With some truly stunning cinematography that's absolutely perfect for the 35mm film format, Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels is an unforgettable experience from start to finish.
Disregarding the narrative and characters for this portion of the review, Fallen Angels is a visual masterpiece in its own, with almost every frame of the film being a perfect photograph. It's incredibly easy to find yourself sitting back and admiring just how beautifully crafted each scene is, observing the constant unique filming methods and angles.
Alongside the sheer beauty, it's unique style has you feeling as if you're alongside the characters the whole time, getting into their faces and actions as if you're another extra just observing, trapped in the claustrophobic 90's walls of Hong Kong. As if the density and film's events coexist without us realising.
Fallen Angels, for the most part, is about boredom and loneliness in life. Showing the chaotic nightlife of criminals each with their own emotional struggles. Bored of life, unfitting in society, but all searching and longing for something more. Their lives are nothing short of adventures in the night; while most are asleep, they're out making a living, drinking, and filling in the void.
With multiple protagonists, the film explores their chaotic, but all-connected lives. It shows how each person's actions unknowingly affect another person's life, and there's beauty in the fact that their bored and loneliness in a sense is mutually shared. They're all broken and dysfunctional beings, together.
A hitman and his associate that is deeply in love with him, despite never having met him beforehand, a lonely woman searching for attention and a feeling of belonging, and a mute with a purposeless life with only his father to keep him company. Each character is unique.
As is the case with Wong Kar-wai's films, the music is never overstepping, never distracting and only ever used to heighten the emotion or progress the narrative, connecting songs to the characters and their emotions. Often enough, a song is introduced through a character's dialogue and physically played through radios or jukeboxes in small, neon-lit bars. It's a neat method to not only convey to the viewer how the characters are feeling emotionally, but to allow us to step into their personalities just a little more, making the characters feel all that more authentic.
This film is bloated with creativity, and it really shows just how artistic and important the world of cinema -- and even the 35mm film format -- can be to creative viewers and other ambitious filmmakers. Fallen Angels sets a standard for excellent filmmaking that isn't very often contested in modern cinema; Wong Kar-wai's style is untouched, and remains his, which makes the film that much more special today, twenty-three years later.