Essay on Chungking Express: Wong Kar-Wai's Two-Part Tale of Love and Midnight Snacks

The 1994 Hong Kong drama film was done by Wong Kar-Wai who wrote and directed it. It is split into two stories that are told in sequence. The stories are about a policeman in Hong Kong who was sick for love and who was in a consistent trail to in a girl. The title of the film is also a reflection of these two stories, with Chungking referring to the place where Wong grew up and Express referring to a food stand midnight express in Hong Kong. He Qiwu in the first story breaks up with his girlfriend in April and decides to move on in May. He meets a blonde woman in the drug smuggling business and they spend a night in a hotel room. She slept early and left Qiwu watching old movies alone. On the following day, the lady shoots the person who set her up. In the second story, another police officer is seen struggling with a breakup. He falls in love with a flight attendant known as Faye. She visits his apartment to clean and redecorate. They meet at a snack joint and planned a hotel date that never happened.

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The film shows several things about culture and life; the first one is that there is a major focus on gender as a construction unit in life. Cop 223 is highly affected by the breakup and wants to ensure he gets back into a relationship soon. He plans to fall in love in May after the April breakup. The other one is time sensitivity, whereby the cop buys items that will expire in May, to ensure the items expiries with the love period he had for the former girlfriend. The movie also shows the conflict between tradition and modernity. The consideration for the time of expiry and the plans is an indication of the conflict, whereby the cop wants the future lover versus the past one whose love has expired. The movie also shows the impacts of politics on everyday life. The use of music and the drug dealers' operations are used to show the political impacts in the world. The movie displays the drug dealers as part of the political leaders and this shows the failure of the political system to deal with drug challenges.

Self-Making and ethical subjectivity are also portrayed in the movie. The ethics have changed in today's world due to the impacts of the media and technology. The two cops in the movie are involved in several cases that required their ethical principles to succeed. The cops are expected to defend the law and avoid getting involved in the operations of the drug dealers. However, the cop falls in love with a lady who was in the drugs market and did not take action to stop her operations. The challenges in daily life including family tangles, stigma when people get divorced, ritual and humor that surrounds life are also portrayed in the movie.

From a personal view, the movie displays the different ways in which life challenges people in love. Most of the policemen and women do not have adequate time to build on their personal life because most of the political systems are corrupted and they do not create a good working condition for the cops. The challenge affects the ability of most of them to fall in love and take care of it. The other view is that the movie shows the relationship challenges that affect people because of their career choices. Most people usually give a lot of time to their careers and this affects their marriage lives. The other one is that there is a need to have a good relationship with the family even when people have good jobs. In the first part of the movie, the cop was in a good relationship with the aunt and the uncle. He used that good relationship to reach out to May.

The other view is that time is an important factor in life that can determine the decisions that people make. The decision to buy foodstuffs that expired in May was an indication that time determines the way people make decisions. The other one is that friendship and persistence help people achieve their goals. In the second story, the police officer was moved by the persistence of the lady and the efforts to maintain a good relationship. The movie was produced in a way that shows the cultural differences between generations, the impacts of technology and others. It also shows that there is a close relationship between the things that people go through in life today and what used to happen in the past. Most of the cases of divorce and the stigma that comes with it are common in the world today. The pain and challenges associated with the divorce affect the way people work and the way they relate with each other. The themes of food and pop music also created a strong feeling that the movie is relevant to today's life.