Film – The Tingle Review

In one of the final scenes of Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together, Lai Yiu-Fai (as performed by Tony Leung Chui-Wai) stands alone on viewing platform besides Argentina’s Iguazu Falls. As the Iguazu rush over him in a violent torrent, the viewer is shown an aerial, top down view of the falls gushing into an indistinct cloud of mist. It seems like the falls could be headed anywhere – perhaps into a hole in the Earth that has no end.

“Direction” is an important concept in every Wong Kar Wai film that I’ve seen, and seems to be a constant theme of his work, whether it be the various clocks on the walls in Days of Being Wild pointing some allotted time, or the train bustling forward in perpetuity in 2048. “Where are we going, and what will it be like when we get there?” seems to be a question that all Wong’s films ask in some way or another. Though the answer is never clearly defined, Wong’s continuously found new ways to keep asking. Here, the Iguazu Falls – unstoppable, forceful, and hurdling toward profound uncertainly – are a continuation of this metaphor.

Given Wong’s status as a Hong Kong director, it may be tempting – and is truly possible – to view all of his films as allegories of Hong Kong’s exit as a British colony, and eventual reunification with the People’s Republic China. Could Fai, Po-Wing, and Chang be themselves metaphors for Hong Kong, China, and Great Britain? One of Fai’s major arguments with Po-Wing centers around the number of past boyfriends that Po-Wing has had. Like the British and Hong Kongers, these two seem destined for an ugly break-up. Also like that same relationship, one of these men (Fai) seems to have been truly hurt and misled, while for the other (Po-Wing) could been seen as the surrogate for a relationship-colonizer, to whom Fai is just another fling that didn’t work out.

But I think there’s a lot more to Happy Together than that, even if the political interpretation of Wong’s body of work is too present and yielding to completely ignore. Fai is an exile – socially, nationally, and even within his own family. As a gay Asian man living in Argentina, he has very little to his name – a job that barely supports a meager existence, few relationships, and a boyfriend who does not seem to care for him very much. On paper, Fai is a sympathetic character, but Wong’s genius lies in his ability to truly make the viewer feel the full depth of emotional confusion that his characters are feeling. That Wong’s films work not only so well on the personal level, but also as intellectual, political, and perhaps even philosophical metaphors, is just another mark of his genius.

Twenty-Four Eyes starts simply enough. It’s the end of summer, and the young Hisako Oishi is biking into town to embark on the first step of her career as a teacher. Wide-eyed children and skeptical parents alike look on with curiosity at the modern, independent, westernized woman who will serve as their educator for the next year.

Oishi is a good teacher. She speaks to her students on their own level. She shows curiosity about their lives, supports their dreams, and empathizes with their pain. She knows how to handle the bad ones, or the “bullies”, while making the good ones feel even more special and close to her. Ultimately, though, Oishi’s education style is at odds with a mid-century Japan that is hurtling toward a nationalistic war.

As the years pass, Oishi begins to receive criticism from her superiors, peers, and even some of her students. She is called a “Red”. Even though her lessons don’t seem to be motivated by ideology, the way that she is simply interested in the personal well-being of each and every student is enough to mark her with this accusation. At one point, she pushes back on a group of war-hungry sixth-grade boys by telling them she thinks it’s better to be a fisherman than to die for one’s country.

Ultimately, though, Japan continues its march to war, and there is little that single teachers like Oishi can do to stop it. She gives up her job as a teacher to focus instead on raising her own family, and even they look at her with skepticism when she voices anything less than full throated support of the war effort. As the war trudges on, the Japanese army go on to commit various atrocities, before suffering horrifying defeat. Director Keisuke Kinoshita need not spend any time of his film focusing on recounting these horrifying events, which would have been fresh in the mind of his audiences.

Oishi’s husband and some of her students never return from the war. But those that do slowly begin to find themselves sobering from the nightmare of fascism. Eventually, Oishi returns to teaching, and is accepted with great joy by her former students, who have now become the next generation of parents. The film ends on a heartwarming final scene – Oishi, surrounded by her former students, singing and laughing as they recall the old days before the war. They seem, at this point, symbolic of Kinoshita’s own sentiments toward himself and his countrymen: They may have lost their minds and done horrible things under the shadow of fascism, but they were never bad people to begin with. And so they could go always decide to go back.

Category: Film

Film Report: The Exiled in “Happy Together”

Film Report: Twenty-Four Eyes