words victoria cilley

Wai Kar Fai tells a story of endless reflections
In Wai Kar Fai’s latest film, Joi Sung Ho (Written by…), a lawyer who dies in a car accident is survived by his wife and daughter. In an act of consolation, the daughter writes a novel in which she and her mother die instead. But then, to her surprise, in her story, her surviving father decides to write a novel in which he dies, leaving his wife and daughter – who writes a novel… and so on and on in an endless loop as characters within characters try to write away their pain. Intrigued, bc caught up with the filmmaker to chat about karma, killing your father and the fun of telling stories.

Could you explain why themes of karma or cyclic causality recur so frequently in your films?
I enjoy metaphysical themes. Though my reading material is very eclectic, I especially enjoy reading Buddhist philosophical texts. I would not call myself an expert, however I have a definite passion for the philosophy of karma and ‘yeep’ that allows one to view existence as cycles of causes and consequences that stretch out beyond what is visible, beyond our finite existence. The philosophy of karma applies even within your immediate sphere of existence: There is an inherent sense of poetic justice in the way we view our own actions and consequences, on both subliminal and materialistic levels. I find Buddhist philosophy to be very appealing, it has definitely reshaped my paradigm.

Do you have any personal experiences that may have inspired this perspective?
(laughs) I don’t think I can explicitly quote a very specific, figurative incident that triggered the re-situation of my perspectives. It grew on me. Especially when one considers interactions with close friends and family, you begin to observe certain patterns in life. For example, when you fly the long journey from New York to Hong Kong, you may find a foreigner sitting next to you and, if you enjoyed the conversation with this person, at later moments of introspection, the element of fate is very palpable. If you adopt this perspective, I believe you will find life more romantic in the sense that when you consider your loved ones, you may contemplate how your existences resonate, gravitate towards each other, may mirror each other repeatedly.

Film critics may suggest that the death of the father repeated and inverted in various symbolic ways in Joi Sung Ho represents the Oedipal complex. What relevance does this complex have in your film?
It is true that I have portrayed the interplay between a father, mother and their children, and indeed I have eliminated the father to catalyze the drama – that may suggest an exploration of the Oedipal complex. But it was not my emphasis at all. I merely explored the absence of the father in a family, it could have been the mother just as well. The visceral dual absence/presence of a dead parental force ‘at’ the psyche of the child was the focus. The absence of the father when the mother is so young, and the children are still so young too, is a severely traumatic life-long experience. I am not just talking about the specific image of the father. The lack of the father is a great loss to any family, it was not my priority to retrace the Oedipal complex.

What are your insights on human perception and consciousness? How are they different from other directors’?
I am very interested in human nature indeed, how human thoughts can be translated into a science nowadays is fascinating. I really do have a big interest in reading such psychology-related texts. These years I have really made it a mission to explore human consciousness. As I presented in Sun Taam, one adopts a different role in every situation, and must confront one’s own attachment/element of possessiveness with the role. I employed visual metaphors to represent these ‘demons of the heart’. And with Joi Sung Ho I took it further to explore the various psychological spaces and chronologies the individual has. Simply put, everyone has memories and issues of attachment and, through our reconstruction of events using our own visual metaphors, we attempt to sublimate pain. I am very passionate about this topic and I feel relatively few films are focused on it. I hope the audience will find this refreshing.

Joi Sung Ho uses its own structure to reveal and dissect the stream of narrative consciousness. How would you comment on the structure and self-reflexivity of your narrative?
Fictional structure is very important to me. From being an editor, then scriptwriter to a director over the past 20 years, I truly love telling stories. Using different structures to deliver the same story can evoke different things. I like to play around with the chronology of events in a non-linear way and demonstrate parallel outcomes. I have an increasing interest over recent years in the aspect of possibility. The element of possibility creates great amounts of tension in our lives and influences our beliefs and direction in life. The fun aspect of putting together a filmic experience is that one can represent events beyond the constraints of time and space; it is very empowering to be able to explore things this way. Telling stories is great fun.

What challenges do you face in trying to place Buddhist themes in a commercial film market?
I have always found this challenge to be great. Motivated by the success of our comedy Sau Sun Lam Liu, we wanted to make a commercial comedy with Dai Jaak Lo. But in the filming process I wanted to incorporate some Buddhist themes. The greatest challenge that I am presented with is the audience’s receptivity towards these themes. I especially wanted to explore yeep, a word that refers to all the moral actions and inactions one commits in one’s life, and the way I had to repackage this concept in the plot was really difficult.

Compared to your previous works, what is different about Joi Sung Ho?
I think this time I was more brave with the filmic techniques. My narrative method was more advanced as I attempted a very complex structure. I told a better story and elevated my standards. More careful with the dialectical aspects of the film, I played around with light, tone and colour to make the visual language more explicit.

What would you tell your audience before they watched this film? What would you tell them to pay attention to?
As this film is quite complex and dense, many audiences will feel that it is meaningful, but to follow the thematic details requires a lot of concentration. I would recommend the audience focus on the concept of attachment. This is represented in various narrative layers and in different contexts. Ultimately they should question the source of the narrativity. The English title of my film is Written by… and it uses a teenage perspective to retrace the memories of her father. At the end it’s the girl’s story, and the violence in her imaginary inversions of events demonstrates her emotions intensely, the severity of her loss, her explicit reaction to her father’s death.

You seem to deliver the notion that our consciousness is shaped by our own perception and that our social dimensions are prescribed (but not fixed) by parental forces. Are you saying this is an oppressive painful phenomena that can be dissolved with the philosophy of Buddhist texts?
It goes beyond the oppressive nature of our social dimensions. Human attachment and loss is a universal, unmovable problem. I would say that the very core of the film is self-therapy, using the act of writing to sublimate pain. People are very lonely, but their narrativity can transcend this loneliness: Cultures, creativity and fantastical dreams can be used to reshape their emotional realities.

Joi Sung Ho is released on 10 July