Letting the pineapple turn

Sunday night after the jam session at Joshua’s house, Marco, Josh and Angie, and myself sat down and watched Wong Kar Wai’s seminal hitman piece “Fallen Angels” (or as it is known in the East, “Duoluo tianshi”). This was the first time I saw the piece and I have to say that I was quite impressed.
According to Josh, this film is a direct follow-up to Kar Wai’s own Chunking Express, and as there are numerous similarities between the two, the connection is palpable. For instance, a main character in this film, He Zhiwu, claims to have lost his voice after eating an expired tin of pineapple. If you’ve seen Chunking Express, you will recall that one of the film’s characters, He Zhiwu, collected and ate tins of expired pineapples. While there is no direct connection between the two characters in either film’s narration, it’s still a curious reference.
Anyhow, I was most impressed by this film because of several reasons:

One of the finer performances.

1. It’s structure. It’s clear that Kar Wai’s films have a unique structure all their own. Most often this is achieved through his improv shooting, which often leads to him piecing a story together (literally) in the editing room. He followed through on this style in Chunking Express, but I have to say that I felt like his attempt here was considerably more effective. The story really had a unique structure and style of editing. Whereas it was unique and workable in Chunking Express, here it was the defining drive behind the film.

2. The spine. This story really had a strong spine that followed through from beginning to end. Although much of it was probably improv, toyed around with and left unsure until the moment of editing, there was an unmistakable sense of direction to this film. It established a strong beginning and delivered with a strong end. And each character had a line of development that they followed throughout the film, sometimes to heartbreaking results. This was well done.

The film's token conflicted hottie.
3. The atmosphere. If this film succeeds especially well in one particular area, it succeeds in creating a suffocating, vivid, strung-out atmosphere. With every scene set entirely at night, this film never lets up for a moment on the enclosed, overwhelming harshness of the city. Everyone is either crammed away in a dingy little apartment, an ice cream truck or a restaurant that barely has enough room to stand up in, let alone sit down. (Most of the time, this seems to be achieved with a telephoto lens, which never lets up on the actors) Someone commented on IMDB that this establishes a proficient commentary on the backlash of modern life, also known as “The Walkman Syndrome”. A key sequence in the film, showing a main character spacing out while a terrible fight breaks out behind her, underscores this theory perfectly.

I enjoyed Chunking Express, but Fallen Angels is a film that I would watch again and again. It may even be a film I wouldn’t mind adding to my own collection.