Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Happy Together (1997)

by Nathaniel R 

I first saw Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together at an arthouse cinema in Utah where I went to college. Though enthralled by its saturated colors and amazing performances, it left me very depressed. I had only been out for a couple of years, was wildly inexperienced with relationships, and chafed a bit at "sad gays" in the movies. Mostly because they were the only kind of cinematic gays regularly on offer back then. Nevertheless I devoured the "New Queer Cinema" of the 1990s wherever I could find it (i.e. arthouse theaters or Blockbuster rentals). And this particular movie lingered. I thought about it often. Seeing it again in 2022, twenty-five years after its Cannes premiere, it felt brand new. It wasn't... but 25 years of life experience later, it was. It wasn't devoted to gay misery as I'd remembered but merely a fascinating emotionally precise account of a particular romance. Not that the title isn't wildly ironic.

"Starting over means different things to him," is one of the saddest lines ever spoken in a movie and it hits early...

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Cláudio's Best Shot Pick: Happy Together (1997)

The next episode of our series, 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot,' arrives Thursday night. Since the Cannes Film Festival is around the corner, it's focused on Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together, which screened at the Croisette 25 years ago. You still have time to participate! Here's Cláudio's entry.

In film criticism, few expressions vex me more than the old "style over substance" adage. To presuppose the audiovisual stylings of any picture should be subordinate to its text, thus taking for granted that true depth exists only in narrative rather than form, is a fundamental misunderstanding of cinema as an art. Such matters come to mind because the works of Wong Kar Wai represent one of the best counterpoints to these erroneous wisdoms. The director's style is indissociable from whatever meaning, narrative, or emotion the viewer can take from his films. That is especially true of Happy Together, one of his masterpieces and one of my all-time favorite pictures…

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Linky Together

The Awl has a good piece on the metaphorical zombies and in blockbuster cinema
My New Plaid Pants a delightfully unexpected list: 5 tertiary characters from Paul Thomas Anderson movies deserve their own spin-off. I totally forgot about Brad the Bartender with Braces in Magnolia!
Atlantic prompted by all the "legacy" talk of TV after James Gandolfini (RIP) & The Sopranos... "where is the female Tony Soprano?"
HitFix David Chases' full eulogy for James Gandolfini

Coming Soon Sir Ian McKellen has wrapped filming The Hobbit trilogy, never to return to Gandalf the Grey (or White)
In Contention's wondering about Foxcatcher in Sony's Oscar Hopeful slate
Hollywood Vin Diesel meeting with Marvel Studios. Hmmm, I can't really see him as any of the characters mentioned beyond Thanos 
Exploding Actresses on Tumblr. You will cry. Or laugh. Possibly both depending on the movie.
Antagony & Ecstasy has a well thought through piece on Joss Whedon's tossed-off Much Ado About Nothing

Today's Watch
Filmmaker IQ's John Hess on Aspect Ratio in cinema. 18 minutes long but well produced and worth it, if your understanding of Aspect Ratio is, like mine, limited to Almost Squares vs Various Shaped Rectangles and trivia knowledge of gimmicks like "Cinerama." Watch it, it's Edumucational!

The Changing Shape of Cinema: The History of Aspect Ratio from FilmmakerIQ.com on Vimeo.

Belated Tony
Filmsploitation Check out this wonderful photo and quote from cinematographer Christopher Doyle about set photography and the making of Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together (1997) which I had just been thinking of for no apparent reason (since I used a different photo for The Film Experience on Facebook... a page you should obviously "like", duh)

And while we're on the subject... Happy (belated) birthday to Tony Leung Chiu Wai (Lust Caution, In the Mood for Love, Hero), our favorite Asian movie star who celebrated his 51st yesterday. His wife Carina Lau posted this picture of him eating cake. 

You missed the thumb Tony. Let me get that for you...