Absence and Presence and the Disintegration of the Space - Essay Example

Absence and Presence and the Disintegration of the Space-Time Continuum in Kar Wai’s (2006) In the Mood for Love June 8, 2014 The music swayed, as well as their bodies, but never did these bodies fully meet to consume its sensual melody. Kar Wai’s (2000) film, In the Mood for Love, has its setting in Hong Kong and Cambodia during the 1960s. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung), a journalist, rents an adjacent room (that Mr. Koo (Man-Lei Chan) owns) to Su Li-zhen or Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung), a secretary of a shipping firm, and they both transfer their belongings on the same time and day. Mrs. Chan’s landlady is Mrs. Suen (Rebecca Pan), a conservative, mahjong player. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan both have spouses who work late at night and are always away from home, until they realize that the latter have an illicit affair with one another. From there, the movie shows how sound can support the visual imagery of broken faith and blooming love in times of tensions in Hong Kong and Cambodia. Sound functions to support visual images through expressing the theme of the role of absence and presence of people and objects in the space-time continuum in representing the out-of-time-ness of two loves, the illicit and the platonic, in an urban society that is changing from conservatism to liberalism in sexuality and materialism. Kar Wai (2000) uses sound to demonstrate that the absence of the actual faces of the spouses engaged in the affair ironically highlights the presence of their affair and how it ruins their marriage. He does not show what these spouses look like at all, and instead, he uses sound to describe who they are as individuals and as spouses. As individuals, Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow are always physically separated from their spouses. The first time that the audience sees Mrs. Chow is when she is running hastily across the stairs, while Mrs. Chan is walking on an opposite direction. The sounds of their footsteps sound hollow in the Byzantine stairway. These steps have the tone of loneliness in their singleness. Mrs. Chow is not with Mr. Chow, so there is already a foreshadowing that she will never be actually with her husband as a wife. Lee (2008) argued that invisibility on the film represents the presence of something else that is more important. She cites Brunette (2005) who talked about “formidable absent preferences” (p.89) in the film and Brofen (1992) who said that the uncanny is shown as mobile because it is a “situation of undecidability… the uncanny in some sense always involves the question of visibility/invisibility, presence to/absence from sight” (p.114 as cited in Lee, 2008, p.130). These authors highlight that by showing what cannot be seen, the uncanny becomes more ironically present in the minds of the viewers and the involved characters of the film. Mrs. Chow is the unfaithful wife, and her absence is one of the main presences that disrupt her marriage and the potential relationship between Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan. Sound is used to suggest the full meaning of the absence of characters in the film. Mr. Chan is also hidden from the audience like Mrs. Chow, for his absence is also a strong presence that haunts the film, which sound shows through symbolism. The audience sees him for the first time during a mahjong game inside the apartment. Shigeru Umebayashi’s “Yumejis Theme” plays in the background. The non-diegetic sound plays with the visual imagery to underscore the absence of the spouses’ faces. Mr. Chan’s face, like Mrs. Chow’s, is never seen. Instead, these unfaithful spouses’ backs are shown in long or medium shots. During this scene, the Chows and Chans are surrounded by other players, but they do not show any real affection towards their spouses. If anything, Mrs. Chan is the one who puts her arms around Mr. Chan’s shoulders. Mr. Chan’s back is seen as he focuses on the play. His concentration on the game underlines his lack of attention on his wife. The film does not show his face, but the sound and imagery work together in revealing who he is. The mise-en-scene of this mahjong game emanates the humid weather with the electric fan slowly moving. “Yumejis Theme” sounds mysterious, as if suggesting that future events are also shrouded in secrecy that is too heated for any decent person to handle. Thus, the absence of faces is a mystery and point of departure from the cultural norms of marriage. Once again, “Yumejis Theme” demonstrates to show the growing time-space disjointedness in the movie. The first scene that shows Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow going to their favorite noodle stall alone is accompanied by this diegetic music. The way that the visual images are presented combines with “Yumejis Theme” to underscore loneliness in out-of-time-ness (Lee, 2008, p.132). The close-up shot of Mrs. Chan’s noodle container and her movement across the dark, dingy aisle, and downstairs to the noodle stall captures the sense of isolation in urban settings. The mise-en-scene of Mrs. Chan in the middle of cooking activities and conversations in medium shot presents the absence of her spouse and meaningful interpersonal communications. Her face looks sad and she appears to be thinking. Mrs. Chan is always eating alone, as well as Mr. Chow. He later enters the same stairway. The camera follows him too downward the stall. In a close-up shot of his face in sideway, he chews his food while in deep contemplation. He must be putting the pieces of the puzzle together because he finds out that his wife blatantly lies to him about her work schedule. Their circumstances of eating alone and analyzing their spouses’ absences are the evidence of the presence of something else. The out-of-time-ness suggests a presence that is surfacing- the revelation of enlightenment for these spouses about the affair that explains why time and space are also disjointed for their marriages. The disconnection of time and space also signifies the role of fate in human destiny. Time and space are not connecting during the recently mentioned scene at the noodle stall because of how Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow missed each other by perhaps a minute or so. It as if fate controls their destiny, so that it can choose the time of their meeting and non-meeting. The same fate disconnects them again at the end. Mr. Chow goes back to Mr. Koo’s unit after years of not hearing from Mrs. Chan. He looks out the window, as he listens to the new renter of the unit talking about a mother and son renting Mrs. Suen’s unit. He smiles when the man says that the boy is cute, as if remembering how he must have also found Mrs. Chan attractive too. The close up shot shows the surroundings behind him, the moving blurred shadow of a man he does not know, a dirty window and curtain with blue flowers. Domestic life surrounds his but he is without a family of his own. In addition, the diegetic sound increases in volume as Mr. Chow leaves the unit, and this music is Nat King Cole’s “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás” which means “perhaps.” Mr. Chow stops by the door where Mrs. Chan once lived. The cut goes to his back, as he is shown in sideways, gazing with nostalgia at the door. The music is saying that, perhaps if he knocked, he would have seen Mrs. Chan again. Nonetheless, their fate is already sealed to be ended a long time ago, which is reinforced when the film shows the sounds of receding footsteps and the words, “That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore” (Kar Wai, 2000). The impact of the absence of image and the insertion of words is that the audience has to think of the dramatic irony of life through simple missed encounters. Sound shows that time and space are also disconnected probably because of fate’s power over human conditions. Besides describing fate’s power, one of the scenes shows how Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan act out their spouses’ betrayal where sound serve the purpose of supporting the meaning of what the characters are doing. In this scene, they pretend that they are their spouses. The non-diegetic music is Nat King Cole’s “Aquellos Ojos Verdes” (“Those Green Eyes”). The music fits their situation because its tone is romantic, and they are being romantically involved through seeing each other often. At the same time, the close-ups of their faces show the reverse shot of them seeing each other in the eye, as well as seeing who their spouses truly are. The sounds of eating and utensils and their conversations undercut the normalcy of the scene. It is not normal at all for them to eat together, but their presence together is a mask for the absence of their spouses and the feelings of misery and revenge. Apart from re-enactments of betrayal, the dominance of “Yumejis Theme” in the film represents the changing economic and cultural conditions of Hong Kong too through the economic and sexual empowerment of women. As women like Mrs. Chan and Mrs. Chow earn their own money, they also earn the right to control their bodies. During the mahjong game, “Yumejis Theme” plays to compliment the sensuality of these wives’ bodies. All of a sudden, their physical aspects become prominent, and competition between them becomes clear as one body (Mrs. Chan’s) becomes replaced with another (Mrs. Chow’s). The camera pans to the left slowly, as if trying to glimpse more into the mahjong game. It represents the psychological voyeurism of looking into the lives and loves of two couples in contemporary Hong Kong where sexuality is more expressed through visible female bodies. Their economic empowerment becomes a source of their sexual empowerment too. Unfortunately, economic and gender empowerment to some extent did not help these women at all in resolving their marriage conflicts. “Yumejis Theme” plays sadly in a sensual setting where human relationships are falling apart. Kar Wai (2000) uses sound to reinforce or support the visual images of isolation, betrayal, and disconnection. Though Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow develop a platonic relationship, this relationship is doomed because they are decent people who will not stoop to their spouses’ level. The film employs sounds that show how inner beliefs contradict people’s emotions for one another. Finally, sound is a powerful expression of the symbolism of love in a materially and politically-changing world, a love that is meant to be started, but never meant to be fulfilled. References Lee, C. (2008). “We’ll always have Hong Kong: Uncanny spaces and disappearing memories in the films of Kar Wai. In C. Lee (Ed.), Violating time: History, memory, and nostalgia in cinema (pp.124-141). New York: The Continuum International Publishing Book. Kar Wai, W. (Director & Producer). (2000). In the mood for love. Hong Kong: Jet Tone Films Ltd. Read More