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62 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Changing perspectives..., July 22, 2000
Happy Together, by Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai, is one of my all-time favourite movies, and - along with The Tango Lesson - one of the movies that has affected me the most. To me, HT is one of those (rare) art products that manage to combine formal beauty, intellectual sharpness and emotional depth all into one. I have watched HT many times, and each time I felt that it had a new meaning to convey. My impressions about this movie have therefore shifted with time, leading me not to a definite interpretation but to the knowledge that art - as life itself - can be looked at from different points of view. The story line is quite simple: two lovers leave Hong Kong and go to Argentina; once there, they argue so much they decide to break up; one of them (Ho Po-Wing) prostitutes himself, while the other (Lai-Yiu Fai) works in a tango-bar and virtuously puts money aside to return home; one day, chance unites them and for a short while they live happily together; inevitably, however, the friskier one becomes dissatisfied with their conjugal life; they separate again, and this time it's really the end. Needless to say, the movie's title - as light-hearted as it sounds - is actually quite deceiving: the two men's relationship turns out to be a rather "unhappy" one. The first few times I watched HT I couldn't help feeling disgusted by Ho Po-Wing's moral hideousness - I thought of him as the negative-model the movie meant to point the finger against. I thought the movie proved that although there are no "real heroes" some people do behave better than others, and that by self-discipline one could "redeem" one's soul... I thought the movie was about Aesthetics as a means of purification, as if Beauty could protect one from squalor. I admired Lai-Yiu Fai and mercilessly condemned Ho Po-Wing. I still admire Lai-Yiu Fai, of course, but I now feel I was too superficial in judging Ho Po-Wing. I see he's not the monster I made him out to be in the past: he's a victim of his own temperament, a person misfortunate to the point of being unable to grasp the good life offers him. In this, I feel he well portrays many homosexuals, who, I'm afraid, often let happiness slip out of their hands, perhaps because a sick environment has taught them not to "love" but to "want." In my opinion, not only are we "all the same when we feel lonely," as Lai-Yiu Fai puts it - that is: inclined to promiscuous sex - we're also "all the same" in that we are all constantly on the verge of self-inflicted unhappiness. Last time I watched HT, about a week ago, I got extremely sad, because I realised how easy it is for anyone to fall, and because through experience I've come to understand that so many of us are like Ho Po-Wing, damned to suffer the pains of degradation and solitude because of our "insatiability." We are taught that since we aren't attracted to someone of the opposite sex we are "bad" and have no values. Of course the effect of this is that we end up believing they are right. Thus, monogamy and fidelity become accessories, as tenderness and mutual support. To me, Happy Together is about all this.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love this movie, October 16, 2001
The first time i saw this movie, I have to admit, I fell asleep. And the second time I saw "HAPPY TOGETHER", I fell asleep again. But each time, I just wanted to slap myself because I had been told and knew deep down inside, it was a great movie. And finally, the third time I saw it, the movie just captured my heart. "HAPPY TOGETHER" is a love story in it's most darkest and bittersweet form. Two gay lovers venture out to Argentina from Hong Kong and the idea of them being happy together is seriously tested. One lover (I can't remember the name) is stable, diligent, and so giving while the other one is just simply a selfish gay slut. They try several times to start over, but each time, the selfish lover wants to eat his cake too. Like all of Wong Kar-wai's films, this one has little dialogue and the story is told mainly through visuals. The waterfall is a major theme running through the movie. The beginning opens up in black and white and later on, when the lovers start over again, color (in a very Wong Kar-wai-esque cinematic sense of it) comes in. And the soundtrack (mostly Astor Piazola) is just an unforgetable part of the movie. I heard that before making this film, Wong Kar-wai was reading a lot of Manuel Puig (gay Argentine writer of "KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN"). Puig dealt with mainly the themes of unrequited love, impossible love, the love that hurts you more than gives you pleasure. And often, his characters where pretty much society's castoffs, whether because they were gay, revolutionaries, or just plain freaks. You can see a lot of these same themes in many of Wong Kar-wai films, but it hits the hardest in this one. The plot is rather simple, but Wong Kar-wai seems to be the master of capturing those feelings people don't talk about-- those feelings that show up only on our faces. In the end, I cried. Not because I had my heart broken in the same fashion, or because I'm one of those people uncapable of attaining love. I cried because the movie just eats away at your heart little by little and anywhere within the last 15 minutes of the film, the tears come and you don't know if you're crying because you're sad or you're happy.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the way life should be, July 21, 1999
By A Customer
Here's a movie I can hardly imagine myself ever getting tired of. Though it is, indeed, the story of an unfortunate and - as it turns out - unhappy love affair, it is not just that: Happy together is a wonderful (and yet sad) fairytale about life and human nature. In this movie I saw the good and the bad that's in each one of us, the potential for happiness which so often succumbs to the stronger inclination to self-destruction, and yet the hope that in the end something good will come out of sorrow. There are no "real heroes" (is there really such a thing anyway?) in this movie, for - as Lai-Yiu Fai puts it - we're all the same when we feel lonely. But there are some differences between people... Though we are all likely to fall (sooner or later), only some of us seem to recognize the fall in time to rise, finding the will to smile and move on with dignity and self-acceptance, looking forward to life and its surprises (though they may be both good and bad). Awareness is a big issue in this movie, and it seems to me to be the most important difference between the two lovers: Lai-Yiu Fai seems to have a much deeper understanding of life and sex, as well as of the consequences each choice bears along. Ho Po-Wing only sees the surface of things and lives for today, thus making their being "happy together" nothing but a temporary illusion. In the end, Ho Po-Wing too seems to gain in awareness, and so maybe (though I'm inclined to think some people never change) there is hope for him as well. The point is, I think, that there is no difference between what you do and how you do it. How you do a thing (that is, with what attitude and degree of awareness) obscures what you do to such an extent that the latter is no longer relevant at all. Lai reaches the bottom of his personal hell and finds he isn't so different from Ho after all, even though he had told his friend more than once "I'm not like you." So why do we sympathize for Lai and inevitably feel Ho is behaving badly? Is it the money factor? Personally, I don't think so, 'cause sure it's hard to approve of someone who, so to speak, exchanges sex with money, but if Lai too had decided to become a hustler we still would have teamed up with him. The fact is, he seems to be so conscious of his weakness, of his need to be "happy together," and yet so disillusioned, that his deviancies from his usual conduct - degrading as they may be - seem to contribute to his heroism rather than betray it. It's his honesty with himself (and us) that makes Lai a positive character, as opposed to Ho, who has something sneaky about him (then again, we are only provided with Lai's point of view: he speaks to us, Ho does not. I wonder if maybe his truth was different from his friend's...). Lai's dignity remains intact throughout the movie, and to me what he really symbolizes is honesty's redemptive force. His interpretation of his own actions (which surfaces through his many monologues) makes everything he does seem beautiful, and therefor right. This movie is a lot about esthetics. It is so as regards human relationships, and it is more so cinematically. What could have been an "already seen" love-story with an inevitable unhappy ending, is turned into a work of art, in my opinion a real masterpiece, by the beautiful photography and the director's brilliant ideas. Modernistic techniques come together beautifully in this movie, conveying emotions that otherwise would not arise. The visionary beauty of this film is what makes it morally edifying and what makes anyone who sees it stop and reflect upon a lot more than just the meaning of the movie. Words, images and music all balance out perfectly, urging the spectator to think "this is real life," or at least "this is the way real life should be."
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