My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar-wai, 2007)

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Village Voice doesn't dig it

An excerpt:

The disappointment here doesn't have much to do with Wong doing America—he's been doing America for years, even in Chinese—but with Wong doing Wong, and not up to his own standard.

[John Cope]

Interestingly, Armond does dig it.

What possessed the Cannes Film Festival correspondents whose reports last year ridiculed My Blueberry Nights! (It’s a thousand times superior to Cannes prizewinner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.) Now we can see for ourselves that it’s a splendid movie—the essence of what makes Wong special. It’s Wong’s most tactile film—almost as if he's found a new medium. Working in video with cinematographer Darius Khondji, Wong sharpens his usual ideas and images and emotions. Sensations result.

I admire his guts as this is not a fashionable statement to make. However, I'm not sure it's a legitimate statement to make either. Reliably though, he also name checked Alan Rudolph and this is always a good thing.

[Antoine Doinel]

I admire his guts as this is not a fashionable statement to make.

Isn't Armond all about taking the contrarian view? Then again, I'm one of the few who thought Wong Kar-Wai went off the rails with 2046.

[foggy eyes]

What possessed the Cannes Film Festival correspondents whose reports last year ridiculed My Blueberry Nights! (It’s a thousand times superior to Cannes prizewinner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.) Now we can see for ourselves that it’s a splendid movie—the essence of what makes Wong special.

I don't want to troll, but this really is balls. 4 Months exhibits an exhilarating marriage of form and content (witness those long takes that pull the viewer into the action, making events, restless movement and shot duration inseparable in order to heighten the snowballing sense of desperation and anxiety), whereas MBN merely presents a series of familiar stylistic tropes draped over an empty shell. It's no progression for Wong, just wayward self-pastiche - the film's fundamental problem being that the essence has gone walkabouts.

[sidehacker]

Yeah, that's silly. I haven't even seen 4 Months but My Blueberry Nights is just Wong-esque eyecandy.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Andrew Sarris gives it a rave review.

Excerpt:

One can say that Wong has only one story to tell, but whether it takes place in Hong Kong and Singapore, or in New York, Memphis and Nevada, it is ultimately the most important story the cinema can tell, and Wong does it beautifully and passionately.

[tavernier]

Armond sums up his rave with the best pull quote ever:

Sensations result.

That'll bring in the crowds.

[John Cope]

Isn't Armond all about taking the contrarian view?

Not to belabor this point but, yeah, he is, however that perception of what he is misses the fact that he sincerely believes what he is saying and has been very consistent for decades in saying it. God knows I don't always agree with him but he is beholden to the value of the Romantic project and so am I so I have a lot more sympathy for his efforts than many. His championing of the great Julian Hernandez is one justification for my own appreciation.

Still, his relentless consistency can certainly have its negative dividends as evidenced in his review of Flight of the Red Balloon, also in this same issue. He's never liked Hou and here, once again, he makes the same mistakes of comprehension. But this is, of course, for another thread...

[Dylan]

My Blueberry Nights was shot on video?!

[Jeff]

My Blueberry Nights was shot on video?!

It sounds like Armond was misinformed. According to this article (PDF), My Blueberry Nights "was originated on 35mm ETERNA 500T
8573 and ETERNA 250D 8563." IMDb says Super35 with a digital intermediate.

[tavernier]

Armond has never been misinformed about anything ever, so don't you dare even insinuate such a thing!

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Film & Video interviews WKW.

[Dylan]

Alright, great news: on April 18th this will expand to many Landmark Theater locations in the US, including Seven Gables here in Seattle. I look incredibly forward to it.

[Barmy]

The Ruins > Contempt > My Blueberry Nights > The Witnesses > 4 Months

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Is it sad when I can't tell when Barmy is a) sincere, b) trolling, or c) misusing inequality notation?

Anyway, here's an interview with Wong where he confirms that the U.S. cut is a bit shorter than the international version (he suggests it was a mutual decision, but then Wong has never seemed terribly assertive when it comes to issues like this, so...). And another interview that's largely gushy fanboyism but contains some brief mentions of The Lady from Shanghai, with Wong acting as though the project still lies somewhere in the indeterminate future.

[Antoine Doinel]

Michael Wilmington makes the argument that the film is built on some noir archetypes. I didn't realize that crime writer Lawrence Block was involved with the screenplay, so the claim could certainly be valid. Can someone who's seen the film perhaps speak to the film's noir aesthetics if any?

[kupo]

This is certainly a plausible theory.

The fact is that ALL of Wong's cinema is deeply influenced by noir-ish aesthetic. If you think about some of the iconography of Wong's films you'll notice there's a significant overlap with certain noir icons. His cinematography is deeply expressionistic and often utilizes low-key lighting and dramatic interplay of light and shadow. And, of course, there's his constant use of voice-over. And, the femme fatale archetype appears, even if in a distorted form, in pretty much everything he has directed.

I've long thought that a reading of Wong's films through a noir filter would prove a rewarding exercise.

[Dylan]

I saw this Friday and for me pretty much everything here is working in spades. Part of what really elevates it (aside from the technical virtuosity and the astounding sets and costumes) is how unquestionably sincere it feels. I thought Norah Jones brought an unusual amount of warmth and nuance, and I liked the genuine rapport between her and Jude Law (who's in a particularly romantic mode). Nice soundtrack, too, and an altogether beautiful (and at times beautifully solemn) atmosphere.

[Murdoch]

I really want to see this, however I get the feeling I'll be severely disappointed. I love Wong, but I've found his films to have lost their appeal to me after Happy Together (sorry, didn't care much for In the Mood for Love, 2046 was alright).

[Murdoch]

I actually just saw this and really enjoyed it. I didn't like all of it, like the parts with Rachel Weisz, but I felt the relationship between Jones and Law to be well-done and they had good chemistry. Portman was better than I expected, even if the whole poor father/daughter relationship was pretty hackneyed. Overall, not my favorite WKW film, but not my least fave either (that would be In the Mood For Love, which I'm sorry, don't think the ending was great and don't think of it as a masterpiece.)

[jon]

Overall, not my favorite WKW film, but not my least fave either (that would be In the Mood For Love, which I'm sorry, don't think the ending was great and don't think of it as a masterpiece.)

Would you explain why you dislike ITMFL so much? And don't say you think that it is overwrought, clichéd WKW (that honor goes to My Blueberry Nights)...

[Murdoch]

Overall, not my favorite WKW film, but not my least fave either (that would be In the Mood For Love, which I'm sorry, don't think the ending was great and don't think of it as a masterpiece.)

Would you explain why you dislike ITMFL so much? And don't say you think that it is overwrought, clichéd WKW (that honor goes to My Blueberry Nights)...

Actually I don't think it was clichéd or overwrought at all, and I certainly don't think it's a bad film. I just thought it was too one-note, Wong usually tackles multiple stories at once and the focus on one story was too much of a shift from his previous style for me to really get into the characters. Also, I've always loved the eccentricity of his work during the 90s, but that was more subdued in ITMFL. It just came as a disappointment because I had always seen Wong as a Hong Kong Godard with his reckless disregard for the conventions of cinema, but ITMFL felt very by-the-book in how it portrayed Leung and Cheung's affair.

I apologize for how blunt I was. I was provoked by how the post before mine said how you can't deny the ending was one of the greatest ever, and I hate to be told I can't deny something just because someone else felt it.

[blindside8zao]

Eh... I still haven't gotten around to seeing anything besides ITMFL and 2046 but thought that the dialogue and N. Jones really sort of ruined this. The whole key-door metaphor, which I take as meaning roughly the same as '2046' was hard not to laugh at, especially whenever Law delivered the lines to Jones. The only parts of this that really got through to me were the parts that referenced themes in the other two movies mentioned above, unless they were too covered over with bad metaphors or undercut by poor deliveries.

On the other hand, Weisz' big scene on the street was worth it, and that one long close-up was really beautiful.