired by the ’97 handover of Hong Kong, where Hong Kong is like an illegitimate son of the UK. The film is called Happy Together because at that point none of them knew what was going to happen after the handover, which is in parallel to that we never see Lai return to Hong Kong and we don’t know where he goes. The title was supposed to be a question instead of an answer. In this way the movie leaves a rather optimistic note in the end. You know it’s hard for both characters to get over each other, but deep down you understand the only way of not getting hurt is to stop the loop. 

finishing up a lot of things today 

I ended up studying well over 3 hours today reviewing macroeconomics, finishing up notes for both biology and HOA and now I am content. It was a lot yes, but my brain didn’t feel the same as yesterday. I feel like reflecting on my self-discipline yesterday helped a lot.