Dreamscapes from the Mind’s Ear: Musical Chronotopes in Two Wong-kar Wai Films

Abstract

A Fei jingjyuhn/Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai, 1990) and Chun gwong cha sit/Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997) enclose their respective stories with sequences whose audio-visual configuration turns them into set pieces in themselves. The distinctive temporal and spatial dimensions of these plot-less excerpts transform them into what I call here, after Bakhtin, ‘musical chronotopes’: time-space capsules that elicit heightened listening and contemplation. In both cases, natural landscapes acquire a metaphorical dimension through the use of bird’s-eye view angles, intensely coloured images, and slow camera movements, features determined by the songs that escort them. The instrumental version of “Always in My Heart” in Days of Being Wild, and “Cucurrucucú Paloma” in Happy Together, unfold stories that traverse the Pacific from the Americas all the way to South East Asia, expressing unattainable longings, and carrying different temporalities with them. These natural environments, envisioned as locations of personal fulfilment, at first totally enveloped by music, end up being sites of loss for the characters, and then, music remains in the background, letting a different soundscape be foregrounded. Not real places any more, the Philippine rainforest and the Argentinian Iguazú Falls emerge as images from the characters’ ‘minds’ eye’.