THE FORMAL ARGUMENT FIRST
Wong Kar-wai has made seven feature films across thirty years. Each one is a different inflection of the same formal argument about time, longing, and what happens to love when it cannot be acted upon. The ranking reflects formal achievement and completeness of argument- how thoroughly each film builds what it's building and says what it's saying. This is not a popularity ranking. In the Mood for Love is not ranked first because it's the most famous; it's ranked first because it is the most formally complete statement of the argument the filmography keeps making.
A note on the Christopher Doyle question: Doyle was Wong's cinematographer on Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, and In the Mood for Love- the period widely considered the peak of the filmography. The collaboration ended after In the Mood for Love. The films after that collaboration are not lesser films, but they are different films: slightly cooler in palette, slightly less kinetically alive. The ranking accounts for this but doesn't reduce the post-Doyle films to a single note.
TIER ONE- THE FORMAL PEAK
In the Mood for Love (2000): The formal summation of the career to this point and the most precise cinematic argument for the architecture of restraint- everything almost happening, nothing quite happening- built with such precision that the film functions as a complete statement about desire and time in under 100 minutes. Two neighbours in 1962 Hong Kong discover their spouses are having an affair with each other. They meet repeatedly in a stairwell. They conduct a simulation of the affair they're not having. They almost become the thing they've been practising. The shot in the alley- Maggie Cheung in her cheong-sam, Tony Leung at the noodle stall, time slowed to the pace of grief- is the whole film in two minutes. Shot in the desaturated reds and yellows of Christopher Doyle's most controlled work. The Cannes Best Actor award for Leung was correct. The Palme d'Or should have been a consideration.
Happy Together (1997): The rawest, most politically explicit film in the catalogue and the most formally necessary. Two Hong Kong men destroying each other in Buenos Aires in 1997. The 1997 handover haunts every frame- the specific anxiety of Hong Kong identity in the year it was supposed to cease to exist as a distinct thing. Shot partly in black and white, partly in oversaturated colour- the visual register shifts with the emotional register of the relationship, which is either incandescent or not existing. Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung at their mutual best. The hardest film in the catalogue to watch and the one that most fully earns the formal vocabulary the surrounding films establish.
TIER TWO- THE GREAT FILMS
Chungking Express (1994): The other mode. Fast, funny, colour-saturated, operating at the pace of Hong Kong rather than the slowed-time pace of In the Mood for Love. Two loosely connected stories about heartbreak and the specific loneliness of a city that never slows down enough for anyone to notice you're lonely. Made in two months, during pre-production on Ashes of Time, as a release valve. The formal range of the career is visible in the contrast between this film and In the Mood for Love: same filmmaker, same vocabulary, completely different tempo. Faye Wong's performance in the second story is one of the most charming things in 1990s Hong Kong cinema.
Days of Being Wild (1990): The foundation text of the mature career. Introduces the formal vocabulary- the relationship to time, the specific Hong Kong of the 1960s, the performers who will return across the filmography- before the vocabulary is fully refined. Less immediately accessible than the later films; more structurally important for understanding why the later films work. Leslie Cheung as the narcissist at the centre, Tony Leung in a single scene at the end that announces the next film before this one is finished.
TIER THREE- ESSENTIAL BUT FLAWED
2046 (2004): The sequel to In the Mood for Love that isn't quite a sequel- it begins where that film ends, follows the same character forward through time and new loves, and is set in a science fiction future (2046 as the last year before Hong Kong's special status expires) that functions as an extended metaphor for the impossibility of return. The most formally ambitious film in the catalogue and the most formally flawed- it is trying to do more things simultaneously than it can sustain. Essential for understanding the career arc; not the best entry point and not the best film.
The Grandmaster (2013): The wuxia film. Based loosely on the life of Ip Man. Formally beautiful in the specific way Wong Kar-wai films are always formally beautiful- the fight sequences have the same temporal architecture as the love sequences in In the Mood for Love. Narratively loose in a way that reads as either meditative or incomplete depending on which cut you're watching. Multiple versions exist for different markets. Seek the original Chinese cut.
Fallen Angels (1995): Made at the same time as Chungking Express from material cut from that film. The darker, colder version of the same formal language- the neon-lit Hong Kong underworld rather than the sunlit loneliness of the earlier film. Not lesser than Chungking Express; occupying a different emotional register. Worth watching as a companion piece to Chungking Express, not as a standalone entry point.
HOW TO APPROACH THE FILMOGRAPHY
For first-time viewers: In the Mood for Love is the entry point. For second-time viewers who want to understand it: Chungking Express, then Happy Together, then Days of Being Wild, then back to In the Mood for Love. The filmography is circular in the way the best formal arguments are- returning to the beginning after the journey changes what you see at the beginning.
The filmography is circular in the way the best formal arguments are- returning to the beginning after the journey changes what you see at the beginning.