The 25 Best Movies of the Century: No. 7 - 'In The Mood for Love’

0:28I'm Sean Fennessy. Sure. Well, it's not word-based. It's not word-based. And it's not... There are actually a few important conversations within the film, but even those conversations are doing double work and are imagined conversations and are not in the here and now. So it's not a movie about two people sitting across a table and chatting. Yes, it is. Well, they are, but they're not saying what they really are thinking. And they're saying something else to other people. And what they want to say to each other is not said. This episode is presented by LinkedIn ads. Sometimes marketing gets wasted on the wrong people.

1:15Like if you see an ad for movie themed dog sweaters when you don't even have a pet. Reach exactly who you need with LinkedIn ads. With a network of 130 million decision makers, they can help you target by job title. industry, company size, or even skills. It's one of the reasons LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B return on ad spend of all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them. Try it out. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash the big picture. Terms and conditions apply. This film was released in the United States of America in 2001, in March of 2001.

1:54It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. It was pretty quickly declared great, but not at the level that it exists at now in the culture. Wong Kar Wai, the great Hong Kong filmmaker, had been making films for more than a decade by this point. He'd already made a couple of certified classics, Junking Express among them. This movie simultaneously feels like a perfect representation of what he does, but also quite different. A kind of elevation of style of a lot of the things that he had done. And a lot of his movies feel much more sort of like kinetic and messy and faster moving. And this is a very purposeful, intentional, composed movie.

2:35One of the most beautifully composed films of the century. Everyone is quite literally framed by a hallway or a doorway or a window or some other transitional space. Yes. It is also produced by Wong. It stars Maggie Chung and Tony Leung. that's more or less it a handful of other actors are in this film shot in part by Christopher Doyle the great cinematographer who's best known for his work with Wong and also Ping Bin Lee when Christopher Doyle just left the movie in the middle of the production as he is wont to do so this movie was shot over 15 months despite a profound lack of dialogue and it is it has had such an interesting life in the movies and it's on this list for a variety of reasons and we can talk about all of those reasons.

3:24But I actually want to start near the end, which is that I think that this is one of the most influential movies ever made. Yeah, right. And I want to give you room to talk about Sofia Coppola talking about Wong. And, you know, Barry Jenkins has been very open about his admiration. Right. And there is, I think, a generation of, for lack of a better phrase, arthouse filmmakers who bring a lot of Wong Kar-wai to their work. There is another way in which it is very, very influential, though, and that it makes it very different from the other Wahoo movies, which is that this movie is very influential on watch and perfume commercials.

3:57And there is a kind of tonality and a reaching for the beautiful image that you see in a lot of advertising. And that's not why it's on this list per se, but it has made a huge imprint on our culture that I think is relatively unacknowledged because we think of it as film fans, as movie podcasters. It's incredible cinematic achievement. Yeah. But in the in the world that we live in, I feel this movie all the time. Absolutely. I mean, you may not distinguish between advertising and fashion and the line goes back and forth. But this is hugely influential in the fashion world as well. But the composition, but really the color and the two things that stood out to me while we were watching this movie, as I did last night, was, you know, like everyone knows that this is like the color study and the color theory in this movie is out of this world.

4:51And I said, I saved my red shirt to wear for this because I was like, oh, I should do it. You know, looks great. Like it. Thank you so much. I did not wear red on purpose. Like, you know, I don't totally understand what synesthesia is, but this movie gets the closest to it of creating, using the color to actually create physical feeling. To me, it's like, I mean, there are some actual electric colors in it, but this is, we were talking about action film, action is like fine art filmmaking with Mad Max. I was going to say Mad Max Die Hard with a Vendance because Chris Ryan lives Ren Free in my head.

5:32But this is like, this could hang next to a Matisse, you know, this could hang next to a, like, it's a different type of color from an Ellsworth Kelly, but the things that I respond to in art and often in fashion, like the color is what I respond to so much in this movie. So it's hugely influential, right? And like, and what we buy, what we see, what people are telling us is aesthetically valuable, I guess. And then you mentioned Sofia Coppola, but I never had a moment's doubt about picking Marie Antoinette, but I was reminded, oh yeah, we don't need to have Lost in Translation on this list because we have In the Mood for Love.

6:13And Sofia Coppola acknowledged that. Like, she thanked Wong Kar-wai in her Oscar acceptance speech for Best Screenplay for Lost in Translation. But we can have it all in this particular case because this movie, and it's not just, like, the structure and the transitional, to people who don't say what they mean in transitional spaces and like a secret at the end. But, you know, like the mood, the music. I think some people have often unfavorably compared Sofia Coppola films to perfume commercials. She's also directed a couple of great perfume commercials, by the way, because art can be found anywhere.

6:54Yes. But this as like ecstatic tone piece is it's really the peak of, I think it really ripples through filmmaking culture in a very serious way. And, you know, this is perhaps the great romantic movie of the century as well. We've talked about a couple of them here in these conversations, but this is one that because it's effectively unrequited, you know, that there's no consummation, I should say. Unconsummated, yeah. That it creates a sense of longing that I think is very present in contemporary culture. Sure. I think that because people experience their life through screens more now, this feeling of I can't have what I want is very resonant.

7:39And that's obviously, this is a film, you know, set in Hong Kong in 1962. Two married people come to move into the same apartment complex and they essentially live next door to each other. And they both have traveling spouses. And the revelation of the film is that these two people who are at this kind of interesting, I guess they're in their late 30s maybe in this movie, Maggie Chung and Tony Leung. I would say mid. Okay, mid-30s maybe. Maggie Chung is eternal. Yeah. And we will get to her in a moment. But Wong was in his early 40s when he made this movie. And I think that's relevant. I think people reach a certain phase of their life, a certain age in their life, and they start reflecting on, do I have the things that I really want?

8:20Am I really happy? Where is my partner tonight? Why are they not home with me? And so the film, while it could seem, I think, if you're not a foreign film fan or if you're not a cinephile, a movie like this could feel difficult to penetrate, right? To get past, to get into it because it's a period piece. It's in another language. It is from a filmmaker who you're like, oh, do I have to see all their work beforehand? The movie is, I think, very... Contained, yeah. Yeah, and it's not hard to put your arms around if you just think about what's going on in these characters' minds, you know, and why they're feeling the way that they're feeling.

8:53Right. Now, that being said, one of the things that I do like about it and the way that the Wong who shows up in Days of Being Wild appears in this movie is there is a little bit of perversion in the movie. Because these two people who find each other and they see that they have they have a connection. Yeah. And they start spending time together and they kind of start dancing around their feelings for one another. And then Lung's character decides he wants to write a serial about what they discover in their conversations which is that their partners are not just not present and maybe not just having an affair but they're having an affair with each other.

9:28Yeah. And then he wants to write this serial about them having their affair. Which is, that's very Hitchcock. Yeah. You know, that's very, that's a little kinky and a little weird and a little bit of like what a stifled man does to process his troubled feelings rather than just like taking them out on a woman by ravishing her with his love. Like this character doesn't know how to do that. Yeah. He knows how to like sit quietly and write while a woman observes him and they talk about story structure. Right. and that's really interesting you know that's not this isn't like some stuffy period piece it's a little strange I mean excuse me don't be stuffy period piece because what I you know this does have this understands all the emotions that are boiling beneath the surface and are restrained or repressed in all of those your beloved Victorian dramas yeah well they're not Victorian those are Tudor dramas like Edwardian Edwardian okay got it and you know and Merchant Ivory would be like ahead of it.

10:30What would you call it? What is your era called? I guess. A Mandanian, yeah. No, because that sounds too much like whatever Natalie Portman's character in the... Queen Amidala. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Padme? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Padme. We'll go with that. But when they're doing what is effectively role-playing, you know, they have many rehearsed conversations where they're talking about how they would speak to their spouse or confront their spouse or, I mean, it's role-playing. There's actual kink in that as well. There is. So it's messed up. It also is quite sad. It really struck me on this rewatch and maybe it's just the age in my life.

11:14Like these are, these people are coming to this relationship from not just like an inability to access their emotions for each other, but they're completely cut off from their spouses and from the world, there are so many shots of these people alone in like small rooms. Being quiet. And the framing so often goes to emphasize just like how small their lives are. And so they have these feelings for each other, but they can't express them. And the feelings are born out of like such like loneliness and sadness that I'm like, Like, is this even, I mean, it is romantic, but it is also, what is the nature of this romance?

11:58They just need something, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. It's tough stuff. Yeah. It's obviously being counteracted by two of the most beautiful screen stars of all time. I think like early 30s, probably. I think we're really flattering ourselves. I know, but I mean, both of those actors were making movies in the 80s, definitely, you know? Tony Wong was in movies in like 1985. five. But like spoiler alert, I guess there's a young son at the end of the movie that would indicate that we're sort of like early to mid 30s. There are a lot of images in this movie of characters not talking. Yeah. Which is very the opposite of what you expect from a Hollywood production.

12:41Right. Especially Hollywood television. The camera never looks at a person that doesn't talk. The camera never looks for a reaction. This is a movie of like quiet sometimes anguished, but mostly like recessed contemplation. And that in and of itself doesn't sound like it would be tremendously cinematic, but when you combine all of these various filmmaking techniques, so you mentioned the color already and that color manifests in the production design, in the spaces that they are in, especially in Maggie Chung's Chung Psalms, those dresses, which are just electrifying some of the most memorable and influential costumes in movie history.

13:21And then the music also is a major factor in making you feel a certain way. You know, Umeji's theme, which plays over and over again in this film. Another thing that I think is very influential on watch commercials. I think you've heard that score from another Japanese film that was made some 10 years earlier. Over and over again in various luxury goods commercials. But in this movie, it's used to, I think as this motif to create this sense of like, here we go again. I'm fucking lonely. Why won't I, why can't I be loved in this sad and difficult world? And I like the origins that Wong talks about with this film.

14:03You know, he's born in the late fifties and he, you know, moved from China to Hong Kong and he arrived in Hong Kong at a time of kind of great transition in that space where you had a lot of immigrants coming over from the mainland and there was this sense that there was like people attempting to experience high society in like lower class environs and like constantly showing us the elegance of this world suited men and women in elegant dresses but also like five noisy neighbors playing mahjong next door and like everybody lives in a sardine can yeah and that contrast of this human desire I think to live a bigger and more beautiful life that everybody has, right?

14:48Like everybody wants to be pulled from the mundanity that they're born into to be a little bit more special, a little bit more beautiful, a little bit more elegant. And to not be the person left at home. Yes. And they keep getting gifts that the husband brings home from, you know, like, oh, my husband is traveling abroad, But, you know, there's the rice cooker, there's the purse, there are the multiple purses. There are all sorts of, there is a sense that there is a bigger, brighter world out there that other people are living in. Yes. And. But also that you could be mollified by receiving these things.

15:32And then just sitting with your objects without having like the feeling of being in that world. Yeah. Which is, we do see this in a lot of mid-century American fiction. And Mad Men was very much about this. I would be very surprised if Matthew Wiener was not a fan of In the Mood for Love. Because there's a lot of similar ideas, at least, about the way that people live in this time in history. And it's very unusual. Because like I said, this movie is largely improvised. And they took a really long time to make it. And it sounds like it's very difficult to work with Wong. But Tony Leung has worked with him seven times.

16:05Maggie Chung has worked with him five times. So they understand his methodology. Yeah. I find watching a lot of his movies that there is like a kind of like chaos on the edges of the frame. And this is the only one really for me, maybe other, I guess this is maybe the beginning of a new era where like 2046 and The Grandmaster are these much more like tightly managed movies. And the earlier films feel very realized in real time. And so this movie being this kind of bridge between that painterly color theory that you're talking about, but also the idea of them like arriving on set and being like, what if we did it like this?

16:41Or what if we went to this location and did the same scene? And it does also, there are so many small moments in this movie or gestures or, you know, they're never words, but they are, whether it's Maggie Chung kind of like grabbing her hand, you know, grabbing her arm to express whatever. Then you can find them like running, you can imagine them running a bunch of times until they find like this moment, or I can see that you're doing this small thing with the, you know, with the way that you tilt your head, but in this frame, it communicates what we want to say about X, Y, Z. But you would have to run it a lot of times, I think, to find the moments that feel as unstudied as they do, but also as revealing.

17:29I agree. I was thinking about this in the context of chatting with Paul Thomas Anderson on the pod about one battle after another. And he said something in that conversation that I've been thinking about ever since, which is that they would go out and shoot a scene and then they would look at it and then they would go out the next day and they would shoot the same scene in a different way. And then they would go back and then they would look at it again and then they would shoot it a third time. And so he would take three days for individual scenes and reshoot them, which I'm sure plenty of people do this, but that's very unusual for a Hollywood movie.

18:03It's all about getting the scene. Getting what the plan is for the day. And it is more in the mode that we're talking about here with Wong Kar Wai, where you're able to kind of like look very closely at what you're capturing. And then if it's not working, dispense with it and go somewhere else and try something else. Or just a different gesture, as you're saying. Just touch your face in this way so I can get exactly what I want. Not what I have like enough money to pay for on this day because of the crunch of the circumstances, but we are being exacting in the way that a fine artist can be because they're working by themselves.

18:37Films don't usually work that way because so many people work on them and they cost so much money. Right. And that's another thing that I think makes this movie stand out from other films is you can feel that level of intentionality that is also defined by looseness. Right. Which is just a really cool paradox of movie making. And one of the things that I love reading about this movie, there's a huge feature in The New Yorker written by Kyle Chayka in which he talks about both the filmmaking and what went into it and then the ways in which it has gone into the world. Yes, yeah. And it's very insightful if you are interested in this movie, but it is one of those films that like, it's a bit like David Lynch's stuff, right?

19:19When it comes out and people are like, huh, this is really interesting. And then 20 years later, you're still talking about it and you're still unpacking it and you're still figuring it out. I did want to shout out William Chang Suk-Ping, who is, I think, the undersung hero of many of these Wong movies in part because he is the film editor, the production designer, and the costume designer on a bunch of his films. That's three big ones. Those are three important jobs in these movies especially. Right. And this movie is really cut. Right. Right? I mean, and that is the mood, the actual mood in The Mood for Love.

19:59The tone of the movie is encompassed in, you know, that plus music is what his job is. So. Another thing I wanted to point out is that this movie is only 98 minutes long. Yeah. But it feels long. Sure. They take their time. And like, it's on purpose, right? Yeah. It's not, a lot of times you say like, oh man, this movie felt like it was six hours long as a pejorative about a movie. This is a case where I think it's like, please sit inside of these feelings. Yes. You know, you're not allowed to look away from these people being unable to realize what they need. They're small events, but big feelings.

20:34And so it is supposed to be an epic, I think, of emotion or of melodrama. I think it wants you to really feel the sweeping nature of what's going on underneath, even if it's not happening on the screen. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support you in your passions. That's so true. I'm so grateful to have Sean support me as I explore my interest in 4Ks.

21:06Like those friends, State Farm is there to help you along the way with so many coverage options. It's nice knowing you have support in finding what fits for you. Go online at statefarm.com or use the award-winning app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Is this the greatest smoking film of the 21st century? Yeah, there's that one shot where some of the smoke is blue and some of the smoke is... I mean, it's really... How do they do that? Yeah, I don't know. Gels on the lights, perhaps? Good job, them. Yeah, it's really quite beautiful. Really, yeah.

21:40And yeah, I think the more times that I look at it, the more it feels like an outlier in this entire run of Hong Kong filmmakers. and it's interesting that it has become such a touchstone. Because it's the exception and this, well, I think, I mean, it does borrow from a lot of conventions that are more familiar to Western audiences, even as it's also breaking a lot of them. And it has a very particular style, but it is, you know, it is a period drama romance, you know? It's just like a more recent period than we're used to seeing. And there are a lot of, like, you know, they all have, like, office jobs.

22:32There is a sense of capitalism and all of these things underpinning all of it. So, you know, you can see, or maybe it's just that other people have translated it so often for us now that, one, we watch it. I mean, you know, I guess I saw this fairly soon after its release, but it is interesting to watch it after 25 years of In the Mood for Love, like being in pop culture and being disseminated in the way that you were discussing. And, you know, what did we recognize the first time we saw it versus what are we seeing now that it's been reflected back to us like 15 times? Yeah, I think that's probably going to continue to because it's a movie that, you know, Criterion issued all of Wong's movies in a box set maybe three years ago, which is when we had a conversation on this show.

23:18we did a whole episode about Wong's work with Justin Chang that people should go back and check out if they're interested in his movies. And this movie is reissued in 4K. 4K? 4K's quite beautiful. Good. If you're looking for an excuse to get a 4K player in the mood for love, it would be a reasonable one. Let's talk quickly about Tony Leung and Maggie Chung. So Maggie Chung doesn't really work anymore. Right. I don't think she's been in a movie in like 10 years. And she just kind of stepped away. There was a time when she was possibly considered the most beautiful person in movies. Yeah. For a pretty long stretch there.

23:55You know, that time between like, when she's a hero in like Police Story and the heroic trio all the way through Irma Vep, probably. And then you get this movie as a kind of like real, like her like true perfect romantic role. But her and Tony Leung are not, also not really known for movies like this. like most of their movies are action movies comedies you know Tony Leung you know last seen by most American audiences in Shang-Chi I think he's Shang-Chi's dad yeah he's pretty good in that and we saw this moment you know with Michelle Yeoh another actress in a cut from a very similar cloth she worked with both of these actors many times having like her grand Hollywood moment with everything all at once and winning and then booking like nine jobs in Hollywood movies after that and everyone being like yeah it is time that we acknowledge Michelle Yeoh.

24:49And it did have me thinking about these two actors. There's a handful of other actors who were in Wong's movies who I came to know and follow their work to other stuff. But they haven't quite had their... Among cinephiles, they're renowned. Right, right. But they're not in the pantheon of regular folk talking about Hollywood movies. Not that they need to be, but this is obviously an American movie podcast. So I kind of wanted to put a circle around them. I'm like, I wonder if there... Would there be a time when a filmmaker could convince Maggie Chung, could Steven Soderbergh convince Maggie Chung to come out of retirement and make a movie?

25:21I mean, it would be amazing. It would have to be that, right? And I think some of it is just that Michelle Yeoh actually did make everything everywhere all at once with the Daniels. And that was an unexpected moment all its own. Super deserving. But we were all like, wow, okay, this is just getting every Oscar. So it would be great. Yeah, yeah. Maybe she doesn't want to work though. Maybe she's just hanging out. I don't think she does. and God bless her. You know, I hope she's happy wherever she is right now. Maybe 15 months of this was enough, you know? Yeah, I think it's also because like those actors never had their like significant American crossover.

25:57Like Michelle Yeoh had Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Chow Yun-Fat became like a US movie star. That just never happened for these actors but they're incredible in this film. Restraint is so important and in action movies and in comedies, it's the opposite. Like it's like a very expressive acting style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, You need to be like over the top. And this movie is about... Stillness. Yes, exactly. And what can you read in the performer's stillness that is really challenging. So I think they're amazing in this film. Other musical choices? I've listened many times, probably because of this movie, to the Nat King Cole Spanish language album.

26:40I know that's probably a weird image when you're sitting alone in a room listening to Kisos, Kisos, Kisos. In what context are you putting it on? Just stark naked, four o 'clock in the morning. Just sitting quietly, sipping tea. Got it. Cool. Normal. And then all the score in the film, all the music. Music is like a huge part of Wong's style in general, but it's usually something a lot more like energetic. And this is, again, much more restrained. Yes. In Slema. Literally. Literally in slow motion. What do you think of the slow motion in this movie? I expect all of it. Like some of it is so, so much of it is like traditional and controlled and composed.

27:27And then at one point last night, I was like, wait, do I have this on like fast forward for some reason because some of the cuts and the subtitles and everything, like as you said, he's like, he's playing with pace and tempo. and so sure, why not? Like I expect that in this movie and I guess in a Wong Kar-wai movie in general. Yeah, like in Chunking Express, he does the same thing where he's like slowing down and you get that kind of like almost like flashing lights quality to some of the sequences. And yeah, he feels comfortable experimenting even in what could be like a pretty traditional staid film format.