My Blueberry Nights

[Tom Lowe]

I finally watched Wong Kar-Wai's 2007 film My Blueberry Nights.

If ever there was a movie that could properly be called a 'postcard', this is it. With WKW at the helm, beautiful, signature visuals are a given. Much like Malick, Kar Wai has developed something of his own film language, with dreamy undercranked shots, far-off-center framing, drifting voiceovers, and unique soundtrack choices. All are on display with this film. But it almost seems like WKW did not want to get too dragged down by plot. Rather, he wanted a meandering postcard of a film that flows more like real life than a typical movie plot.

I really applaud this film and very much enjoyed it. Portman's character came into the film just when she was needed. I finally saw some of the acting flare from Leon, but which has been all but missing from most of her other films. Norah Jones was perfect as the fresh face.

While Khondji's contributions to the film were good, I have to think that WKW's work with Doyle and Lee Ping Bin were better.

Wong's next film is listed as The Lady from Shanghai on IMDB, but it's been in "pre-production" for years. I hope he gets back in the saddle soon. What ever happened to his rumored "Taiwan high school lesbian epic" movie... ? That sounded promising! :w00t:

 

[Alexander Nikishin]

I think a lot of the beauty found in In the Mood for Love and 2046 come in large part from the beautiful work of the production designers as well as Doyle/WKW choice in framing as and of course Doyle's lighting.

My Blueberry Nights just didn't have that same period piece charm and un-orthodox story telling technique that ITMFL and 2046 did. I still enjoyed the film though.

IMO, Khondji had much less of an artistic storyline/location palette to choose from.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Yes, that is why I cannot really blame Khondji for the lesser cinematography in this picture compared to 2046 and In the Mood, as you mentioned. Let's see what happens with the next picture, if Khondji is attached.

 

[P Andersson]

love everything WKW but couldn't get into blueberry nights - it wasn't only doyle missing - it was an approach to americana that was too sugary and soft focus

loved delicatessen with khondji and the look works great there

for a foreigner doing the american trip i prefer robby mullers paris texas

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You have to remember that "Blueberry Nights" was atypical for Wong Kar Wei in that it had a tight shooting schedule, and for once, he stuck to it - unlike the extended schedules of his HK films which allowed him to shoot and shoot and shoot... and develop that style and those stories in his own way.

I suspect that if Malick had to make a film on a tight schedule, it probably would not turn out like his recent movies, that sort of open-ended expansiveness of vision.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Good point. In the Mood went on for like YEARS of shooting, on and off, I think.

Why was WKW on such a tight schedule with Blueberry Nights?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

American-style budget, actors, etc.

In HK studio scene, actors work simultaneously on multiple features, so you schedule around their availability. This means you sometimes shoot for two weeks, take a week off, shoot for another week, etc.

This allowed directors like John Woo to develop a complex editing style because they could edit their movies during the off-times and then do pick-ups and reshoots when the actors came back to refine the scene.

Of course, for WKW, this allows some extreme cases where the shoot can drag on over a year or more. This became a problem of "2046" because it was shot in anamorphic and WKW wanted the same lenses everytime he went back into production. Plus, of course, sometimes he's had to switch between two DP's because of this.

Here in the U.S., with the very high salary rates of actors, plus the expense of union crews, it tends to encourage shorter schedules, and if the actors are particularly expensive, longer shooting days rather than more shooting days. Personally I'd rather have lower rates for everyone IF combined with more shooting days for everyone (so net salaries remain the same but we get more humane working hours), but you'd have to get the stars to take pay cuts... But the high cost of hiring name actors means that often you get a window of one or two weeks in order to fit all of their scenes, with very little option for going over schedule.

These tight schedules encourage a certain lean style of filmmaking where you can't wait for the right light or weather and where you tend to send out a second unit crew to get those shots because the first unit is bogged down with making their daily page count to stay on schedule. Frankly, it sucks -- I haven't been able to go out and shoot landscapes like I did on "Northfork" because of this system.

I did this ghost story movie in New Orleans, out in the boondocks, and I wanted to shoot it in a Malick-style, figuring that would be unique for a horror film, to ground it in the landscapes and time of day, etc. But then I got handed this 25-day schedule which was so packed that the last shooting day ran 20 hours long just to fit in all the scenes. And I had a second camera crew that only occasionally had time to sneak off and grab a shot of a bird or tree. In the end, they had to buy some HD stock footage of the swamps to cut away to for "atmosphere". I still feel like I never really "shot" the location. I kept begging them to let me work an extra three days or a week with just a camera assistant, going around and shooting landscapes, establishing shots, etc. like I did on "Northfork" but they would not budget for such a thing.

In fact, I've asked for this on EVERY distant location movie I've done over the past five years and no one has ever allowed it. The day after I wrap, they fly me home and return all the equipment as fast as they can. If I'm lucky, I get a couple of second unit days allotted, but that doesn't really allow them to sit around and wait for a couple of good sunsets, etc. And I'd rather be the one to set-up those shots anyway.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Here in the U.S., with the very high salary rates of actors, plus the expense of union crews, it tends to encourage shorter schedules, and if the actors are particularly expensive, longer shooting days rather than more shooting days. Personally I'd rather have lower rates for everyone IF combined with more shooting days for everyone (so net salaries remain the same but we get more humane working hours), but you'd have to get the stars to take pay cuts...

I agree with that, when and if it's possible.

This is where having major weight, like Malick or Kubrick, comes in handy. Kubrick could demand anything he wanted and get away with it. I remember watching that Kubrick: A Life in Film doc or whatever it was called.. he spent something like 10 days just rehearsing one scene for Eyes Wide Shut with Kidman and Cruise. Some might say overkill, and it probably is, but that particular scene (when they smoke pot in the bedroom and Kidman drops an emotional bomb on Cruise with her revelations) is one of the best-acted and most perfect scenes in recent cinema. So in that sense, it paid off, IMO.

David, I know you're probably too modest to do it, but you should consider having your agent send your reel to WKW one of these days. That would be a collaboration I'd love to see at some point in the future.

As for not being able to shoot those cutaways on your own films, like you said in another thread, this might be reason enough to think about getting a DSMC. I know you really enjoyed that type of shooting in Northfork, and IMO, it truly paid off.

 

[jpp]

The importance of time, allowing the work to evolve and alter, can't be over-stated.... Who knows what we're missing, for lack of this freedom? In the Mood for Love appears to have been conceived as a whimsical and maybe silly (judging from the early footage) romantic comedy. If constrained by a traditional schedule, the existing film would never have come into being.

Since film today is an international megapolis, there's a bit of a joke here: in another movie called "Irma Vep" (dir. Olivier Assayas) Maggie Cheung plays herself, arriving late for a French production because her Hong Kong(!) shoot went way over schedule..... And the French film within the film (staring Maggie Cheung) is a remake of Feuillade's 1915(?) crime serial, "Les Vampires" (available on DVD for the curious). And this film within the film also goes over-schedule when the director has a nervous breakdown.... Anyway, to conclude this ramble, before the new director takes over, they view the material that the prior director ([played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, btw) edited from the rushes. And it's pure abstraction (with Maggie Cheung).... Every artist's ultimate dream, no constraint of narrative. You can thank WKW for going over-schedule.

 

[jpp]

I'm probably the only one who enjoys these games, but we can take this one further: if Irma Vep was the product of WKW's dilatory shooting style, In the Mood for Love in turn took form thanks to a movie by the absurdist Japanese filmmaker Suzuki ("Yumezj"), from which WKW took that haunting plaintive musical theme. The imagery may also look familiar:

And Maggie Cheung, as Irma Vep:

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Tom,

Kubrick to a much bigger extent, and also Malick, but I doubt they would have been afforded the courtesy of such extended shooting schedules (yes, I'm talking about Kubrick and Malick) were it not for the fact that almost any actor, stars included (or perhaps especially stars for the credibility builder that it is to star in one of those directors' productions) was/is willing to work for them for very reduced salaries or even gratis, just for the experience. As David said, the exorbitant wages commanded by stars nowadays are a determining factor in schedules, not only when it comes to shooting around their availability but also, and as importantly, for whatever it's left for under the line expenses. Everybody suffers, most of all the film itself, every time you get a $20 million star, or two of them, in your film. Add that to the typical $20-40 million budget allotted for marketing and you may have potentially up to $80 million in a production without shooting one single frame of film and with only two actors signed up out the 200 crew needed to pull it off...Hollywood is killing the art of cinematography, how truly sad indeed.

 

[P Andersson]

David Lynch took his time on Inland Empire with a Sony PD-150 (Hong Kong Style)

http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_10704.html

The waiter leaves and our interview begins.

DAVID LYNCH: Fire away!

Q: So how long were you guys in production on this film?

DAVID LYNCH: Well, production is a weird thing. How long from the beginning to the end was about three years, but we weren't always shooting every day, you know what I mean? And a lot of days we weren’t shooting. (laughs)

Q: (to Laura) He’d just call you up like every once and a while and say, ‘I got a camera and I got an idea’?

LAURA DERN: Pretty much. (to David) Right?

DAVID LYNCH: Yeah. (Dern and Lynch both laugh)

 

[rod bradley]

This kind of big machinery, big star, big promotion, tight scheduling American filmmaking (at least in Hollywood) is one reason why, I think, we see less contemplative and what I would call "inner" voice and intimate filmmaking (such as WKW and many contemporary Iranian filmmakers for example) in the United States than in other parts of the world.

This system also, as David has suggested, tends to short-change expessive esthetics that add nuance and depth to films -- attributes that often elevate a film and may even contribute to its longeivity. And income! (When a culture becomes excessively financialized, everything seems to boil down to "all about money.")

David's suggestion about shorter saner days, more days, more time to stop and smell the roses cinematically, is a good one, and one that serious filmmakers everywhere embrace. The artistic side of anything takes time, thought, and in a collaborative medium like filmmaking, it's also essential for people being about to know each other outside the stress of pure efficiency. A happy balance between schedule and allowing for happy accidents and catching the breath and even a whimsy or two.

Alas, our financial structures, our star systems, our whole modus of promoting films, and our perverse (IMHO) and bombastic monetary rewards (of course this applies in many arenas of our culture) only serves to perpetuate the fast-food filmmaking system.

This system is viable for certain kinds of films and production and has its benefits -- but alas, it's a system that tends to dominate and impose itself on most of our filmmaking, so that a situation like Northfork becomes truly exceptional. Alas, alas.

It seems our filmmaking has become way too much all or nothing, huge, or barely eeking it out, and films like Northfork that take chances and are unique and what I would call tending in the direction of non-manipulative contemplative cinema, are finding it harder and harder to launch.

I would also say that the example David gave of the refusal to budget the small amount for him to shoot the establishing footage, is a sign of pennywise and pound foolishness that is far too prevalent.

It strikes me as another case of if everyone gives up a little, we all gain a lot -- this ethos applies to so many areas of human endeavor and ecology. But alas, is not the way things generally work.

Perhaps, just perhaps, with Obama as president, and our need to reassess and "downsize" our extravagance, this will, in some small way, filter down into the filmmaking world.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Great thoughts Rudi and rod.

I have to say, Rudi, that what you mentioned is why I admire what Darren Aronofsky and Chris Nolan are doing as directors. At this point, especially after seeing Rourke resurrected by Aronofsky, and Ledger deified by Nolan, actors are going to line up to work with those guys, which means more freedom in terms of budget and schedule.