Review and analysis of Days Of Being Wild

After his directorial debut in the acclaimed and commercially successful As Tears Go By, Wong Kar Wai’s future as a director was assured. It was barely conceivable though, at that point, that WKW would later become Hong Kong’s premier auteur, with movies which would defy convention, challenge and enthral, cultivating a style, method of execution, and vision which would become singularly distinctive, almost as though a genre in itself. What was even more surprising was that WKW chose only his second movie as director to make clear his intentions, his vision, in a move which could easily have backfired on him and ended his cinematic career prematurely.

In fact, that film, Days Of Being Wild, did fail spectacularly at the Hong Kong box office, confirming to many that the domestic audience’s tastes weren’t tickled by ‘art’ films. However, this did not bury WKW. Despite commercial failure (and with a top notch cast too) critics were fascinated, and this kept WKW in contention: stars were still queuing up to work with him, bankable stars being enough for WKW to establish his own production company, Jet Tone, and continue with his ventures. And continue WKW did, in the same spirit as Days: determinedly ‘arty’, often shooting with schedules which last aeons by Hong Kong standards, often going without script, seemingly freeform. The result is that WKW found respect and acclaim as a cinematic visionary, fans of world cinema ensuring him cult status. Despite commercial performance being varied (particularly in his domestic market), he found his niche and went from strength to strength.

Days is a period drama, harking back to the start of the 1960's, set in a Hong Kong very different to the one today. At its heart Days is the story of a youth, Yuddy (played by Leslie Cheung), an archetype of recklessness and restlessness whose life consists of starting and ending relationships, drifting aimlessly yet searching, impulsiveness and violence regularly featuring in his character. The Chinese title refers to ‘The True Story of Ah Fei’ - ‘Ah Fei’ being the archetype summed up by Leslie’s character - but WKW clearly wants a depiction beyond what the public already know - after all, the Chinese title is deliberately the same as that given to the Hong Kong release of Rebel Without A Cause. WKW therefore toys with the preconception of the reckless youth, and then looks into the deeper questions of why such a character exists.

The very first scene has WKW staking out his intentions and direction, serving as a striking encapsulation of Leslie’s mode and persona. The first thing we hear is his shoes clattering with utter confidence as he moves in on his ‘target’; bored and unsuspecting Maggie Cheung, who is working at the SCAA stadium selling snacks. The very aura of the echoing, ringing footsteps contrasts with most Hong Kong movies, where the dubbed on sound is usually barely disguised, and the opening shots are often geographic to give a sense of setting. What WKW does is to thrust the viewer immediately into following Leslie, just like the characters who end up following him. We are made curious as to who he is, a man who appears to stride with such purpose. What follows is a classic seduction cranked to extremes: he sweeps aside any repression of emotion Maggie may have, asks of her name, tells of her name, then asserts to her that, ‘tonight you will dream of me’. His manner is so clear, executed in such outrageously blatant fashion, that one cannot help but be fascinated.

It is not long before he does seduce Maggie. WKW makes her job appear the absolute epitome of boredom: the ever-present ticking of the clock in the background, the absolute lack of any other life whatsoever - we only see a snippet of this, as the film jumps to Leslie’s next visit, but we are never anything less than convinced of how absolutely nothing is happening in her life. Leslie brings to her the concept which then colours all relationships in the film - time, and how this is allied to memory. In his ‘one minute’ speech, he encapsulates the irrecoverable nature of time; but not as a condition of loss - he deems himself and Maggie to be ‘one minute friends’ - something which time makes an incontrovertible, immutable truth. And it is this formation which WKW has concentrated on. But from here, we jump straight to the ending of the relationship, suggesting that WKW is uninterested in their togetherness. Instead, as impulsively, casually and outrageously as before, Leslie unilaterally concludes the relationship.

Before Leslie has moved on to his next lady, brassy nightclub girl, Carina Lau, we learn something of his background: the connection with his stepmother, Rebecca Pan, glimpses of violence and protectiveness. It is in the context of this violence that he meets Carina, who is instantly in awe of his fiery nature. There is nothing revolutionary in connecting violence and sex, but WKW cleverly allows the neutral token of the pair of earrings to supply a surface reasoning for the characters’ actions - Leslie beats the toyboy to get him to return his stepmother’s earrings, which Carina picks up. However, it is clear that such surface reasoning is only to mask the inner desires of the characters. Squealing with defiance, Carina says she is not ‘easy’, but this is no barrier for Leslie. In seducing her, Leslie’s charm is laced with latent malice, and the resultant relationship reflects this. We also see Jacky Cheung, Leslie’s friend who clearly wants to be like Leslie. But Jacky is the reckless youth archetype turned on to its own neuroses: he is a loser, a wannabe. Simply asking Carina’s name, and watching her dance, he falls for her, but being no Leslie he can’t have her. In the end, he tries to take Leslie’s place, failing miserably and ending up with nothing.

One of the most interesting relationships in the film is that between Leslie and his stepmother. Early on we learn that she adopted Leslie, and that he resents her for telling him of this. This drives his search for his natural mother, a quest conducted always in a confrontational manner, more in anger than in love. Why does he need to know one may ask? WKW toys with an underlying concept of identity here: the existence of Hong Kong as a point of transience is indisputable, and this is reflected in various characters having come from outside the territory, or with a view to leaving it. There is an essential rootlessness which is apparent in many WKW characters, and this comes across as both a freedom from encumbrance, and a state of wayward loneliness. These characters seldom impart to us any relationships which are automatic, taken for granted, and so the few relationships they do form have obsessive significance, and become the crux of existential dilemmas.

But on the other hand, the characters have a freedom of choice, as nothing is for granted they can pick and choose relationships at will. The irony is that they seldom manage to make choices which reflect logic or fulfilment, and in the end they often revert to solitude again. In Leslie’s case, he seduces and dumps his women, fearing intimacy, but cannot do the same with his stepmother. She is the only one who can find his natural mother - a fact preventing his escape, but one which she suggests he is merely hiding behind. The truth is that Leslie truly does have a life mission to find his mother, but it is also merely his excuse, holding him in stasis. The mother figure is important in his life, not least because it is a figure of blame, and he feels he merely has a substitute. In the end, his quest to find his mother results in his downfall: he has to face the reality of rejection a further time - his shield of hope destroyed by truth. His downfall thereafter is spectacular, as he is then shorn of reason and drive. His subsequent actions - violent and irresponsible, are unlimited extensions of his earlier persona, but now with a purposelessness which makes his previously latent death-wish more apparent than ever. In a way, this gives us insight into the nature of his character: marked by rejection, he resolves to reject all those around him. In Ashes Of Time, Leslie’s character says that, to avoid rejection he learnt to reject others first. Here, Leslie employs such a measure of emotional protection, but ends up succumbing to the hope of acceptance. The result of rejection is devastating for him, and drives him over the edge.

Leslie’s most fascinating conceit is of the ‘bird with no legs’. He likens himself to such a creature, flying until the day it dies. The projection of mortality makes his death-wish apparent, but this is disguised by the idea, inherently impermanent yet fantastically ephemeral, of flying free. Such freedom reflected concepts important to Hong Kong and its citizens when the film was being made: whether to stay in the territory destined to change, or to leave for destination unknown. For Leslie, such freedom is a concept always nearby, from the moment he strolls in carrying his Pan-Am bag, to when he disastrously attempts to obtain an American passport. But he is constrained by his past: scars of memory making him who he is. When asked about his plans he speaks of ‘uncertainties’ - always the open possibilities of the future. But he has kept this trammelled by his mission to find his mother - a mission to find some type of certainty, perhaps a meaning.

By presenting these concepts, WKW acknowledges the double-edged nature of freedom: the openness of possibilities being both uplifting and frightening. It is notable that when we cover Leslie’s downfall, WKW takes an ambiguous line, not favouring a truly moral viewpoint. The crowning moment of this is when the camera ‘floats’ up the stairs at the dilapidated train station in the Philippines, a latinized beat defining the rhythm as we approach Leslie in the canteen area. Here, we find him casually dancing between the jukebox and the confused figure of Andy Lau’s character. Leslie looks shabby and dishevelled, but in no way lost or uncertain. He truly looks free here compared to the relatively restrained dance he performs to the mirror in his apartment. It is as if he has become the bird he refers to. WKW presents this even though this is Leslie’s downfall, a matter which other filmmakers might present as inevitably depressing. But in Leslie’s case, he has attained some kind of certainty about his future (even if it will certainly be messy), and so revels in the freedom of the present. How far can such a concept extend in metaphor? The idea of transience is never far from the definition of Hong Kong, and the train station canteen reflects this as being a waystation, a point of impermanent waiting before moving on. The parallel with Hong Kong would be made more explicitly by WKW in the final scene of the later Fallen Angels.

Days has been called a ‘chamber drama’, probably as much of the film involves dialogue between two characters in private, preserving a feel of intimacy. At this stage, WKW’s use of the monologue was still embryonic, although when it does occur, it hits the spot emotionally without being cryptic. The result of the dialogue-heavy structure is that the film feels very much like a ‘web’ of relationships, some only obliquely affecting others. Some might feel that the late inclusion of further characters, like Andy Lau’s introspective cop, adds to confusion and lack of priority, but the true feeling one gets is that the web of connections is approaching stifling point. The contrast is that Leslie is entirely uninterested in such complications: he finds his relationships as and when he wants them. In the end, this is another factor which highlights his hankering for some kind of freedom and simplicity: he quits Hong Kong with no desire to return, and in the end he tells Andy not to tell Maggie that he remembered her as he had promised after his ‘one minute friends’ speech - to give the impression of amnesia, to break his promise and leave the world unconnected to anyone is, to his mind, ‘better for everyone’. This is a philosophy which WKW was to revisit later in Ashes Of Time.

Andy Lau’s character is not really a ‘follower’ of Leslie’s. He enters the narrative when a ‘gap’ arises; consoling a distraught Maggie who seems unable to break free of her unrequited obsession with Leslie after he has dumped her. His character is introspective and not prone to expressing his emotions to others, reflecting Tony Leung in the later Chungking Express. His connection with Maggie ends in something little more than embryonic: perhaps she ‘only needed someone to talk to’. For all intents and purposes, this offshoot of narrative, a complete contrast of flavour, should not reflect on Leslie’s story. But WKW contrives a connection in the second half of the story, relocating Andy and Leslie to the Philippines. Andy truly does contrast with Leslie here in that his mother has just died, and he ‘goes to the sea’, to take his dream vocation as a sailor, something he couldn’t do before as he had to look after his mother. We know so little of Andy’s background that we don’t know what he is striving towards, or what he wishes to leave behind. He is as much a wayward soul as Leslie, but his drives are hidden, seemingly yet to be encumbered with social complexities. All we do know is that he has walked out on any possibility of getting to know Maggie better. In this sense, he is a projection of the ‘rejection’ philosophy expounded by Leslie. But WKW feels compelled to point to how things can never be so simple - there is an inherent bittersweet regret which attends such unfulfilled solipsism. The contrivance is that Andy picks up Leslie when he finds him in the gutter - Leslie not recognising him - and seeks slowly to indulge his curiosity.

The interesting thing about Andy’s character is that we end up connecting him to Maggie rather than any life he has ahead of him. When he says that there are still many things he wants to see, in response to Leslie’s query as to what he’d like to see on his death, we have to agree with Leslie’s retort that, ‘the sea’s boring anyway’. To us, as soon as Andy arrives at his hotel he meets a young woman who, by clothing and hair, brings Maggie to mind. Then he picks up Leslie, a connection to Maggie. Once again, WKW shows us how the memory, our active connection to the past, is forever re-engaging past emotions, inseverable yet unreachable. Andy ends up connected to his past by the proxy of Leslie, finding out that Leslie has fulfilled his promise to remember Maggie and the minute they spent together. Ironically, he causes Leslie to think of Maggie on his death, thus recalling his belief that he wouldn’t know which woman he loved most until he died.

After this point, the narrative halts and we receive our final revelations: the ‘true’ story of ‘Ah Fei’ - the background to Leslie’s adoption. On a surface level, this appears to provide the traditional comeuppance, heightened by Andy finally losing patience with Leslie. But the situation is more complexly layered. The train scene which marks Leslie’s end - more like an existential waiting room than a form of transport - shows Andy’s character mutate from mere passive observer into a man who wants to live, his hopes contrasted by Leslie who tells him that life is short. Leslie is burned out, but has accepted a fate which holds a degree of certainty and conclusiveness. Andy, on the other hand, is aware of the need for survival, to live, but for what? As he says, there are so many things he has yet to see, but as viewers we are interested in his connection with Maggie. In that direction lies profound uncertainties, not displayed as possibility and hope as in Chungking, but as the potential of living with regret. The juxtaposition of the reason why Leslie was adopted holds a surface shock for the viewer, but it must be remembered that the insertion of the scene is entirely due to the director - it is a revelation which stands independent of the narrative as it unfolds: we don’t know if Leslie ever discovered this truth, and even if he did it would have affected him earlier. What the scene achieves is to put a finality on to the existence of Leslie’s character, as outrageously unexpected as when we first see him. For good or otherwise, we discover Leslie’s ‘roots’, and this gives his character a balance on his exit, emphasised by the scrolling rainforest shot from the beginning of the film.

What then follows amounts to a series of mini epilogues. What they suggest is that the other characters do not have the benefit of the finality which Leslie has opted for. As referred to before, Andy lives on, but his connection with Maggie is hanging in the air - literally, when Maggie decides to call the empty phone box in his absence. Carina Lau arrives in the Philippines, looking for Leslie - but we are not shown what she finds. WKW is obsessively disjunctive here, showing all the various missed chances, expectations and regrets, and then deciding to leave them on a note of discord. For not the last time in his career, WKW foregoes narrative conclusion for the other characters (after all, it is Leslie’s story) - the fulcrum of their story is removed, and we follow them no more.

The final scene is the mysterious coda featuring Tony Leung. Reputedly, he was to be in a sequel to Days which, due to Days’s commercial under-performance, failed to materialise (unless one can regard In The Mood For Love as being a pseudo-sequel). It seems outrageous to place his character, unexplained, on to the end of Days, but WKW does this, giving us one scene in a long take featuring Tony preparing for a night out. What this conveys to viewers is really subject to personal interpretation, but one can surmise that WKW is again suggesting an archetype to act as a fulcrum to a story. Tony’s chancer/gambler moves with a purposeful confidence over the whole scene, each action clear and unhesitating, bringing to mind our first impressions of Leslie. In fact, his presence seems almost to be a proxy for Leslie: a new point around which the other characters and a possible story will revolve: his purposefulness balancing out Leslie’s wayward and aimless self-destruction at the end of the film. This idea of substitution, characterisation by proxy, is prevalent in Days: stepmothers and real mothers, Jacky trying to be a replacement for Leslie, Andy seeking to project Maggie on to those around him. Later, in Ashes WKW expressed the concept succinctly as a displacement of obsession, best seen where Leslie’s character dreams of someone ‘touching’ him in his sleep, the scene melting in to a melange of displaced eroticism.

A concept which continually appears as a subtext in Days is that of commercialism. However, this is not in the sense of capitalist politics but in the far hazier sense of how value is attached to things - conceptions of worth. This may sound too grand at first, but one has to take a WKW viewpoint: rather than singling out commercialism as a force in itself, usually artistically portrayed as a malign force, WKW allows the concept to merge with others in the film, until it shades in with general ideas of worth and value, exchanges of commitment and promise, the reasoning behind actions, gain and loss - ideas prevalent beyond Hong Kong society. If one doubts the existence of such a subtext, it should be noted that WKW was to make references to commercialism more explicit in the later Chungking and Fallen Angels. Whereas those films traded on Hong Kong’s perceived ultra-capitalism, in conjunction with pop values, to make commercialism more apparent, Days - set in a curiously depopulated Hong Kong and in an era invoking nostalgia rather than consumerism - allows the subtext to be more latent.

The core revelation at the film’s denouement, the ‘true story’ of Leslie’s adoption, immediately grabs the viewer with its idea of mercenary self-interest. In this sense, WKW evokes the ordinary reaction to the juxtaposition of values of greed and commercialism; ‘cold’ values, against the ‘warm’ values of love and care which supposedly lie at the heart of relationships. Instinctively, the viewer is thrown into denouncing the relationship as false; tainted with selfish capitalism. This adds to our feel that Leslie’s existence has been all the more worthless. But, as ever, WKW asks one to look deeper, and one soon realises that the idea of commercialism is so widespread and diffuse that it is part of the background to all the characters, rather than being a singular malign force. This is evident from the other relationships in the film, which all hint at a context not far removed from conceptions of value and worth. Consider how Leslie meets Carina, and how the earrings are a token indicator of value there. It is submitted that WKW allows the concept to merge in such a way that there isn’t a scale of commercialism here: as has been argued, the earrings merely form a token, and not a core to a relationship. Looking to the revelation of Leslie’s adoption, this itself doesn’t explain the relationship entirely in selfishly mercantile terms: his stepmother is only promised an income by Leslie’s natural mother until he reaches the age of 18 - so why should his stepmother ever invite him to emigrate with her? This suggests that the mercenary interest is only relevant to part of the connection between Leslie and his stepmother: the formation. From there, it has developed such that she is a mother figure to him, and expects such a relationship - ‘you should treat me nicer’, she says. Despite the suggestion of cold commercial values, WKW hints that the human ends up seeking ‘true’ emotional values.

The displacement of emotion into substitute values can be illustrated by the scene where Jacky, realising his failure in winning Carina’s heart by emulating Leslie, crudely proffers her the proceeds of selling his car. He is so embarrassed he literally slopes off camera. But WKW shows that his failed attempt isn’t the result of cold commercialism: he really does want Carina to love him, but the only way he knows how is to fall back on the common ideas of value, the promise of exchange. The idea is repugnant, and makes us view values of emotion as mutually exclusive with ideas of mercenary value. But this is the most extreme and explicit example: simply because the character has attained such desperation that he seeks to equate the values so crudely. In other examples, WKW presents the commercial interest more subtly, a mere factor bringing the characters together simply because it is part of the background make-up of their society - like when Maggie asks Andy to lend her cash for a bus fare: merely a context where they might otherwise have passed alone. Later, the idea of value is mixed with Andy asking himself what it was that Maggie wanted, merely someone to talk to or something more? The communication of desire is very difficult here, and so one can see why the characters fall back on the certainties of a more mercenary conception of value.

Value doesn’t have to be expressed in terms of wealth either: consider Leslie’s promise to Maggie - to remember the minute they spent together - causing Maggie to attach emotional value to the memory. The idea that an emotional promise can be a commodity seems strange, but one can see how the consumerism of emotion finds easier expression than the treatment of love as a matter beyond evaluation. Perhaps WKW does believe in love as an ephemeral, value-free concept, but his characters are forever straddling the line between submitting themselves to such an untrammelled belief, but fearing the vulnerability - emotional exposure, possibilities of rejection - that such a concept entails. This suggests that they view the giving of emotion as a limited commodity: so that rejection takes them closer to emotional destitution. This is summed up in the scene where Leslie seeks out his natural mother, who shuns him without even showing herself. Having exposed himself in seeking her, Leslie is rejected - and so his instinctive reaction is to reciprocate this: ‘She wouldn’t even let me see her face... so I wasn’t going to let her see mine.’

The overall result is that the idea of value is both a conspicuous and hard to grasp concept in Days. On the one hand, there are the direct equations/substitutions of value with the ephemeral idea of love - causing one to view the connection with repugnance or suspicion. But on the other hand, WKW allows the subtext of commercialism to colour all the relationships in Days, but in a manner often subtler than our gut instincts can detect. The effect seems to point to how a conception of love as absolute, ephemeral, beyond conceptions of value, is an ideal which is unable to find root in reality. The characters trammel their existences by reference to comforting concepts of value, but - while there is a lot that is sad in Days - this is not a tragedy in itself, as WKW shows how the inherent commercialism of society is not a concept which can be totally divorced from the ‘warm’ idea of love. Is this a good or bad thing? WKW’s position is never clear, which is why his films avoid a partisan viewpoint, but he does acknowledge how the treatment of love as a commodity is uncomfortable, yet somehow inescapable. Consider Takeshi Kaneshiro in Fallen Angels, comparing himself to a ‘shop’, hoping his girlfriend will forever be a customer: the concept is absurd, for the idea of commerce is inherently fickle. Yet, in the end he is dumped, just like a product past its expiry date (to borrow a Chungking concept), suggesting that it is equally absurd to take the idea of love as an absolute, immutable concept beyond value. The end result is Takeshi and the killer’s agent riding off together, but strictly on limited terms - no longer with the ideal of absolute love. WKW’s treatment of this is double-edged: the rejection of absolute love is a shock, but the alternative ‘hopeful’ approach would be to accept obsession and hurt in striving for an unquantifiable ideal. The resultant compromise is simply a mechanism to ensure survival.

Considering this was only WKW’s second film, this is an incredibly assured effort. The style is clearly a departure from many Hong Kong standards, Chris Doyle’s luxurious cinematography giving the details a rich yet impressionistic texture. The look, particularly the interior shots, brings to mind European drama. This is enough for some to see WKW as obsessed with western auteurism - seen as ‘indulgent’ cinema. Yet WKW, taking a cast of popstars and a vision in his head, has created something which bears his unique hallmarks. As a chapter in his career, this is incredibly far removed from his debut, yet one can also spot how he developed after Days. Since Days, he refined his technique and found more succinct ways of expressing concepts, yet managing to reach into more impressionistic territory, finding a method of creating epiphany and uplift. One of Days’s greatest faults, if only in comparison to later WKW, is that it doesn’t have the exhilarating feel of his off-beat mid-90's hip-fests, or the emotional soar or power of Ashes Of Time or In The Mood For Love. However, stood on its own, it is still an excellent example of marrying concepts to a tale told in stunning fashion. This is still unlikely to woo non-WKW fans, as this film is full of his trademark solipsism, brooding indecision being of more importance than a fast moving plot. The pacing in Days is best described as luxuriant, but perhaps a bit too sedate - the film doesn’t hit you or carry you off, but asks you to think and perhaps, slowly, empathise.

Compared to later WKW, Days is both simple yet also complex. Premises present themselves as relying more on archetype than later films. Notably, control of actors varies: Leslie gives a masterful and complex performance which dominates the screen, but Maggie’s role is slightly too subdued - not moving far enough from her simple ‘secondary’ role in As Tears Go By. By contrast, Carina’s ‘brassy’ performance is so noisy that she seems out of kilter with the other characters. WKW devotes quite some time to her relationship with Leslie, but this cycle of short term fulfilment seems disjointed, and so the audience don’t empathise well here. The story is allowed to jump from relationship to relationship, and so this adds a degree of complexity, but also detracts from the viewer finding a ‘meaningful’ relationship. In the end, WKW stops the tale becoming too disordered by concentrating on the core of Leslie’s actions, and then relocating the focus to his birthroots, his formation. In this sense, WKW shows his ability to accurately locate an acute emotional point to delve into his characters - something which he has honed in later films.

Technically, the film manages to marry ‘arthouse’-flavoured techniques with a richness which is as far from amateur as possible. As mentioned before, cinematography is classy, although not as exciting as Chris Doyle’s later contributions. William Chang’s production design is also excellent, evoking a Hong Kong which many had forgotten. WKW’s angle is to turn the territory into a depopulated zone of near stasis - characters looped into their pasts, like Andy’s cop, walking the same streets. Musically, the film’s latinized beats sporadically turn up, suggesting slow, somehow fatalistic dances. This theme merges the uncertainty of youth with an idea of moving to a rhythm, something which can be followed and divined, the beauty being the movement rather than the destination.

And that seems to sum Days up: WKW finds beauty in the execution of the conceits contained, but the destination seems doom-laden. Compared to his later films, the sense of epiphany is lesser, and there are fewer thrills, leaving us to admire the film and think rather than actively engage at an emotional level. Having said this, it is still an excellent film in general - better than the work of many other directors at their best. Seen thus, it would be fair to say that, for another director, Days would be their crowning masterpiece, their magnum opus, but for WKW it was only a promise of what was to come.