In this blog, I want to address two styles of narration in films, stream of consciousness, and existentialism.
Taking Wong Kar Wai’s film Chungking Express as an example for the stream of consciousness, Wong once said in his interview that he barely had specific scripts for this movie. He wanted his character to “collide” and form natural chemistry between them. Chungking Express breaks the concept of time in the physical world, also avoid the traditional linear narration. The clips of reality, past and future, memory and imagination are cut and pasted into an order that Wong desired- that shows a fragmented flow of consciousness.
Chungking Express is a “collage” of two separate stories under the same time and space. The narration is also separated, where the fragments of two stories intertwine without logic but with the stand of the flow of emotion. The audience can feel that the story is separated in logic, but connected emotionally. They would also feel a sense of disordered, confusion and dazzling by the fragment. This truly reflects how life is. Life is in a state where it is barely consistent and disordered which makes us dizzy.
Now, when we go back to the idea of “World of Awe: The Traveler's Journal”, it becomes interesting how Chungking Express- a film consist of intertwined fragments- would bring an effect in different navigation. If we start watching Chungking Express in a different time, we would see different emotions in the characters.
If we start the movie from here:
We wouldn’t know the presence of other women in He Qiwu life in just the next six hours. "我们之间的距离只有O．01公分，6个小时后，我爱上了这个女人。"This randomness is significant emphasized by Director Wong to enhance the theme of distanced spirit of people in metropolis.
If we start from:
Then the emotion is completely different, the audience would start to wonder, why did He Qiwu fall in love with that woman?
The second example is an existentialist drama production Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett- a play that will tell the same story no matter where the entry points are. I see an implication of a disordered and boring state of mind- there are no climax and ending, or even a logical plot in the movie-, an unreasonable action in an uncomfortable social situation in the actor’s performance. The play appears to me unreasonable at first, but then a strange emotion is aroused in my mind. Why are they acting in a chaotic way that reflects their chaotic mind? Why is perfect human acting weirdly? I imagine here, an impossibility of rational communication, and a realistic but abstract presentation of disharmony between human and their environment. All these elements reflect the absurdness of life and the absurdness in the dramatic society of the post Second World War (when the film is written).
A clip from Waiting For Godot:
Video Credits:
Chungking Express: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrI0l5vOAwo
Waiting For Godot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMz1-Kgz_DI