#115: Happy together
Release Date: May 30th, 1997
Format: Theater (The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, CA)
Written by: Wong Kar-Wai
Directed by: Wong Kar-Wai
3.5 Stars
The greatest strength of Happy Together is also its greatest weakness. Director Wong Kar-Wai is able to capture incredibly powerful moments in his story of a torrential relationship between two Chinese men living abroad in Buenos Aires (strength), all the while his narrative can feel like it’s stuck in a low gear at times, revving its engine loudly but not really propelling us forward (weakness).
The devil’s advocate in me wants to say that Wong Kar-Wai took a 10-minute short film about a couple breaking up while on vacation and padded it out to its runtime of 96 minutes. This isn’t my actual belief, but there were times (especially in the first half) where I thought to myself, “Is Wong Kar-Wai aware that watching two people live wretchedly in the midst of a break up isn’t inherently interesting?”
To Wong Kar-Wai’s credit, I think this was his intention. We are stuck with these two hurtful lovers who are forced to live together in a small studio apartment out of extreme poverty and a lack of desire to return home to Hong Kong (probably because of the prejudice against gay men). They bicker, threaten, and assault each other, and generally live out a miserable existence.
But somewhere around the hour mark, when a third character, Chang, enters the picture, the movie’s scope broadens and other emotional tones are allowed in. Chang works with the more stable of the lovers, Fai, in a Chinese restaurant, and is also traveling abroad, from Taiwan. Chang, whose sexuality is left undetermined in the story, is a gentle, observant soul, and sees the pain in Fai’s speech and body language. He is eager to understand Fai and build a connection before he continues on his travels.
In as beautiful a moment as can exist in a film, the two are in a busy restaurant when Chang gets up to dance, and asks Fai to record him a message in his voice recorder so that he can take it with him when they finally part.
Fai tells him he doesn’t know what to say. Chang tells him to say something from the heart. Chang leaves the table to dance, but Wong Kar-Wai keeps his camera trained on Fai from across the table. The music is loud, we see Fai hit the record button, and then he begins weeping into the recorder. He looks utterly inconsolable, this poor man being asked to say something from the heart, a man whose heart has been breaking for months and months.
It’s a monumental scene.
Later the two do part, Chang continuing his travels abroad and Fai to Iguazu Falls, the destination that originally brought him and his lover to Argentina. While at the falls, we see that it’s not a singular fall, but rather two falls that crash into each other, sending torrents of water tumultuously into a dark abyss. The symbolism seems clear.
In somewhat of an epilogue, Fai returns home, with a layover in Taipei. There he wanders a busy market and is able to find the food stand run by Chang’s family. Fai sees a picture of Chang hanging on the wall of the stand and steals it, and the movie ends with his narration saying that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see Chang again, but he knows where to find him.
For what is often a tonally suffocating and uncomfortable movie, it’s a lovely sentiment to end on. As with the end of many relationships, it’s impossible to see beauty when the pain is so raw and encompassing. Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together knows that such things shall pass, like waters over a fall.
