Scenes of Others

This collection of excerpts from three films and the accompanying commentary seek to portray a number of different ways that the cinematic city, modern life, and otherness are intertwined. Though the nature of the relationship between these three components differs in each instance, all of the examples highlight particular material and/or physical component of the urban scene. Components that may serve as visual cues, significant symbols, or sites where the dynamic between the city, modern life, and otherness is brought out.

Visitors to the site are encouraged to submit scenes of others, otherness, and modern life in the cinematic city alongside their interpretation relating to these themes. That the relationship between such elements is subtle, quiet, dismissible even when it might be problematic or life-affirming means that we must pause and parse all the more the cinematic contents we are so often contentedly consume.

In the Mood for Love
2000
directed by Wong Kar Wai

Wong Kar Wai’s 2000 film In the Mood for Love tells a story of Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan) whose respective families rented homes adjacent to one another. Both of their spouses are often absent and Chow and Chan gradually find out that their spouses are cheating on them with one another. As the story unfolds against the backdrop of 1960s Hong Kong under the British Empire, the two main characters convene to try to understand how the affair began. Chow and Chan act out the possible scenarios the seduction could have taken place, taking on the characters of eachother’s spouses. As they spend more time together, Chow finds the answer as to how the affair started when he, himself, falls in love with Chan.

The film engages with the themes of modernist ambivalence and otherness in multiple ways, one being through its depiction of the cinematic city. The main plot relies on the fact that 1960s Hong Kong, much like its present-day counterpart, was a flourishing city that was dealing with a large, increasingly diverse population and a housing shortage. The problem of limited accommodation is reflected in the fact that the main characters rent small rooms from other families already living in the apartments. Wong transfers the claustrophobic nature of the close quarters of urban housing into the film by making most shots contain a frame within a frame. The technique obstructs the audience’s and further emphasizes the sense of clautrophobia. The accompanying clip, for example, shows a scene where the the inhabitants of the two apartments meet one evening to play mahjong. The audience sees this activity through a small narrow doorframe with a thick, bright yellow casing through which the characters move in and out, closely brushing against one another, and exchanging polite, neighbourly glances. As well as conveying the crowded conditions of urban life, the doorframe—and many other frames in the film—reflect and highlight the important role of the gaze in the conduct of social relations in big cities. As Georg Simmel writes, “interpersonal relationships in big cities are distinguished by a marked preponderance of the activity of the eye over the ear.” Chow and Chan, for example, are under constant threat of gossip and scandal for anyone could have easily misconstrue their playacting without the understanding of the reason behind their ambitious exercise. The mere fact that the main leads believe that it is even possible they could find out how their spouses’ affairs started, and to go about the task of understanding unsentimentally, seem to be a task conceived of under the modernist thorough rationality.

In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar Wai (Jet Tone Production and Paradis Films, 2000).

Verdens verste menneske
(English: The Worst Person in the World)
2022
directed by Joachim Treir

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Her
2013
directed by Spike Jonze

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