Chungking Express
The opening shots of the "Chungking Express" set the pace: hurrying people, flashing lights, the noise of cars non-stop motion that fills metropolis.
Two love stories that don’t intersect at first. Two police officers, whom we know under the service numbers 223rd and 633rd, have broken up with their fair ones. Both characters are similar to each other with their eccentricities. One can’t forget the girl who dumped him, and as a symbol of expired love every day he buys canned pineapples with a shelf life - the 1st of May. And he eats all of the 30 purchased cans at a time. The second one can’t forget the girl who dumped him, and he talks with a piece of soap, a teddy bear and his shirt. They have two objects of passion: the first is a drug dealer that gets into serious problems; the second - a weird worker of an eatery who has unintentionally laid her hands on the keys of the apartment of the apple of her eye, and this girl decided to get into this apartment to slowly, but surely change his life for better.
It seems that these two parallel novels have nothing in common, but in fact they’re an organic whole, it’s one scene from one movie. When I decided to choose one scene to describe, I determined to take these two love stories because they look like one scene and go side by side with each other, and the audience enjoys them and watches the movie in one breath.
Both stories start from feeling of loneliness and finish with a sense of hope, though, admittedly, the story of the police officer with a waitress is more twisted, more emotional, and at the same time it has a final. But in the end both stories leave room for fantasy and imagination. But the essence of each is the emotional torment, ambivalence of feelings, randomness of life and its gifts, sadness, loneliness, unexpected discoveries and unexpected hope - in my opinion, they are shown very clearly, though, terribly calm.
Yes. A distinctive feature of these novels and the film as a whole is its total calm, which isn’t lost even during the dynamic moments, especially when the director artificially suppresses or hinders any of spectator’s attempts to "be excited" and to get out of a balanced perception, by making the slow motion at every emotional decision of a character.
Two storylines collide in the middle of the film, literally, the characters stumble upon each other and separate, barely glancing each other. For me it was a complete surprise because here I expected something great and outstanding would happen. In my opinion, this scene shows the collision of two so similar and yet completely different human worlds. And I failed to figure out who had become my favorite character because in the end I liked both novels, which I joined in one scene, in one story of life. And in this story one can draw a parallel with their own life and find a bit of each character in themselves.
Work Cited
MegaJingjo. “Chung King Express”. Online video. YouTube. YouTube, 5 Dec. 2012. Web. 10 March 2016.
