My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar-wai, 2007)

[Murdoch]

I don't think ITMFL is by the book at all in its portrayal of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung's affair in that nothing ever really happens and we never get to see their respective spouses.

By "by-the-book" I meant I thought it was boring.

[Tom Hagen]

Finally got around to seeing this tonight, and enjoyed it beyond the limited expectations that I had going in based on all of the tepid reviews. The film's themes (and some of its narrative structure) reminded me of one of my favorite Hemingway stories, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and in some ways of Kieslowski's Blue. This film was one of the more moving examinations of heartbreak -- and the need to dull it through routine, through people and places -- that I have seen in some time. I find it unfortunate that a lot of the discussion that I have read about this film (not necessarily here) focused on WKW's aesthetic sensibility and treated the narrative as if it were slight. See A.O. Scott's review for example. It wasn't a perfect film, but I for one was certainly satisfied.

[Antoine Doinel]

I saw this tonight and thought it was absolutely terrible, and one of the worst films so far this year. The first and biggest problem with the film is the screenplay by Lawrence Block and Wong Kar Wai. Whereas past Kar Wai films let the moods and moments speak for themselves, here we have hilariously bad dialogue and voiceovers explaining every feeling and intuition the characters feel. This is only made worse by the fact that every set up in each of the three stories are built on tiresome, worn out cliches (the sensitive guy mending a broken heart; the drunk getting over a woman; the woman who can't trust anyone). The closing portions of the Weisz/Straitharn and Portman/Jones stories are tortuous as we have everything summed up Carrie Bradshaw style in boring monologues. However, it's the casting that's truly ridiculous. Norah Jones is painful. She can't act. Period. Natalie Portman doesn't sell her character as a worldly gambler and the unnecessary cameo by Chan Marshall (why? because she has one song that's played to death in the film?) as Jude Law's Russian ex-girlfriend (seriously) is godawful.

But the biggest shock for me is how bad the film looked. I've never seen a road movie where the locations were indistinguishable. It's shockingly apparent how much influence Christopher Doyle had on the look of Kar Wai's best films. Here Kar Wai has no idea how to shoot any of the cities he's in. New York may as well have been Toronto. Memphis was, well, was that Memphis? And Nevada could've been anywhere. The location scouts - if there were any - should seriously reconsider their day job. Even Law's cafe, which is supposed to be some sort of bohemian, lively spot is ignored. There is even an extended conversation about how he can't find chairs to match the decor --- decor we never get to see! The editing is haphazard and even the framing of scenes is dull and pedestrian. And for what it's worth, it does look like it was shot digitally (ie. it looks cheap and the transfer to film is poor).

The entire film builds up to one great scene (which we've all seen stills of already) but it's certainly not worth the journey. A huge, huge miss and a massive disappointment.

[Shrew]

I've never seen a road movie where the locations were indistinguishable.

Stranger Than Paradise?

I was also unimpressed by the film, but I don't think this was one of it's problems. While the cities were all saturated with neon, the color scheme of each did differ, with New York being cooler, Memphis being filled by lots of orange, etc. And the constant smokey bar neon look, like that of Stranger Than Paradise, does reflect Norah Jones' search--running across the country but not truly moving forward.

The script was awful though, for reasons Antoine stated. The acting ran across the board. Norah Jones wasn't so terrible as she was a nonentity, and thus not an interesting figure to have at the center of the film. My biggest problem was with Jude Law. I'm reminded of that anecdote about Robert Redford's audition for The Graduate, when Nichols asked him if "He had ever struck out with a girl", and Redford replied "What?". When Law plays these tortured lover types in this and Closer, I can't help but feel he's an overacting prick.

[Antoine Doinel]

I've never seen a road movie where the locations were indistinguishable.

Stranger Than Paradise?

It's not really a road movie at all (Down By Law more fits the bill). But New York actually feels like that city and captures the vibe of it, and I've been through Ohio and Jarmusch certainly captured what I felt about Cleveland. And if Kar Wai needed some tips on shooting Memphis, he really should've watched Mystery Train. It just seems he picked up on the most cliched depiction of each city.

For me, Jude Law and David Straitharn were the only reasons that kept my ass from walking out of this thing. If Law seemed like he was overacting, it was simply because Norah Jones read her lines like they were instructions for installing dry wall. And don't get me started on Weisz's and Portman's "accents".

[Cronenfly]

Beaver review of the R1 DVD and DVD Times on the R2.

[blindside8zao]

If Law seemed like he was overacting, it was simply because Norah Jones read her lines like they were instructions for installing dry wall.

I agree with everything in your review. I don't understand the appeal, it's lost on me. I honestly couldn't believe I left the theater sorry that I had even spent my time and money on this.

[domino harvey]

Wow. This film was astonishingly bad. Like, so bad that I'm retroactively examining just what it was that I ever saw in Wong Kar Wai as a director. A few good ideas scattered around here and there, but there are so many show-stoppers of the worst kind that practically dare the home viewer to push stop and never resume the film again that I should have started to keep a tally. Surely surviving a screening of just the Weisz freak-outs could be an intimidating challenge on a Fear Factor-type show. The attempts at pathos are suffocatingly juvenile, and for a film that thinks its cinematography is so 'different,' the film is almost entirely shot/reverse-shot to a degree that would shame even three camera sitcoms. Believe the hype.

[kupo]

I suppose I should start this by saying that I worship at the altar of Wong. He holds a very special place in my heart, a part of my personal pantheon of artists from any medium along with others like Edward Hopper and Andre Kertesz.

In the Mood for Love is actually one of the two films that I always go back and forth between when asked what my "favorite" film is (the other being Sans Soleil), and I honestly believe it will be one of the films to truly stand the test of time from this decade.

And so, I was quite surprised that the director that has given me so much from Days of Being Wild on proceeded to give me this. I, too, thought it a poor film.

However, it seems I don't loathe it to the same degree as many others here. I really think Beaver comes pretty closely to the truth: " less an overt misstep than a sidestep into shallower waters." I still think it fails even in its more modest ambitions, but I don't think it's an outright disaster.

First, I will say that the print journalists and critics may have got the thumbs up/down right, but they gave it the thumbs down for all the wrong reasons. The cliche, trite dialogue is NOT the issue here. Wong's films have ALWAYS had cliche, trite, even "cheesy" dialogue. Complaining that Wong's characters speak in romantic cliche is like complaining that the characters in David Lynch films speak in too-cryptic phrases. That's really part of the point, part of the general thematic structure of the film. So is the obvious, expository voice-over (another feature that many critics seemed to pick up on for the first time in this film that has been a feature in much of Wong's work).

The oneiric nature of Wong's films is oft-commented on, but rarely explored in any great detail. But it is ESSENTIAL to the way his films work. Wong is not a "realist" in any way, shape, or form. I don't think anybody would try to claim otherwise. His films leap STRAIGHT from the psyche of his characters. His movies are their dreams and fantasies, and as such, their romantic impulses are revealed unfiltered, in all their unabashed and incredibly sincere schmaltziness. It's always been one of the charms of his films for me. His writing is as stylized as his visuals.

Also, the fact that he revisits his own filmography yet again is not an issue, either, though many felt it was. Again, it's time for critics to start engaging Wong's intense self-referentiality instead of simply commenting on it as though it's little more than a curiosity. This, too, is a very deliberate strategy. Wong's films are all about memory, about the inability to let go and move on: fear of transience. And thus, Wong's films refuse to let go of one another, constantly remembering each other. It's an incredibly organic form for his work to take, and Wong, probably more than any other filmmaker working today, is truly creating a series of films that not only benefit from being read as one large tapestry, but almost DEMAND such a reading. I think the reason people had such a problem with the revisiting of past work here is that this film is so much weaker than the others that the references felt like they were trying to make up for the deficiencies of the rest of the film by recalling superior works. But I was actually happy for the self-reference, and don't think it, in and of itself, was a problem.

The problem for me, rather, is that for the first time in his career Wong has made a film that feels very "plotted." The screenplay isn't poor because of the dialogue, but rather because the scenarios created don't capture those rapturous, meaningful quiet moments that make up Wong's other films. In every work previous to this, Wong crafted a series of moments that happened to coalesce into a narrative. Here, he had a narrative that he had to craft a bunch of scenes to relate. And it shows. I constantly felt as though I were being moved from point to point. But that was it. There was no real discovery in these scenes, no transcendent experiences. Just a bunch of plot points so that we could understand why Elizabeth ends up back in New York. For the first time, Wong tried desperately to find a point, and in doing so, missed it.

Tonally, the film doesn't work, either. The NY segments recall his spunkier work, while the middle segment is over-the-top melodrama, and the Nevada segment seems to have no mood at all (which is baffling, considering this is Wong.) And nothing gels. The two middle segments also aren't long enough to really explore their narratives or characters in any appreciable way. The implied narratives are too expansive to fit in these short segments (the multiple narratives of 2046, for example, are much more suited to their given length).

There are some positives, of course. I actually like Portman's extremely self-aware performance here. Her extremely self-conscious ticks really work for the character, and she brings a lot of energy to the film. Too bad her segment is so underdeveloped. Chan Marshall provides the stand-out performance of the film, though, and does so with only a minute or two of screen time.

And I disagree with the idea that this film isn't an aesthetic achievement. If anything, I think this, and Wong's pulp-short There's Only One Sun really prove that a Wong film will ALWAYS look like a Wong film, Doyle or not (though I would agree, his works which were collaborations with Doyle are probably visually superior). But this is still an intensely beautiful film, and Wong succeeds at somehow de-emphasizing line in favor of rendering his world in color and light, and yet often still crafting intensely striking compositions that underscore the emotional modulations of his characters. He also continues the trend started in 2046 of using the widescreen framings to create "unbalanced" compositions that stress the negative space as much as the positive (though, the effect is softened in this film).

And you're right, domino, that a lot of shot-reverse shot is used, but I think you'd find that it's actually quite a common structure in Wong's film. He's never shied away from this fairly standard cutting style. But I don't think it's lazily employed in Wong' films. For him, it is the perfect articulation of his concerns, because it allows his characters to inhabit the same "space" without sharing the same frame. And the inability to connect with others, even those in the closest proximity, is a recurrent theme in his work.

[jsteffe]

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.

You're not the only one. It was embarrassing to see him attempting fruitlessly to wring one last drop of "melancholy charm" from the same vein that he had already mined fully in In the Mood for Love. That film was a masterpiece, but it was also a terminal point. He needed to move into very different territory, and he notably failed to do so in 2046. I'm scared to watch My Blueberry Nights, but eventually I will despite evertything I've read about it so far. Maybe at this point he should shoot a low-budget genre thriller to make some money, get back to filmmaking basics, and clear his palate, so to speak.

[Murdoch]

I guess I'm the only one here who liked 2046 infinitely more than ITMFL.

Maybe at this point he should shoot a low-budget genre thriller to make some money, get back to filmmaking basics, and clear his palate, so to speak.

I think that this would be a far worse idea than My Blueberry Nights was.

[filmnoir1]

Having watched this twice in less than two days, I would have to argue that this film is as good as Wong Kar wai's other works. If there is a problem with it (and I don't think there is) it would be that this film is designed in such a way that it does not openly appeal to American viewers.
It is definitely a Wong Kar wai film with its caressing camera moves as he attempts to capture and wring out the emotion from every second of the action being displayed. The central motif of the relationship between time and space is also prevalent in this film. While the images may not resemble the America we know, they do resemble the fantasy realm of his films wherein time and passion are embraced in a deep lovers kiss.
Wong Kar wai understands better than most filmmakers that the contemporary world is defined by speed (instant communication and gratification). Thus in his films Wong Kar wai challenges these ideas and nostalgically embraces the simpler and slower pace of life, which is not without its faults. The other thing that he understands and continues to explore is how do the geographical and physical spaces wherein people live define their actions, reactions, and perceptions. Therefore he uses public spaces such as restaurants or bars to explore the deeper pains of the characters in this film. Thus the cafe run by Jeremy defines him and his own expectations just like the bar defines Arnie and his willingness to give up on life. The casino functions as a metaphor for the realization that all human activities are in essence a gamble of one kind or another and this is why Lizzie is able to finally return to New York and accept the possibility that the very romance she has sought was present all the time.
This film is not as great as 2046 or In the Mood for Love or even Chungking Express. Yet, it is still worth watching and thinking about how he is able to showcase his thematics within an English language film and in a foreign nation.

[Antoine Doinel]

...as he attempts to capture and wring out the emotion from every second of the action being displayed.

You just described precisely the problem with this film. In The Mood For Love and even 2046 (which I didn't much care of) were allowed to breathe, and the emotional state of the characters were able to develop. Watching My Blueberry Nights is like reading the livejournal entry of a teenage girl who just broke up with her boyfriend.

Also, how does the film not appeal to American viewers? Narratively, it's as straightforward and accessible as they come.

[domino harvey]

filmnoir1: You are analyzing a cocktail napkin.

[Matt]

I would have to argue that this film is as good as Wong Kar wai's other works

This film is not as great as 2046 or In the Mood for Love or even Chungking Express.

No contradictions here, move along.

[foggy eyes]

The casino functions as a metaphor for the realization that all human activities are in essence a gamble of one kind or another and this is why Lizzie is able to finally return to New York and accept the possibility that the very romance she has sought was present all the time.

Sorry, this made me laugh - if only all films could be read so literally. You're clutching at straws.

[King Prendergast]

Wow! kupo you must have read my mind when you wrote what you did about this film. i agree with you 99.99% on Wong's latest, and sadly, least effort. The high point was Cat Power's 2 minutes as Jude Law's ex. Damn is she sexy as hell, and a fine actress. Reminds me a little of an older, wiser Scarlett Johansson. I hope to see her in some more stuff in the future. Harmony Korine, are you listening...?

[Barmy]

Cat Power was the hottest metaphor ever!

[Roger_Thornhill]

Even I, perhaps the most forgiving of viewers on this site, was supremely disappointed with 'My Blueberry Nights'. I kept thinking, "Surely this isn't Wong Kar-Wai?" It felt like a pale imitation of the man and even at times a sad parody of his previous work. Wong, do yourself and the rest of us a favor and go back to Hong Kong..,or, at least, Buenos Aires. Oh how I love 'Happy Together'...

Well, at least Natalie Portman was smoking hot as a blonde in it... =P~

[King Prendergast]

Well, at least Natalie Portman was smoking hot as a blonde in it...

She did look rather good with that hair. The only reason to discuss this film is the one question thats been going around my group of cinephilic friends is: who's the hottest in this movie: Jones, Weisz, Portman, or Cat Power?

[Barmy]

Uh, not Jones.

[Barmy]

Uh, not Jones.

[rs98762001]

Barmy's so adamant about this that he had to say it twice. But I personally find all the women in My Blueberry Nights, including Jones, beautiful in their own, different ways. Much like in any KarWai movie.

Yes, this film is silly and superficial compared to the director's earlier, greater work, and it's a minor entry in his filmography. But that's not to say that there isn't much pleasure to be found in it. I found myself resisting, and then eventually capitulating, to the dreamlike, unreal, heavily romanticized vision of America found in this film, despite its obvious flaws.

To me the only truly disheartening choice was the use of Jones' own music. I may disagree with the Barmster on her attractiveness, but agree wholeheartedly about the AOR vapidness of her songs.

[Michael Kerpan]

... unless commenters here are personal acquaintances of the director, isn't referring to him as "Kar-Wai" a bit overly familiar?

;~}

[moviscop]

... unless commenters here are personal acquaintances of the director, isn't referring to him as "Kar-Wai" a bit overly familiar?

in rare circumstances, first names become more concise than using last name of "wong" to refer to the man by.