Review: My Blueberry Nights (2007)

My Blueberry Nights
Directed by Wong Kar Wai
Starring Norah Jones, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, Natalie Portman

It is 1997. I am sitting on the carpeted floor of a darkened conference room, the only light coming from a TV screen. Faye Wong is carrying a transparent bag bursting with goldfish. I know this scene by heart. Still I smile for what's coming next. I hear someone calling for me. I lower the volume. I have disappeared for the day.

It is the year 2000. W looks at me questioningly as we step inside Chungking Mansion's damp and rancid elevator. It chugs upward like a disgruntled old man. The elevator doors open to a dark hallway; the fluorescent lamps above flickering ominously. Just like in the movie, I whisper to W.

It is 2008. W is fixing the DVDs on the shelf. He picks up the still sealed My Blueberry Nights. When are we gonna watch this, he asks. I explain to him that that is my Open-in-Case-of-Emergency DVD.

I'm the kind of man who likes to prepare for things. I bring an umbrella two days before it is expected to rain. I take an antacid before I begin drinking. I even prepare for loneliness. Wong Kar Wai is my ticket, my escape to a kaleidoscopic landscape of lights when things don't go according to plan.

Last night, I finally saw My Blueberry Nights.

Plot takes a backseat in Wong Kar Wai movies. The men and women that populate his worlds are either at a stand still or moving at a blur, the smudged faces, arms and legs do not necessarily imply speed or motion but most often than not it is the passing of time that stretches and distorts faces familiar and often loved. The past and present are fluid; a minute is a week, a week is a month. And along with the passing of time comes a growing distance.

Time and distance are constants in WKW movies. In Chungking Express, Cop 223 laments, Somehow everything comes with an expiry date. Swordfish expires. Meat sauce expires. Even cling-film expires. Is there anything in the world which doesn't? A caption in In the Mood for Love read He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct. Navigating through time and space to find love, WKW seems to say, is our lot in life.

In this respect, My Blueberry Nights traverses familiar territory. Norah Jones is Elizabeth, Lizzie or Beth, a young woman propelled by a broken heart to travel great distances to get closer to herself and inevitably, closer to a man, Jeremy (Jude Law) who insists on standing still so he could easily be found. Lizzie's soul-searching first lands her a bartending job in Memphis where she encounters a broken man, played with stubborn frailty by David Strathairn, who refuses to let go of his ex-wife Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz), a character reminiscent of Brigitte Lin's in Chungking Express. In a different state, Lizzie brushes against a compulsive gambler named Leslie (Natalie Portman) who is as much addicted to raising the stakes as she is at reading people like cards. If there's anything to fault My Blueberry Nights with, it's the clunky writing of the Las Vegas road trip that oftentimes drifts toward melodramatic rather than melancholic, explaining motives rather than hinting at them.

But WKW is more of a painter of emotions and My Blueberry Nights has a palette that sings.

Reds, blues, greens.

Neon signs, traffic jams, syrup.

Reflected, refracted, overlapping.

He just doesn't paint with light but also with music, predominantly with Norah Jones' blues and Cat Power's swirling, translucent smoke. The repeated riffs and refrains have lost their claustrophobic nature and instead are sighs of relief, the cool breeze that escapes from a slightly open door. There's a sheen of sweetness that covers the movie that understandably turns off a few viewers who are used to his deeper, melancholic hues, but we are seeing America through Lizzie's eyes, who, even after the heartbreak and the tragedies she encounters on the road to self-discovery, is more of a wide-eyed observer and possibly still views the world through rose-colored glasses.

At the beginning of the movie, Jeremy explains to Lizzie why he keeps the keys that the customers (of the cafe he is running) leave behind, If I threw these keys away then those doors would be closed forever and that shouldn't be up to me to decide, should it? Lizzie insists on a reason why the keys continue to gather dust, untouched. Jeremy continues, It's like these pies and cakes. At the end of every night, the cheesecake and the apple pie are always completely gone. The peach cobbler and the chocolate mousse cake are nearly finished... but there's always a whole blueberry pie left untouched ... There's nothing wrong with the blueberry pie. Just... people make other choices. You can't blame the blueberry pie, just ... no one wants it.

It is 2009. I am standing on a balcony high above the city. It has been 6 hours since I started writing this review and as the sky slowly deepens from blue to purple, the lights blink awake. It's a little bit silly now, the idea of time, distance, and the colors that curtain our lives even if we're not looking. But there it is, right below me and far in front of me. The choices I make. The world I want to see. And if I squint a little, the lights, shapes and shadows bleed together. Just like in the movie.

4/5