Fallen Angels Review

Review and analysis of Fallen Angels

Fallen Angels: a film which emphatically proves Wong Kar Wai’s mastery of cinematic technique, and how he integrates this with an artistic vision.

Yet Fallen Angels is also a film that constantly challenges the viewer to reject it, its vision and execution frequently being at odds with, not just convention, but the limits of narrative and character extremes. Its technique creates a unique connection, yet the film uses this in a variety of bizarre, extreme situations, playing against an audience’s gut instinct to prejudge. The result is an incredible tapestry of feeling utterly out of kilter with the constraints of basic narrative.

The underlying structure of the film consists of two stories, combined thematically and geographically, though separated by tone and markedly independent by plot. However, unlike Chungking Express’s consecutive structuring of the stories, here WKW allows the plots to interweave, to start and stop, hang and jump. The story which starts first consists of Leon Lai in the role of a hired killer, who works (though seldom meets) with agent Michelle Reis. This narrative is heavy in moody contemplation and contrasts with the second story to start, which has Takeshi Kaneshiro playing a mute street urchin who indulges in petty crime whilst blundering around night time Hong Kong meeting and antagonising all manner of characters.

The first story provides the film’s defining, powerful opening shot, relating to a scene late in the narrative, where we have Michelle, shot in close up, black and white, in the film’s characteristic, claustrophobic wide-angle lens, asking Leon, ‘are we still partners’, an apparently simple question. But, already we can see how the question is emotionally loaded, and attempting an answer even at the end of the story is difficult. What the shot sets up is the tension of defining, and perhaps resolving Leon and Michelle’s connection, yet dealing with the confines of audience expectations and cinematic conventions as to how relationships are formed and where they lead. Deliberately, WKW provides us with facts through the medium of Leon’s voice-over - ‘I’ve been working with her for 155 weeks... this is the first time we’ve sat together’ - presented as objective fact but signalling the connection between both characters as being more important than the mundane words suggest. This gives us the suggestion that the emotional relationship is the core of the story, despite the unlikeliness of it in the face of such facts. The facts themselves are also the beginning of a penchant in Fallen Angels for extreme premises that create an inherent disparity in normality and expectation.

Yet the basic focus of the story seems simple: Leon wants out from his profession. For most films this would be enough of a premise to drive an entire narrative, but WKW decides to delve deeper. The classic existentialist dilemma is presented as Leon tells us he ‘must make a decision’. This occurs after he closely survives an ambush, suggesting that the danger of his profession is his reason for wanting to leave (‘I hate digging bullets out of myself’). Yet this obvious reasoning doesn’t tally with his start of film monologue where he expounds on how partners mustn’t become close - the real dilemma is his connection with Michelle. Michelle pines for him in an obvious manner, despite his absence, yet she maintains a limit on her intimacy (‘Get close to someone and they become boring’). We have no direct indication of exactly what Leon feels, but his non-moving relationship with Michelle is contrasted with his fast starting hook-up with Karen Mok (beginning in, of all places, McD’s). The dilemma of choice is pre-empted by the first scene, and so the audience spend most of the film trying to guess Leon’s decision.

However, in the end WKW abandons two likely outcomes (i.e., choosing either woman) in favour of a third, seemingly illogical solution of rejecting both for another fate. This ‘third way’ is not unique to Fallen Angels, as WKW does something similar in the outcome of In The Mood For Love: the protagonists don’t unite, but neither do they retract to their old relationships. The effect of the choice in both films is both refreshing and tragic - by throwing off the manacles of a constricting (often genre-dictated) choice, the characters attain an independence of existence (Leon says, ‘At least the decision is my own’). Yet in neither film is there any glossing over the substance of the outcome: both choices result in tragedy and sadness - this is why the decisions seem so illogical. What WKW appears to be showing is that the freedom of the choice is an uplift in itself, especially given that his characters are often stuck in existential paralysis dwelling on their pasts. The actual consequences are tragic and sad, which forces us to recognise that the uplift is not from the result of the choice but from the act of choosing itself.

It takes two to tango: WKW sets up the tension of defining Michelle Reis and Leon Lai’s relationship right at the beginning of the film - ‘are we still partners?’ This shows a conscious desire to challenge our instinct to categorise and prejudge - as the film, from the very first scene, takes a dive away from normality. In the end though, this is a profoundly human tale which asks us to engage and empathise with core emotions - even if on the surface the characters seem so otherworldly and mysterious

This is not to say that Leon’s profession is relegated to the background in the film. Far from it, his assassinations feature prominently, and form some of the most atmospheric parts of the film - a heady mixture of trip hop and incredible cinematography. Into each scene steps Leon, suddenly under a mask of apparent coolness, as genre would expect. Yet he also appears vaguely silly in his shades, vest and jacket, strolling towards unsuspecting victims. When it comes down to it, there is nothing balletic (i.e. John Woo-like) about the gunplay: Leon finds somewhere to un-holster his pistols (twin pistols, of course), and then proceeds to perforate a group of people. Unlike the genre of heroic bloodshed typified by John Woo, there is no attempt to explain why his victims are marked for death, and furthermore, Leon’s expression is completely blank as he carries out his acts. The settings draw upon WKW’s own As Tears Go By: a film immersed in the extremes of underground criminality, but this time we don’t concentrate on the complexities of the gangster underworld: our perspective is with Leon, the outsider. Yet the technique employed by WKW is so staggeringly evocative that the acts are like fulcrums of cool which typify the movie’s style. The editing, cross-cuts, blurred stop-motion, all exemplify a kinetic camera in contrast to Leon’s blankness. Whilst he doesn’t move in any manner to betray emotion, his victims are writhing in spurts of blood, which the camera gleefully chronicles. In short, the audience receives excitement, as they would expect from a scene of gunplay.

A short film about killing: the marriage of rhythm, texture and visual style is consummated in the gloriously climactic gunplay scenes. It is as if Chris Doyle was outdoing Chungking (quite a degree of that film was shot by Andrew Lau) with the gleeful agreement of WKW and William Chang. But these are no ordinary scenes of violence: whilst stylish and stylised bloodshed is very common in HK cinema, WKW’s scenes push very little narrative points - and there is a moral detachment which isn’t often seen in HK’s gun-toting movie heroes. In essence, we have the fight divorced from the cause - the spectacle divorced from the need. Though the killings form a crucial element to the feel of the film, WKW shows us that the drama comes from something far more personal to his characters