Wong Kar-wai: Sculpting In Time Experimenter

Time and space in movies is always an interesting topic: movies have the transcendental power of controlling the time and space; by dint of images, time and space extends or condenses by all means. The consciousness of time and space reveals incisively and vividly in Wang Jiawei's world of movies, which has shaped a distinctive individualized style of composition and the way of self-expression.In the beginning of twentieth century, Bergesen divided time into two types. One is the traditional concept of time, which can be measured by clock and watch. This is what he defined as "space time". The other one is what we feel of time, i.e. the "mental time", which he defined as the "continuous". Bergesen believed that the "continuous" is the real time, and this was the actual presence of every one. This concept of time and space influenced the following century. We can find the refraction of this concept in the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, and the movies of Alain Resnais, Bergman, Angelopoulos, Gldard. This concept of space and time can be found in Wang Jiawei's movies as well. Time, of the "clock" representing time, always exists in Wang Jiawei's movies, composing the witnesses of the curse of the story. Wang Jiawei seems to be more wild about expressing exact time, but the time in his movies is never the physical time. On one side, as the symbol of the subject, time appears again and again to accumulate the power, with each time point or period related closely to the figures and affairs. The director intended not to care for the time itself, but visualize the...