Film Composition Research Essay. Analysis of Chungking Express

Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Course
Date
Analysis of Chungking Express
Introduction
Chungking Express is a 1994 movie that was directed and written by Wong Kar-Wai. This movie perceives life as a string of chances to which specific people react (Redmond 48). Most of the chase scenes, if not all of them are step-printed, which figuratively distorts the lines of reality in this film to a considerable extent. Chungking Express is a movie that has two different plots, which encompass chance encounters among the various characters because of the shared settings. However, due to Hong Kong’s flux, they meet other people, and as a result, develop unintended emotional connections. Many people who have watched Chungking express seem to have diverted opinions about Wong’s manipulation and depiction of chance, time as well as space. Teo postulates that Wong looks at time as a tangible item through expiring objects and perceives life as something associated with expirations and further emphasizes Wong’s 0utilization of old songs as a portrayal of the expiry of life, hinting at nostalgia. However, Wong's undefined positioning of the music in cinematic spaces and his manipulation/editing of time, as well as space, stress the fact that the future is unwritten.
In the part of the film, the song “Things in life” could be heard four times. At first, it is heard in the scene with the jukebox at a bar. When this music is first associated with the bar owner, who is a drug boss and the female bartender, it was diegetic since it was coming from a specific device. The second time this song is heard was when the drug boss had given a death sentence to Brigitte Lin. However, this time it is heard as a diegetic off-screen sound since the audience could listen to the music but would not see its source. With the source of the sound hidden, this music extends the movie's spatiality, opening up possibilities and giving dimension to space outside the ocular. The turn of events in this case, from the song being first heard on a diegetic situation and the second time being due to death, helps in advancing the theme of the future being unwritten. The change of events from a happy moment to a death shows the uncertainty of the future.
The extensive work by Michel Chion, a French film sound scholar, gives an ideal platform that helps in enhancing understanding of how sound has been used in the film Chungking Express. He draws the relation that when a sound is heard and the source is not seen, the sound is said to be acousmatic. In the case of Chungking Express, music has been acousmatized. It is uncertain to the audience whether the music heard during the play is diegetic or non-diegetic. The narrative of indeterminacy in the film regarding the use of sound corresponds to the aleatoric nature of life and the uncertainty of the future in Hong Kong. As such, this indeterminacy contributes to the unwritten future in Hong Kong and the future in general. Sound in this case is used to show the uncertainty of life in the city and also that the future is unpredictable.
The film is made up of two stories that have been tied together by Cop 223’s visit to a sandwich shop called Midnight Express. He notices the counter girl working at the shop, Faye, and seems to fall deep in love with her although she later falls in love with another man after a few hours. A few minutes prior, she was also hitting on Brigitte Lin’s character. Memories of love and romance are fleeting for Cop 223, appearing more of a dream than the reality. The past, once the concreteness has been rejected or consumed, becomes somewhat different from the future. In this case, history becomes as mutative as the uncertain future. Although it is impossible to change facts, it is possible to change the perception that one has towards the past and the future. However, Wong Kar-Wai suggests that both of these are fantasies. It is through this line of thought that it becomes possible to bring together the idea of the disparate narratives of the stories and the music. At first, Cop 223 was hitting on a Lin and felt that he was in love with her. However, he reaches the shop and falls in love with the shop girl. At first, it could not be easy to tell that Cop 223 could fall in love with someone else after he met Lin. Therefore, hi...