Abstract
This chapter explores the representation of time in the films of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai. Wong’s films display a strong fascination with temporality, its construction, deconstruction, fragmentation, reconstruction, projection, and retrospection. Memory, nostalgia, and amnesia are recurrent motifs in Wong’s films. His film art embodies the principles of the “time-image” in modern cinema, which is a cinema of fragmentation, self-reflexivity, paradox, double and multiple temporalities, non-linear narrative, and inconclusive endings. Using Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of “movement-image” and “time-image,” the chapter looks at various configurations of time in Wong Kai-wai’s films. It focuses especially on Wong’s informal trilogy: Days of Being Wild (1990), In the Mood for Love (2000), and 2046 (2004), in which Wong uses exemplary time-images to explore problems of time and memory in the changing geopolitical and psychosocial landscapes of Hong Kong, attempting to open up a space for its past to negotiate with its unknown future.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
2046. Directed by Wong Kar-wai. 2004. Hong Kong: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2005. DVD.
As Tears Go By. Directed by Wong Kar-wai. 1988. Tartan DVD, 2005. DVD.
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken.
Bettinson, Gary. 2009. Happy Together? Generic Hybridity in 2046 and In the Mood for Love. In Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, ed. Warren Buckland, 168–186. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Bogue, Ronald. 2003. Deleuze on Cinema. London: Routledge.
Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten. 2008. Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, and Wong Kar-wai. Lexington: Lexington Books.
Boym, Svetlana. 2002. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.
Chunking Express. Directed by Wong Kar-wai. 1994. London: Artificial Eye, 2009. DVD.
Days of Being Wild. Directed by Wong Kar-wai. 1990. Tartan DVD, 2005. DVD.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 1989. Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fallen Angels. Directed by Wong Kar-wai. 1995. London: Artificial Eye, 2012. DVD.
Flaxman, Gregory. 2002. The Brain Is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of worldmaking. Vol. 51. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Gheorghe, Cezar. 2013. Bazin Meets Deleuze: The ‘Fact-Image’ and ‘Pure Optical Situations’ in Italian Neo-Realism. Film & Media Studies 1: 93–99.
In the Mood for Love. Directed by Wong Kar-wai. 2000. Tartan DVD, 2001. DVD.
Lee, Vivian P.Y. 2016. Infidelity and the Obscure Object of History. In A Companion to Wong Kar-wai, ed. Martha P. Nochimson, 378–396. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Luk, Thomas Y.T. 2005. Novels into Film: Liu Yichang’s Tête-Bêche and Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love. In Chinese-language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. eds. Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Y. Yeh. 210–219. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Martin-Jones, David. 2006. Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: Narrative Time in National Contexts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Martin-Jones, David, and William Brown (eds.). 2012. Deleuze and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Moulard-Leonard, Valentine. 2008. Bergson-Deleuze Encounters: Transcendental Experience and the Thought of the Virtual. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Powell, Anna. 2007. Deleuze, Altered States and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Rushton, Richard. 2012. Cinema After Deleuze. New York: Bloomsbury.
Wilson, Flannery. 2009. Viewing Sinophone Cinema Through a French Theoretical Lens: Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood For Love and 2046 and Deleuze’s Cinema. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 21 (1): 141–173.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hou, D.X., Lu, S.H. (2017). The Time-Image and the Unknown in Wong Kar-wai’s Film Art. In: Baumbach, S., Henningsen, L., Oschema, K. (eds) The Fascination with Unknown Time. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66438-5_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66438-5_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-66437-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-66438-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)