Chungking Express
Films that shaped it
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The way I feel about Wong Kar-wai and Chungking Express, is I’m always surprised by the things people say influenced Moonlight because I never thought of them. But I do think Chungking Express and Happy Together are two of the films I constantly rewatch and they just permeate my being, so it’s impossible for them not to show up in the work.
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The way I feel about Wong Kar-wai and Chungking Express, is I’m always surprised by the things people say influenced Moonlight because I never thought of them. But I do think Chungking Express and Happy Together are two of the films I constantly rewatch and they just permeate my being, so it’s impossible for them not to show up in the work.
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Breathless Atlas note
The way I feel about Wong Kar-wai and Chungking Express, is I’m always surprised by the things people say influenced Moonlight because I never thought of them. But I do think Chungking Express and Happy Together are two of the films I constantly rewatch and they just permeate my being, so it’s impossible for them not to show up in the work.
Films it shaped
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Barry Jenkins has cited Claire Denis's Beau Travail as a foundational influence, the film that showed him how to use the body, light, and music as primary storytelling tools rather than dialogue. Moonlight's fragmented structure, its use of color as emotion, its willingness to let silence carry meaning, these are lessons from Denis and Wong Kar-wai. Beau Travail is streaming on Criterion Channel and is one of the most beautiful films ever made.
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Wong Kar-wai's films, especially Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together, were very important to me for their use of pop music and how they create a sense of melancholy and urban loneliness. I thought about them a lot.
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Lost in Translation Atlas note
Sofia Coppola has said she wanted Lost in Translation to feel like a Wong Kar-wai film set in Tokyo, the same grammar of longing, the same two people in a city who almost connect and then don't. In the Mood for Love is the direct model: desire as proximity, missed by centimeters. Ozu's Tokyo Story is the other ancestor, the city as a place where people pass each other in corridors without ever really meeting.
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Her Atlas note
Her is Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love reimagined as near-future science fiction. Spike Jonze has cited Wong extensively, the longing, the missed connections, the way time and memory warp desire, the use of color and texture as emotional registers. Theodore Twombly and Samantha's relationship has the same impossible quality as Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung across a thin wall, present and absent simultaneously. In the Mood for Love is on Criterion Channel and is one of the great romantic films ever made.
