தனிமை.. த‌விப்பு.. த‌ய‌க்க‌ம்

 Can any­one be able to express freely to the other per­son hon­estly ? We have so many fil­ters, we rehearse the dia­log before we let it out. There are very few places that we let out what­ever that comes to our mind like close friend, in prayer etc., Once Kamal­has­san said that he likes the Vil­lain char­ac­ter in any story because he is hon­est — if he wants to rape a girl, he does it straight for­ward :). We the nor­mal peo­ple hes­i­tate, oscil­late, fal­ter, bog­gle.. at least within our­selves before we express out. This film is about those minute emotions.

Have you heard of the song ‘Oru naalil vaazhkkai’ in Pud­hu­pet­tai ? The most philo­soph­i­cal song that I have heard of late. That touches upon the loneliness,hesitation,unexpressed emo­tions of self. How about an entire movie talk­ing about the same. A nor­mal form of cin­ema deals much with the story like Bhim singh films.. Another form of cin­ema mostly deals with the visu­al­iza­tion of a sim­ple story. The sec­ond form is slightly tough to get attached with. But he Wong Kar-wai made it very sim­ple so that we under­stand what the char­ac­ters feel about. The beauty is with­out dia­logues and with the help of cin­e­matog­ra­phy and music. 

Film : In the mood for love [ Drama / 2001 / Hongkong ]

Direc­tor ; Wong Kar-wai

Music : Michael Gal­laso / Umebayashi

Cin­e­matog­ra­phy : Christo­pher Doyle [ Remem­ber.. Rab­bit proof fence ].

 Plot :

 The story is set in 1960s. Two cou­ples move to adja­cent apart­ments simul­ta­ne­ously. The first apart­ment has Tony a jour­nal­ist whose wife mostly comes late or trav­els. “So” is the other lady who stays in the next apart­ment and her hus­band trav­els most of the time. She works as a sec­re­tary in a com­pany. They are accom­pa­nied by a friendly house owner lady. Though the apart­ment is a lively place with peo­ple our 2 main char­ac­ters don’t min­gle with the crowd, much. Wife of Tony and hus­band of ‘So’ don’t respond to their spouses prop­erly. Tony and ‘So’ hardly meet each other. they slowly come across each other in the hall­way, restau­rant, a rainy day.

 One day they have din­ner in a hotel and in their con­ver­sa­tion they realise some­thing. This dis­turbs them a lot. They slowly develop a friend­ship but very cau­tious about their lim­its. Tony starts writ­ing about mar­tial arts in the paper and So helps him. He stays in hotel for writ­ing with­out any dis­tur­bance. She meets him in the hotel. Time pass on and on a rainy day Tony says to her that he is slowly loos­ing him­self towards her and noth­ing good is hap­pen­ing. He says that she any­way can­not leave her hus­band and things won’t change.. Also, he thinks that they also may end up in a rela­tion. Hence, Tony leaves to Singapore..‘So’ tried to stop him but not. She weeps.

After 3 years, Tony gets a blank call from ‘So’ .. he realises that it is her. Tony does a con­fes­sion at the end. Some­thing happens ..

View :

- The story might look vague but the emo­tions it leaves us is a sim­ple heart­break. Direc­tor Wong doesn’t much believe in script. He shoots through the year and cuts as he needs them and mostly the story is formed in the edit­ing table and given life by cin­e­matog­ra­pher and the musi­cian [ of curse , less dia­logues ]. The true form of visual communication.

- The music makes the movie lively. Their lone­li­ness, hes­i­ta­tion, sad­ness, com­pas­sion, unex­pressed love is expressed in music. Just a cello talks to the audi­ence instead of the char­ac­ters and they use mostly slow-motion.

- Their inter­ac­tion is poetic and they take their own time to inter­act with each other. It’s not like they dash in the hall­way and the next moment they sing and dance in Swiss, half-dressed.

- The story has very few char­ac­ters and they are neatly used. House owner, maid, ugly friend in press, lonely man­ager in ship­ping company.

- The first lengthy con­ver­sa­tion they make is bril­liant as it reveals their per­sonal sad­ness. The beauty of this cin­ema is they never show ‘So’s hus­band and Tony’s wife. they just exist in the story, invis­i­bly in phone / conversations.

- Some sin­gle shots express the feel­ings mag­i­cally. An empty foot­ball ground, a boy, a foot ball from a top Angle shows the sum­mer lone­li­ness of a boy in Kiku­jiro. Sim­i­larly, Jason Bourne [ the mas­ter action hero for me ] enters New York in a ship — the shot is just shown with Statue of lib­erty on one side and his ship on the other side. here, Wong Kar-wai uses rain to show the lone­li­ness. It rains heav­ily on the lamp post and road in the lonely street at night. Both Tony and ‘So’ mostly exchange silences in place of their dialogues.

- Michael Galasso, Shigeru Ume­bayashi and Christo­pher Doyle are def­i­nitely the mas­ters who made this visual poem lovely to watch.

- The way the movie ends in Angor­wat is lyri­cal. Just a sim­ple beat and a cello. He talks to the hole in the tem­ple wall and closes. A monk just observes from the top side of the tem­ple. I admire the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Tony and ‘So’ — the cast­ing is per­fect with actors hav­ing sym­pa­thetic faces.

Con­clu­sion

Some movies just pass by with some ques­tions to us. If they lived together this movie would have become one another adul­tery movie. But the thin line between the hes­i­ta­tion and the romance makes it inter­est­ing to watch.

Emo­tional jour­ney of lone­li­ness and unex­pressed love.

Related Posts B

1. The Eng­lish Patient — Tales of love quotient.
2. Mem­oirs of a geisha — Colour­ful visual.