The year was 1994.
From reading Reddit threads on the film that many people consider Tarantino’s masterpiece — Pulp Fiction to some of my favorite gems like Thenmavin Kombathu, Leon The Professional, Three Colours: White, and Andaz Apna Apna and Minaram, the year 1994, gave birth to some of the greatest films of all time.
Then, nearly three decades later, I came across a movie that was to become one of my all-time favorites.
This was a defining cinematic experience for me in the last few years.
The Pandemic and Uncertainties with Chunking Express
As someone who spent most of her 2021 in a city, without a particular reason to stay or leave, and in search of company, conversations, and love, I was able to immediately connect with the movie.
How especially the crowded streets and busy corners of Hong Kong can make one feel alone.
Wong Kar Wai made a visual narrative, a masterpiece, a movie about love, loneliness, and Hong Kong, by breaking filmmaking rules to create a dual work of art.
I loved everything about the movie. It is melancholic and bright, transient and eternal all at once.
Though I have to admit that I felt disoriented throughout the film. Particularly in that split second when both stories and worlds collide and we’re thrown headlong into another offbeat love story, the show moves on, but it left me uncomfortable, longing for more information about the first story.
Despite Faye Wang’s adorable presence, I wished for a deeper connection between the two modern romantic tales. Cause that’s what entertainment has fed us for so long. It fed us linear, beautiful, fairytale endings.
However, the experience of watching a movie link Chunking Express will hypnotize one into a nonlinear world.
Much like the people in Hong Kong who are influenced by eastern and western ideologies and are in constant motion, the film contributes to understanding your pattern in an era filled with the urge to keep creating and to keep moving toward changes, uncertainty, and nothingness.
Parallels between streets of Hong Kong and India
Not to forget how Chunking Express and its busy streets reminded me of my trails through bustling bazaars of India including some like the Meena Bazaar, Sarojini Nagar in Delhi, Colaba Causeway in Mumbai, and a few others in Bengaluru, and Chennai.
A lot like us, the characters in the movie are trying to survive and straddle through, to make meaning out of something, to move toward a purpose and a goal, to make sense of life.
Dreamlike Soundtrack of Chunking Express
Also, I can’t write a piece on Chunking Express and not mention the soundtrack.
It’s magic. It’s a daydream. It’s all things beautiful.
In the film, the song “California Dreamin’” stands out as one of the best examples of the commitment to repetition and the power it represents.
It goes on for 9 minutes long. 9, and you don’t feel tired of it.
My favorite track though is the ominous score that plays during the first half of the film, creating an air of danger and suspense when the mysterious girl crosses paths with Cop 223.
Hong Kong through Chunking Express in the 90s
I also learned that the handover of sovereignty from the UK to China caused Hong Kong to enter a phase of uncertainty which caused a lot of confusion among its citizens. And, the economy suffered as well due to major changes in lifestyle. And so, Chunking Express was in many ways, Wong Kar-Wai’s ode to Hong Kong — When it was a state with no past and became situated within a state of constant motion (Usen, 2013), moving towards nothingness.
Watching Chunking Express was like talking to a friend.
I don’t know how Wong Kar Wai put this masterpiece together in 23 days cause IMDB tells me that this was just his experiment and a hiatus project from “Ashes of Time”.
The stakes are too high to ignore this film.
Just like how stories move on from one to another without closure, sometimes we long for one, but may not necessarily find it.
