'Fallen Angels'

Experimental Cinema

Wong Kar-Wai as an Auteur:

• Uses both Asian sensibility and New Wave stylisation
• Looks at Hong Kong's relationship with China introspectively rather than cynically
• Themes of connected identity
• Maintains a status as a 'Post-Modern Auteur'
• Creates moments linked both to history and personal
• Notions of identity
• Fusion of East and West
• Themes of love, loneliness and alienation that pervade protagonist
• Tension of past and present linked to memory, desire, time, space and environment
• Uses a wide variety of colour within his films reflect mood and/or tone
• Often starts making a film without finishing the script first
• Ambiguity of time
• Protagonists always searching, escaping or waiting
• Recreates the 60s era of New Wave to combine tradition and modernity
• Everyone Smokes
• Frames within Frames - Characters framed within camera are also framed within set
• Step Printing effect with protagonist acting in slow motion
• Recasting Actors

'Fallen Angels' Important Aesthetics:

• Jump Cuts and Non-Linear Editing
• Depths of Field (very shallow to fairly deep)
• Overwhelming sense of nostalgia
• Western Music with Easter Lyrics (reflect the fusion of cultures)
• Cramped Environments
• Voyeuristic
• Tinny Audio
• Extreme Wide Angle Lens to reflect distortion of emotion
• Smudge Motion/ Step-Printing
• Focus on Time, Memory and Emotions
• Frame-Within-Frame
• Clocks

Fallen Angels Unconventional Narrative Essay

Key Characters:
Killer
Killer's Agent
He Zhiwu
Charlie
Blondie

Narrative must be considered in terms of:
The conception of narrative based on the difference between narrative and plot.
Structuralist conception of narrative based on binary oppositions.
How narrative can function as an ideological framework.
Going against narrative conventions such as narrative arc, Todorov's theory of equilibrium and disequilibrium, Levi Strauss' theory on binary oppositions.
Discuss how character cab represent a symptom of the time.
Issues of narrative must be debated and negotiated.
May Mention Narrative in terms of:
Limited cause and effect
Lack of goal-directed plot
Significant temporal disorientation
Difficulty in identification/alignment/allegiance with character and situation
Multiplicity of information (parallel/simultaneous storylines)
Lack of Familiar and Obvious structuring principles (beginning, middle, end)

'Fallen Angels' is an interesting mix of experimental narrative and New Wave conventions. New Wave revolves around camera style expressing subtle emotions and inner thoughts. It breaks away from narrative form in order to liberate itself and express through more unobtrusive narrative technique. Jump Cuts, non-linear narrative and long takes are all markers of New Wave film.