Wong Kar Wai: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, wearing his signature sunglasses.


WONG KAR WAI: ASHES TO ASHES
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the October issue of Venice Magazine.

Wong Kar Wai was born in Shanghai in 1956, and moved to Hong Kong with his parents when he was five. He broke into the film business as a screenwriter, making his directing debut with As Tears Go By, in 1988. It was his 1994 feature Chungking Express (ironically shot very quickly during a break in post-production on Ashes of Time) that got him noticed internationally, with help from newly-minted wunderkind Quentin Tarnatino, who released it under his own banner, Rolling Thunder Pictures, in the U.S.

Wong went on to win the Best Director prize at Cannes for his 1997 Happy Together, with all of his subsequent features (In the Mood for Love, 2046, and My Blueberry Nights, his first English-language production) premiering at the legendary film festival. Wong served as President of the Cannes jury in 2006.

Wong Kar Wai has recut and restored his 1994 epic Ashes of Time, much as Francis Coppola did with Apocalypse Now: Redux, resulting in Ashes of Time: Redux, after discovering that not only were there several different versions of the film in circulation, some approved by him, some not, but the original negative and sound materials were in danger of rapid deterioration, after the lab in which they were stored in Hong Kong was suddenly shut down.

Ashes of Time: Redux is Wong’s definitive cut of this masterpiece, loosely based on Louis Cha’s famous marital arts novel The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, a four-volume tome that is the stuff of legend in Asia. Wong’s story is wholly original, telling the early years of the book’s two main characters, Dongxie (Lord of the East) and Xidu (Lord of the West). The film features a who’s-who of Hong Kong actors, including Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and the late Leslie Cheung. It is being released by Sony Pictures Classics, and arrives on U.S. screens October 10.

Wong Kar Wai sat down recently to discuss revisiting one of his earliest films, as well as the highlights of his remarkable career.

This is quite a different film from the one I saw years ago. Tell us why you decided to revisit it.
Wong Kar Wai: We were forced to revisit it, otherwise it would no longer exist. In ’98, when the film was four years old, the Asian financial crisis hit Hong Kong, and the lab where we stored it went bankrupt over night. We had very short notice to retrieve all the materials the night before the lab was shut down. The material was actually in pieces, with some parts actually missing. It was a blessing that we learned to store our films more carefully after that. So we retrieved all the missing materials from our Asian and overseas distributors, and that’s how it all began. We actually went to this warehouse that was so huge, it was like Indiana Jones! (laughs) There were thousands of prints of Asian films from modern times, going back to the early ‘20s. It was really amazing: the history of Hong Kong cinema under one roof.

So it was just poor storage, after only four years that accounted for the film being in such bad shape?
Yes, and it also tells you something about the state of the film industry in Hong Kong. In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, it was at its peak, and everyone was making films. But by the late ‘90s when the financial crisis hit, everything changed.

The late Leslie Cheung in Ashes of Time: Redux.


What’s different in this version?
We made several changes and added some new material, and the music is re-arranged, but I’m going to be vague about specifics, because I’d like the audience to discover that for themselves.

You have some of the biggest stars in Hong Kong cinema in this film, many of whom were just starting out in 1994.
Yes, and it tells you a lot about what Hong Kong cinema was like in the early ‘90s: all the talent, all the energy and all the amazing resources we had to make a film like this. This is the first film for Charlie Yeung, who’s now in the remake of Bangkok Dangerous with Nicolas Cage. So there you are. (laughs)

One of your stars, Leslie Cheung, committed suicide in 2003.
Yes, that was a great loss on many levels. When I look at the film, I realize it’s some of his best work. He was a very talented man, a great singer, which most Hong Kong stars are, singers as well as actors. Leslie was a very sensitive man, and was very hard on himself, but was very serious and very professional. It was a great joy to work with him. We were very close friends. I miss him very much. One thing I remember, since we shot the whole film in China, and a Chinese-Hong Kong co-production was a rare thing then, was that Leslie hated to fly. And we flew people to these remote parts of China on those small, private jets, which I know terrified Leslie, but he never complained, and did it.

Was he such a sensitive soul that the rigors of life simply became too much?
It’s still “unsolved” to a large extent. The only concrete explanation we have is that Leslie suffered from severe depression. It was a very tragic night, when we got the news. I was shooting a segment of an anthology film called Eros with Gong Li that night, and we got the call before we had to go to location. Gong and Leslie had done Farewell, My Concubine together, and were very close friends, so that was a very, very tough night for many of us.

Maggie Cheung in Ashes of Time: Redux.

The other star of the film who is well-known in the States is Maggie Cheung. It was amazing to see her at that early point in her career.
I worked with Maggie since my first film, so our careers literally started at the same time. She was Miss Hong Kong at that point, and considered much more of an idol than an actress. Over the years, she has become very serious about acting and life in general. She’s interested in much more than just being a movie star, and is a very interesting, curious woman.

You were born in China, but grew up in Hong Kong. When did you fall in love with movies?
My mom is actually a crazy movie fan, so she took me every day to the cinema, which was a great education.

Was there one movie that did it for you?
Not really, although I remember the Christopher Lee vampire films, the Hammer films, had a real effect on me. It’s funny though, I’ve always avoided making horror films. (laughs)

So it was a mix of Asian and western cinema?
Yes, exactly. The great thing about Hong Kong is you have local productions that literally aren’t seen outside of Hong Kong, and then you have movies they bring in from all over the world. So I saw everything. I loved the martial arts films, too. What was your first martial arts film?

It was really two TV series: "The Green Hornet," with Bruce Lee, and "Kung-Fu," with David Carradine, that introduced me to the genre.
That’s funny, we were just talking about "The Green Hornet." Bruce Lee was great in that.



Enter the Dragon was probably the first one I saw in a cinema, when I was about ten years-old.
A friend of mine, who was a student in Southampton, said he went to cinemas every week to watch that film, because he enjoyed the reactions of the crowd, which made him very proud, as a Chinese. (laughs)

Enter the Dragon was very easy for Westerners to relate to, because it was basically a James Bond film with marital arts, unlike Bruce Lee’s earlier films, which were very Asian in tone and their philosophy.
Bruce Lee, which a lot of people outside of Asia aren’t aware of, isn’t just a figure who’s renowned for his fighting skills in Asia, but also for his philosophy, which he learned from his master. We’re actually working on a project about his master now, called Kung-Fu Master (released in the U.S. as IP Man), which is about Bruce Lee’s teacher, who was a Grand Master of Kung-Fu and marital arts.

You have a unique visual style, and I know you studied at art college. Are there any specific artists who influenced the color palate you use?
I think I’ve been influenced more by photographers, people like Robert Frank, than painters. I was very into photography at that point, which was my major. Photography is all about the moment, what some people call “the decisive moment,” and I think that’s what continues to interest and captivate me.


Trailer for Ashes of Time: Redux.