Table Of Content*i
WONG KAR-WAI'S
A s h es
of T i me
WIMAL DISSANAYA^KE y-^s/
'I would prefer ashes as the better paradigm for what I call the trace —
something that erases itself totally, radically, while presenting itself/
- Jacques Derrida
'My movies have nothing to do with deconstruction.'
- Wong Kar-wai
WONG KAR-WAI'S
A s h es
of T i me
Wimal Dissanayake
with
Dorothy Wong
HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS
Hong Kong University Press www.hkupress.org
14/F Hing Wai Centre (secure on-line ordering)
7 Tin Wan Praya Road
Aberdeen
Hong Kong
© Hong Kong University Press 2003
ISBN 962 209 584 4 (Hardback)
ISBN 962 209 585 2 (Paperback)
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound by Condor Production Ltd., Hong Kong, China
m
Hong Kong University Press is honoured that Xu Bing, whose
art explores the complex themes of language across cultures,
has written the Press's name in his Square Word Calligraphy.
n This signals our commitment to cross-cultural thinking and the
distinctive nature of our English-language books published in
China.
"At first glance, Square Word Calligraphy appears to be nothing
J££L
more unusual than Chinese characters, but in fact it is a new
way of rendering English words in the format of a square so they
resemble Chinese characters. Chinese viewers expect to be able
to read Square Word Calligraphy but cannot. Western viewers,
however are surprised to find they can read it. Delight erupts
when meaning is unexpectedly revealed."
— Britta Erickson, The Art of Xu Bing
Contents
Series Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
f Introduction l
2 Background 5
3 Story 23
^ Characters 35
5 Narrative Structure 47
6 Style 59
7 Martial Arts 75
^ Time 97
vi CONTENTS
9 Melancholia 109
10 Fragmentation 119
11 Response 129
12 Conclusion 139
Appendix 1 149
Appendix 2 159
Notes 161
Filmography 167
Selected Bibliography 171
Series Preface
The New Hong Kong cinema came into existence under very special
circumstances, during a period of social and political crisis resulting
in a change of cultural paradigms. Such critical moments have
produced the cinematic achievements of the early Soviet cinema,
neorealism, the 'nouvelle vague', the German cinema in the 70s
and, we can now say, the recent Hong Kong cinema. If this cinema
grew increasingly intriguing in the 1980s, after the announcement
of Hong Kong's return to China, it was largely because it had to
confront a new cultural and political space that was both complex
and hard to define, where the problems of colonialism were overlaid
with those of globalism in an uncanny way. Such uncanniness could
not be caught through straight documentary or conventional history
writing; it was left to the cinema to define it.
It does so by presenting to us an urban space that slips away if
we try to grasp it too directly, a space that cinema coaxes into
existence by whatever means at its disposal. Thus it is by eschewing
a narrow idea of relevance and pursuing disreputable genres like
melodrama, kung fu and the fantastic that cinema brings into view
something else about the city which could otherwise be missed.
cvitr SERIES PREFACE
One classic example is Stanley Kwan's Rouge, which draws on the
unrealistic form of the ghost story to evoke something of the
uncanniness of Hong Kong's urban space. It takes a ghost to catch
a ghost.
In the new Hong Kong cinema, then, it is neither the subject
matter nor a particular generic conventions that is paramount. In
fact, many Hong Kong films begin by following generic conventions
but proceed to transform them. Such transformation of genre is
also the transformation of a sense of place where all the rules have
quietly and deceptively changed. It is this shifting sense of place,
often expressed negatively and indirectly — but in the best work
always rendered precisely in (necessarily) innovative images — that
is decisive for the New Hong Kong Cinema.
Has the creative period of the New Hong Kong Cinema come
to an end? However we answer the question, here is a need now to
evaluate the achievements of Hong Kong cinema. During the last
few years, a number of full-length books have appeared, testifying
to the topicality of the subject. These books survey the field with
varying degrees of success, but there is yet an almost complete lack
of authoritative texts focusing in depth on individual Hong Kong
films. This book series on the New Hong Kong Cinema is designed
to fill this lack. Each volume will be written by a scholar/critic who
will analyse each chosen film in detail and provide a critical
apparatus for further discussion including filmography and
bibliography.
Our objective is to produce a set of interactional and
provocative readings that would make a self-aware intervention into
modern Hong Kong culture. We advocate no one theoretical
position; the authors will approach their chosen films from their
own distinct points of vantage and interest. The aim of the series is
to generate open-ended discussions of the selected films, employing
diverse analytical strategies, in order to urge the readers towards
self-reflective engagements with the films in particular and the
SERIES PREFACE <*£>
Hong Kong cultural space in general. It is our hope that this series
will contribute to the sharpening of Hong Kong culture's
conceptions of itself.
In keeping with our conviction that film is not a self-enclosed
signification system but an important cultural practice among
similar others, we wish to explore how films both reflect and inflect
culture. And it is useful to keep in mind that reflection of reality
and realty of reflection are equally important in the understanding
of cinema.
Ackbar Abbas
Wimal Dissanayake
Series General Editors
