JANUARY 15
Films:
Happy Together (Wong 1997) DVD 047/ Blu-Ray 288
excerpt from:
Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai 1990) DVD 1160
Joe McElhaney. “Happy Together.” Senses of Cinema.
Robin Wood. “Big Game: Confessions of an Unreconstructed Humanist.” (in course reader)
This is a film that makes extraordinarily bold formal choices at
every turn. Wong tries everything here, and part of the thrill of the movie is
seeing how he lurches from hyper saturated color to black and white and back,
the way the camera flies past the lighthouse in a series of dizzying cuts near
the end, the slow motion dinner or that stunning aerial view of a waterfall set
to Astor Piazolla. Your assignment this week is to pick one formal element of
your choosing – the use of color, camera movement, music, anything at all that
fascinates you – and discuss how it functions in one scene. I want you to speak
specifically, not generally – if, for instance, you are intrigued by the depth
of color, then you should pick two or three shots to discuss at length, keeping
in mind how they work in the context of the film. I don't want two pages of “he
moves from black and white to color a lot.” The idea is to write about a specific instance where he does
in great detail and to talk about the impact when he does so.
Needless to say, to do this right you may need to review the film.
There are two copies on reserve in the film library, and last time I checked,
it was also available, though with Spanish subtitles only, on YouTube.
