Happy Together

Key info

• Director: Wong Kar-Wai
• Cinematographer: Christopher Doyle
• Year: 1997
• Main characters: Ho (Leslie Cheung) Lai (Tony Chiu Wai Leung)
• Best Director at 1997 Cannes Film Festival

Narrative

• The film follows the turbulent relationship between two men, Ho and Lai
• The couple move to Argentina hoping to save their relationship
• They continue to argue, break up then reconcile
• Ho and Lai dream of visiting the Iguazu falls, but Lai eventually goes alone

Style

• Combination of Monochrome/Colour footage
• Kinetic visuals and editing - hand held camera, quick jump cuts, montages
• Fish eye distortion, stuttering slow motion
• Voice over narration
• Cyclical narrative events

Christopher Doyle

• Poetic cinematography
• "The relationship between me, the camera and the actor is always a dance"
• Chinese name - Du Ke Feng which means "like the wind"

‘Happy Together immediately foils attempts to read it in a single way, such as by its half-replacement of narrative by image, as in all of Wong Kar-wai films’

Jeremy Tambling

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Themes

• Migrant experience - travelling
• Sexuality and homosexuality
• Exploration of time & space - moving on, 'starting over', loss and love
• Dreams & nostalgia, the meaning of happiness
• Self-absorption, experience 
• Existential crisis

Existentialism

• Definition: Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe.
• How far is Happy Together a film about existential crisis?

‘It is several things: a Hong Kong film, but one set in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a closing sequence in Taiwan; a version of a North American ‘road movie’; a film about homosexuals and homosexuality made by – for what the statement is worth, and not wishing to be essentialist about categories – a heterosexual director; a film about Hong Kong on the eve of the transfer of power, complete with a televised sequence recording the death of Deng Xiao-ping; a film about exile, or nostalgia, or displacement; and, finally, a film about Hong Kong, or, possibly, about Argentina.’
Jeremy Tambling

'It's not a gay film. It's a love story about being lonely with somebody else; being happy together could also mean being happy with yourself, with your past'

Wong Kar-Wai

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‘Consider how repetition is used in Happy Together: it is the binding motif of the film, most consciously so when characters talk about ‘starting over [again]’. Repetition makes for recurrent shots such as the Iguazu Falls or the Bar Sur where Lai works. But repetition, far from holding things together, affirms their dissimilarity’



Jeremy Tambling

Happy Together as allegory

• Meaning: a text that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning
• What meanings do you find when analysing the film?
• What alternative meanings could you gain from the text?
• To what extent is Happy Together a purely allegorical film?

‘The film shows one thing, but it describes another – as happens in allegory’
Jeremy Tambling

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The Iguazu Falls

'The river, as it flows down, makes a border between Brazil and Paraguay and Paraguay and Argentina as it flows into the estuary formed by La Plata river, on the west bank of which is Buenos Aires'
Jeremy Tambling

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Why Buenos Aires?

Buenos Aires is directly on the opposite side of the world to Hong Kong

‘Hong Kong is the opposite of Argentina, at 398 square miles (just over half London’s size) with very little land dedicated for agriculture. Buenos Aires’s population is double that of Hong Kong. The two places are there for comparing and contrasting’

Jeremy Tambling

Migration & the 'road movie' in Happy Together

Jeremy Tambling - HT & the road movie

• The road movie - ‘marginal, rejecting the politics of home and going outside the boundaries of heterosexual society’
• ‘It is the fantasy of escape […] of freedom from constraints, which is narcissistic, and of getting to the ‘other side of the mountain’

‘Happy Together taps into images and genres which permit violence and displays of masculinity’


Jeremy Tambling

‘The dream is suffused with nostalgia, for the masculine hero who turns his back on civilization is looking for something purer than what he has left behind, and that purer thing is also a memory, even if it cannot be recalled by the particular subject who is on the road’

Jeremy Tambling

Lai and Ho ultimately need stability, yet they feel that constant movement is the only way to solve their problems

‘there is not a single buried narrative to be retrieved, only fragments and interrupted moments’

Jeremy Tambling

Questions to consider...

• How can you relate the aspects of Tango to the character's relationship?
• Do you think Happy Together is style over substance?
• What does the film communicate about the migrant experience?
• What does Happy Together say about sexuality and relationships?

Further questions...

• How does Happy Together's film form micro create dramatic intensity?
• 'Wong Kar-Wai is an auteur'. Discuss.
• What do you think Wong Kar- Wai is trying to communicate about Hong Kong and Argentina?