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The World of Wong Kar Wai

I recently found a big picture and essay book about Wong Kar Wai on my bookshelf. I must have bought it years ago and, because I was so busy, never got around to reading it. These days, I have been sitting on the floor every morning and reading it cover to cover as I drink my coffee. The book inspired me to see his films again and I have been watching them one by one in chronological order.

One of the things I love about Wong Kar Wai and his cinematographer Christopher Doyle is the way they use strong colour casts to emphasize mood or setting or time. Often it is a prominent green, especially noticeable in Days of Being Wild, Fallen Angels and even In the Mood For Love. The photography in these films is so striking that on the first viewing, I end up misunderstanding the story because I am so focussed on the images alone. I have always loved these green steeped scenes the most.

Here is a famous example from the end of Fallen Angels:

My Fujifilm X100T

This 10 year old camera is the only digital camera I have ever owned. By today’s standards, it is pretty old technology but I still love it. I have always been able to capture any picture in my imagination with this little machine. If you are interested, I describe it in a more detail at this link.

A few days ago, I decided to try to take some green toned pictures. I wanted to see if I could make some images that come close to the ones I love in the Wong Kar Wai films. I did this by manipulating the white balance of the camera and pushing it hard to the green side. How to do this is not really that interesting so I won’t go into it here but, if you want to know more about it, there are lots of good articles on the subject. Usually, you manipulate the white balance to keep your colours more natural under different kinds of light (like sunlight vs LED lightbulbs indoors). I did the opposite, manipulating white balance to get unnatural colour tones.

Here are a few of the pictures I like the best

I just took pictures of regular things..no extra effort to make cinematic compositions this time…

On my way home to write this post today, I was thinking..

Ever since I was little, if you asked me what my favourite colour is, I would say “green”. Always. The green of the sea, the green of the forest, the green of kelp and algae, the green of moss. Always green.

As I was walking home and thinking about writing this, I was listening to Luminescent Creatures, Ichiko Aoba’s new record. I only know a few words in Japanese but, every now and then, a word will pop out and stay with me… most often just because I like the sound. On the last track, which is so beautiful that I listened to it twice today, the word was “midori” 緑. When I got home and looked it up, it turns out to be the Japanese for word for “green”.

When I rolled that word around in my mind a little further, I realized that I had heard it before. In the movie Norwegian Wood (adapted from Haruki Murakami’s novel of the same name), lead character Toru Watanabe’s true love interest is named Midori. This film, directed by Tran Anh Hung, is full of vibrant green…just like his other famous film, The Scent of Green Papaya. And the cinematographer for Norwegian Wood was Mark Lee Ping-Bing who also worked on Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love. So many connections…

Green, my favourite colour. Green, the colour of summer. Midori…something beautiful. Green has been in my heart for the last few weeks. Maybe because it is mid summer after a rainy spring and the whole city is flooded with shades of green. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I really like them. I will keep working on it.

If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below. I am always happy to hear from you : )