Review and analysis of As Tears Go By

Wong Kar Wai’s debut movie as director is perhaps his least remembered film. It is not difficult to see why, as the flavour is markedly different to his later, daring cinematic formulations. However, As Tears Go By was clearly a success, both at the Hong Kong box office and with local film critics, and this ensured WKW the opportunity to continue making films. For WKW though, Tears did not reflect the mode of film-making he wanted, and so he left its style behind in later films, making it the oddity in his back catalogue.

Having said this, the film still bears some of the hallmarks associated with WKW, and it is interesting to see how he changed and adapted after this film. For one thing, afterwards he started to collaborate with cinematographer Chris Doyle - Tears has Andrew Lau (not the actor) as cinematographer - and to experiment more freely. Tears is the only WKW film to have been shot to a full, pre-written script. The whole feel of the film-making changed after this film, which is why it is curious to watch.

The plotline - allegedly borrowed from Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets - is a tale of ghetto level gangland life. In Tears, Andy Lau plays the ‘big brother’ of irresponsible hothead Jacky Cheung, both low-level triad ‘foot soldiers’ collecting protection money and debts. Needless to say, it is Jacky’s recklessness which brings trouble, and Andy finds his duties and responsibilities becoming drastic and violent. However, it is the third element of the story which best signals the WKW to come: that of Maggie Cheung as Andy Lau’s love interest. Her character is perhaps not quite the most interesting ever committed to film - Maggie’s performances in later films outshine this one by a country mile - but it is the romantic aspect which is interesting, as clearly WKW warms to the subject. For an entire section in the middle of the film, WKW takes us away from Andy’s violent lifestyle and onerous responsibilities, away from the oppressive throng of the seedy Mongkok area of Kowloon (the Chinese title of the film is literally Mongkok Carmen), and we follow Maggie to her home on Lantau Island - a place of peaceful relaxation, a verdant idyll, practically depopulated compared to nearby Hong Kong. Though an existential dilemma is not pondered on for any great length, unlike in later WKW efforts, he still manages to build up a fair measure of expectation and uplift, even if the plot here is rudimentary at best.

But, of course, the world of WKW is the world of uncertainties, and for a moment the possibility of romance hangs in the balance, before being resolved in one of the most accomplished scenes of the film - Andy taking Maggie into a telephone booth, the pair kissing in WKW’s trademark blurred stop motion until the scene fades to white. Though the premise is almost entirely devoid of the quirkiness which is common in his later films, WKW still accomplishes a romantic nexus which connects very naturally with the viewer, and this point of the film engages the emotions almost as well as any of his later films.

In fact, technically, this film shines in a manner rare for a debut director. WKW manages to get the best out of cinematographer Andrew Lau, mixing static and handheld, some inspired colour usage, particularly in setting atmosphere and change, as well as creating motifs which have become WKW specialities: fluttering drapes, blurred stop motion, jump cuts and the like. Though very different in feel, one can see aspects of Tears in later WKW films too: the dingy neon mah-jong joints and eateries of Fallen Angels; the death wish of reckless Yuddy in Days of Being Wild; the relentless handheld of Chungking Express; the pager messages conveying fundamental turning points in that same film.

But then, Tears also has many other excellent technical flourishes of its own: the scenes of brutal violence set the standard for grit in Hong Kong, but it is the menacing atmosphere of downtown Mongkok which so spurs these moments on, with the film balancing the fundamental things the gangster seeks -  reputation, respect, to be ‘something’ for however short a time - against the possibility of sudden, terminal violence. The film shows the thrills of such a lifestyle, best shown when Jacky escapes through the full length of a snooker hall, as well as the foreboding: the knowledge that a messy end will come. When we are in the ‘dens’ of the triads; eateries and mah-jong parlours, the fluorescent lighting casts a morbid pallor over the characters, and in one scene, the atmosphere suddenly changes from slow drawn-out menace to instant, possible violence, with the lighting changing (subtly hidden by a cut) to crimson red, highlighting urgent neon and the hues of the ‘shrine’ commonly found in Hong Kong shops.

In contrast, the scenes where we find Maggie show different textures. Initially, her entry at Andy’s flat seems rather pathetic - complete with face mask (conveniently attributed to a medical condition). Clearly WKW wishes her to ‘flower’ from this slightly ridiculous start: the flat seems oppressively dank, barren and unfriendly, not helped by Andy occasionally returning blood-soaked. Maggie’s presence slowly begins to change the surroundings, the buying of drinks glasses being an obvious example. Note also her accidentally dropping a pill into one of Andy’s bottles - a variation of which occurs with Faye Wong in Chungking Express. When we reach Lantau Island, we see Maggie against bright colourful fabrics, like those which cover the tables and chairs at the cafe. And on a Kowloon rooftop the fluttering of bright clothes on a clothesline again highlights the youthful, carefree exuberance which is growing in her character. This all seems very different to the type of youthful energy which is the world of Jacky’s character - a world of neons blurring past as he seeks his fantasy of status. But briefly, at the film’s denouement, WKW allows a moment of thematic union when we see Jacky carry out his suicidal mission: a piece of bright orange plastic fluttering in slow motion as he waits for his target; the same motif continuing on his own death. In the same vein, the film’s opening shot too is a juxtaposition of differing textures and flows: a human mass moving through Mongkok, sharing space with a bank of screens showing clouds rolling across a tranquil sky.

As a precursor of WKW’s later refinements, music usage shows promise too. Even though we may only be talking about an otherwise forgettable Cantonese cover version of Berlin’s Take My Breath Away, this is used well to build what might otherwise have been quite an awkward union between Andy and Maggie. And so from here WKW’s screen love of the jukebox is born. Also, the signature theme, though unspectacular, is used well to invoke atmosphere.

Essentially, the film is split between its worlds of gangsters and romance, a split mirrored in the dilemma facing Andy. As has been mentioned, for me at least, it is not the gangster side of the story which grips the imagination. When in the world of the hoodlum, we see characters with vastly exaggerated mannerisms - no doubt as it really is in such a subculture - but apart from Andy’s character, we take these facades to be the whole of the personae of the other gangsters, which is disappointing considering WKW’s ability to extract complex layers of characterisation, as proved in later films. In fact, it is possible to discern something of the essence of later WKW by comparing what he does in parts of Tears, but avoids in later films: beyond Andy and Maggie’s relationship, all dialogue in this film is quite uncharacteristic of WKW - often plot-driven, with surface significance but little else. Such dialogue is normal for the majority of filmmakers simply because all that is needed to be communicated is present: there is gestural clarity, something all the more important in an urban culture where one struggles to be heard. But since Tears, WKW has obsessed over miscommunication, whereby dialogue becomes an introverted device which often only hints at motives and desires, more important as self-expression of a concept than any attempt to communicate clearly. It is no surprise that later WKW characters often largely abandon dialogue in favour of monologue.

With Maggie, Andy’s changing feelings force him to reappraise his mode of communication from the ground up. Initially he doesn’t treat her as anything special, and so addresses her with the same mix of casualness shading into contempt which is the norm for him. But, in the section of the film which marks a diversion from Kowloon gangland brutality, we see Andy on Lantau Island, suddenly struggling to find a sufficient manner of expression. For WKW, the usage of the song, Take My Breath Away, is enough to hint at his feelings, and such alternative means of communication have found favour with later WKW characters (for example, Leon Lai’s jukebox song in Fallen Angels, or the coded boarding pass in Chungking Express). But for Andy, he must make do with building on language from scratch. And so we find him traipsing across the island to find her, and then waiting at the port all day until her ferry arrives. Then, seeing her with her doctor ‘boyfriend’ in tow, he hesitates before she notices him, the handheld camera swinging from his point of view to hers. In a classic moment of WKW humour, when asked how long he had been waiting, Andy lies, saying he just arrived. However, where words fail him, actions take over. After being prompted by Maggie’s pager message the pair are reunited, Andy literally dragging Maggie to a phone box for a defining scene of the film.

From this point on, the romance is resolved as ‘in being’, and WKW leaves it at that until circumstances intervene to end it at the end of the film. Once again, this shows how WKW is less interested in the state of a continuing relationship than its beginning or end. However, compared to other WKW films, the portrayal of the change of feeling in Tears is far more simple than, say, the tentative manoeuvres in the second half of Chungking, where WKW manages to extract the maximum potentiality and expectation from the story, arguably without even fully resolving a relationship by the end of the film. But anyhow, Tears still impresses in invoking a compelling relationship which pulls the audience in despite being quite economical on narrative.

Of course, we are talking about WKW’s first film as director, so of course there is much which doesn’t withstand the test of time and, most importantly, there is much in the way of technique and theme that the director doesn’t resurrect in his later work. Note, for example, the mass crowd scene in downtown Mongkok where Jacky is chased out onto the streets and given a beating. The crowds - shot in long shot from a high vantage point - are clearly out to see a film being made. In later films, WKW would either give an artificially depopulated Hong Kong (Days of Being Wild), or some other technique which would separate the characters of the film from the ‘human backdrop’ (e.g., the first half of Chungking with its roving handheld and blurred stop motion, or the second half of that film with its telephoto long shot, or Fallen Angels with its ‘liquid’ lens and blurry fast-forward crowd). Also, WKW has since minimised his use of scenes featuring more than two characters interacting - Tears has several of these such scenes, all in the gangster parts of the film: like the marriage scene where Jacky’s character is unable to provide his ‘little brother’ with a suitable ceremony. Tellingly, the multiple character scenes lack the feel of later WKW, and concentrate on matters such as pride and status: issues of surface importance in a society of the many, but lacking the intimacy of WKW’s more introverted themes.

In terms of genre and plotting, as has been mentioned, Tears is ‘influenced’ by Mean Streets. Compared to later WKW works though, there is a narrowness and inflexibility of genre which serves to limit the film somewhat. Tears is not the only WKW film to have influences from other stories - Happy Together draws inspiration from Manuel Puig’s The Buenos Aires Affair, and Ashes Of Time is supposed to be an extrapolation of Jin Yong’s Eagle Shooting Heroes - but in those later films, WKW only has the source material as a basis, and he largely jettisons the responsibility of following the source closely. But in Tears, the attempts to follow the story coherently (something which would seem not to matter to later WKW), result in the film veering near to the territory of melodrama.

In fact, the success of Tears (critically and commercially) meant that the film inspired many other Hong Kong filmmakers of the period, resulting in a raft of street level gangster movies, often with a smattering of tragic romance, but employing more melodrama to cover up their lack of charm or style. The likes of A Moment Of Romance - a movie also featuring Andy Lau as a cool but troubled and not very successful low-level gangster who falls for an otherwise reticent and frankly boring Wu Chien Lien - became typical of an entire genre of Hong Kong movie output from the late ‘80s to the early ‘90s, where the combination of doomed violence and doomed love was extended to near-hysterical levels. In this sense, Tears has a lot to answer for, not least when one considers how the faults of movies influenced by Tears are often merely magnifications of Tears’s own weaknesses. For instance, consider Maggie’s character who, though she ‘flowers’ later on in the story, is still very much secondary in characterisation: waiting for Andy, living by Andy, we never see her own thought or independence. This fault would be addressed by WKW later in his career, like when we see Maggie in Days Of Being Wild learning to live without the central character, or when we learn that Tony Leung’s air hostess girlfriend in Chungking has moved way beyond his memories of her.

Speaking of characters, WKW comes something of a cropper with Jacky’s. Though Jacky Cheung is usually a very capable actor (as proved by his later, carefully judged performances in Ashes Of Time and Days Of Being Wild), he fails in Tears to evoke sufficient engagement from the audience, simply because his wide-eyed, semi-psychotic portrayal is practically flat. Of course, not every character has to be drawn from the WKW stable of introspective silent souls, and this could have been an opportunity to create a viable gangster with carefully shaded desires and motives. Alas, that wasn’t to be. Some may argue that Jacky’s character is refreshingly simple and that real life people aren’t like WKW characters - but perhaps that’s a good thing if the alternative was to have something like Jacky’s character in every WKW film. In any case, WKW’s late attempt to show an underlying angst behind Jacky’s problems - hints at his denial of his mother’s remarriage - seem like a lame attempt to give his character more depth. The only pathos we feel is when, just before the end, he manages to dupe Andy into believing that he will stay out of trouble, but even on his final scene of suicidal determination we still don’t really care about him. Watching Jacky’s character, compared to an infinitely more shaded performance from Andy, I felt like shouting at the screen the words of Jim Kelly from Enter The Dragon: ‘man, you straight out of a comic book!’ And considering that Andy is merely average, compared to many of WKW’s later characters, this gives a good idea as to what a mistake Jacky’s character was.

Warts and all, Tears is an interesting experience. It takes a while before one notices any relation to the later works of WKW, and even then Tears is different by flavour. As a film, it can be an entertaining enough experience, and one can even see how it was an eye-opener in terms of technique and style in its time. But when one sees how WKW changed, it seems quite difficult to bridge the gap between Tears and WKW’s next film, Days Of Being Wild. In short, for a fan like myself of WKW’s later idiosyncratic perception which, in my opinion, has taken cinema to new heights, Tears is quite disappointing and probably the worst film he has directed. It’s not really a film which has hidden depths which one could analyse, but neither is it particularly likeable for me. Having said that, it is still a good film compared to other films in general, and it is remarkably accomplished for a debut director - WKW could pretty much have continued his career in the same vein whilst still being praised - but it is not a film which I could fall in love with. More reason to be thankful that WKW changed afterwards and hit the jackpot.