Even bad movies can remind you of good songs.
An LG fantasy if I ever heard one. Makes me wanna bob my head like that blondie in the video. What is the deal with that beat? Syncopation? Something's going on there and it's heavenly.
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So first things first, a confession: I am a full-on Wong Kar Wai (the director of said movie) fanboy. But even I will admit MBN was pretty bad; his worst movie except possibly for his first film, which was a shameless Mean Streets rip-off. Something must have been lost in translation (this was his first non-Cantonese movie). Although this is a great song his use of it in the movie was cringe-worthy. Could it have been more obvious? And the thing is, his soundtracks are usually one of his strong suits (of course, I mostly don't understand the lyrics of the songs in his movies so perhaps they are also as cringe-worthy).
Ironically, I had thought about posting to this blog regarding his use of California Dreaming in his very fine Chungking Express in response to the posting of the video of said song a while back. It must be used more times in that movie than any song has ever been used in any movie before or since. So the long and short of it is, don't let MBN turn you off one of the great directors of the last 25 years. Especially if you are interested in depictions of love and it's fallout in ways both beautiful and affecting. Chungking Express is a fine place to start, as it's certainly his happiest movie, but I would also highly recommend Fallen Angels (a good one to watch in a double feature with CE, as they are related), Happy Together (beautiful location shoots in Buenos Aires, the always great Tony Leung Chiu Wai, and an amazing helicopter shot over Iguazu Falls with Caetano Veloso singing Cucurrucu Paloma, a song I don't understand the words to, but I know what he's singing about) and the truly magnificent In the Mood for Love (an ode to love, as well as a time and place, rarely matched). They are generally melancholy but also leavened with humor. WKW (along with his regular DP Chris Doyle and set designer/editor William Chang) is truly a visual poet of love, memory and loss.
Now that I've raved so much, they will prolly be a letdown, but honestly don't let MBN dissuade you from watching other things by him. If nothing else they are notably better than that one.
Thanks for the WKW briefer. It just so happens that Chungking Express is definitely one of my favorite movies - you might even call me a fangirl. I had heard all the bad things about My Blueberry Nights, but I couldn't imagine him making something so atrociously obvious and boring. I had to turn it off because all I could think about was posting to the blog about this song.
The soundtrack in general was puzzling -- several of the songs were personal favorites (i.e. Cat Power), but their placement in the plot (and perhaps even the fact that they were simply familiar) made me roll my eyes and definitely took away from my enjoyment of the (sub-par) story. Which makes me think that soundtracks are better filled with original or at least more obscure musical tracks. It's a rare moment when I appreciate a well known song in a movie (Wes Anderson comes to mind).
Feedback?
I'm glad you dig on the WKW! Chungking Express was a revelation for me when I saw it in the theater and until MBN he hasn't let me down.
On the soundtrack front, in general, I am always a little suspicious of foregrounded use of music in movies as it's often a copout used by people who don't have the skill of cinematic storytelling. But I think it maybe has less to do with familiarity than it does with words. Music, like books, allows for greater autonomy from the end-user (so to speak), meaning that there is more ambiguity. You get to paint a bit of the picture yourself in a way that film doesn't allow as much space for. In this regard familiarity isn't necessarily helpful in that you instantly have an idea what the song means for you, but I think the larger issue is in the words in general. Film not only has the (immense) power of the visual images, but typically has its own words as well. There is still some ambiguity, but naturally, the more of your senses that are being fed the less meaning you have to create in your head. In the example of Try a Little Tenderness, I think the issue isn't that the song is very familiar, it's that the film has already bludgeoned us with the message and the use of the song feels like overkill (or even an insult to your intelligence). And to be honest, it could have been a million and one other songs about the same topic that was used. And, as you well know, 999,000 of those songs (or more, depending on how charitable yer feeling) would have been vastly inferior to Otis Redding and would have made the scene excruciating whether you were familiar with them or not. Finally, I will add that if that's as far as you got in the movie (i.e., you didn't watch till Norah Jones made it out west and met Natalie Portman), count yourself lucky as you missed the most unbearable parts of the movie.
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