SummaryIn his first hypnotic backward glance at Hong Kong in 1960, Wong Kar Wai creates a post-modern La Ronde set in a fluorescent labyrinth of cool desperation and unfulfilled need. Against the echoing rhythms of period rumbas, Days of Being Wild (1991) tracks a half dozen characters through their individual searches for intimate connection. ...
SummaryIn his first hypnotic backward glance at Hong Kong in 1960, Wong Kar Wai creates a post-modern La Ronde set in a fluorescent labyrinth of cool desperation and unfulfilled need. Against the echoing rhythms of period rumbas, Days of Being Wild (1991) tracks a half dozen characters through their individual searches for intimate connection. ...
Days of Being Wild delivers as expected: a highly aesthetic and enjoyable film. You can feel the humidity of melancholy summer nights and sense the fatalistic but untragic vibe the characters give off. This is quintessential HK cinema and easy to recommend.
when i watched the film ,it makes me to feel that oh you are watching something **** an unusual movie. iam deeply impressed by the director kar wai wong who made this inexplicable movie. the characters in the film make us emotionally attached to them ,even after we watched the film.....
Sometimes cinema's highest achievements become clear only in retrospect. Days of Being Wild--now clearly revealed as one of the peaks of Hong Kong filmmaking and a masterwork of contemporary cinema giant Wong.
Wild is a relative term for Wong Kar-wai, the master of cinematic languor. You can feel the tension in his second film between genre excitement (there are jarring bursts of violence) and the languid sort of yearning that would become his trademark. These Days of Being Wild are both electric and exhausted.
In many ways, Days of Being Wild anticipated the overall pattern of its writer-director-auteur's haunting career, with this genuinely wild story of casual sexual encounters and obsessions across East Asian locales traversed by rootless characters crammed up in Hong Kong's dream factories. [29 Nov 2004, p.27]
As much as it also has a twisty, and hazy plot as the other Wong Kar-wai's movies that I've seen so far, Days of Being Wild's narrative feels more controlled. Even the seemingly unfocused nature of its storyline can be justified this time, as its despicable protagonist, Yuddy, is a nihilistic character.
The same goes with the tech aspect. The expressive beauty of this movie doesn't often stem from the hypnotic colors, and numbing lights like Chungking Express, or Fallen Angels, instead it comes from the demonstrative use of tight framing that also provided us with some astonishingly good-looking shots.
Yuddy is an extremely obnoxious character that you can't emphasize with. That said, I didn't hate him, simply because I found the fact the woman who raised him refuses to reveal his real mother's name so agonizing. To top it all, Rebecca Pan, who played his adoptive mother, gave such a provocative performance that I couldn't help hate her character so much that I kinda rooted for Yuddy.
The realistic method most scenes are shot with made me connect with every character on the screen, even if their actions may sometimes feel implausible. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough to make me convinced one hundred percent. I found two central characters' feelings and doings far from being reasonable. As these two characters are seen very much from the outside, and lacking real depth, at least to justify their actions.
The editing is pretty exquisite, and also indicative. However, it was quite messy and distracting near the end. It deprived me from being fully satisfied. Some scenes could have been so heartbreaking, but they ended up being jumbled and muddled up. On the other hand, the ending itself is quite devastating, and has all the movie's emotional impact.
I think this movie features the best use of music among the other two Wong Kar-wai's movies that I've watched. Besides that it's so moving, it expresses Yuddy's emotions and feelings, nay his psyche.
(8/10)
Can not tie unconnected stories into a central theme. "Birds without legs" imagery is forced. Narrative is Inconsistent (use of several inner voices, addressing the audience). Caricature eccentric mother, a girl starting with a dramatic effect but ending up as a meek character...
Promises something but clearly over-valued.