Lost in Translation: Wong Kar Wai's 'My Blueberry Nights'

by Sean Matthieu Weiner

Saturated zooms on cream careening through the violet innards of pie-a-la-mode resonate in Wong Kar Wai’s venture West, My Blueberry Nights (2008). Resonating alongside are the quirks, scrapes, and ditties usually ringing through Wong’s narratives. Unfortunately though, Wong’s Americana holiday emerges a bit touristy. Signature characters of past films turn stereotypical when reborn Yankee. And as subtitles are removed from the WKW experience dialogue falters, posing a debasing question, “Were the subtitles a fundamental part of the magic?”

My Blueberry Nights follows meek, blue Elizabeth (crooner Norah Jones) on her voyage from New York City to New York City. Stopping off for vignettes in day-tripper renderings of Memphis and Nevada on her way from start to start. As always with WKW heroines, Elizabeth is ejected from her routine when her relationship crumbles. Taking refuge in the former couple's hip diner, she meets Brit, expat Jeremy (an overactive Jude Law) whose dim opinion of love’s outcomes are conflicted by his confectionary romanticism.

While floating the baked good before her, Jeremy recounts how every night while closing he dumps an untouched blueberry pie. Pastry is personified. In support of deserted desserts Elizabeth begins coming in nightly for a nocturnal nosh. Jeremy falls for her as she dozes on his stained carved countertop. Leaning in, he kisses away the cream spattered upon her lips. Elizabeth departs at daybreak unknowing of his slumberland advances. And so, she commences her road trip and Wong commences his road movie.

Customarily, Wong’s ninth full-length feature references his previous, particularly this time, 1996’s cult romance Chungking Express. The relinquished keys of broken lovers still wait to be claimed at local eateries. Lovely, lonely damsels once again misshape their doos while snoozing on tabletops. And, perhaps the paramount WKW recurrence, tunes continue to echo through their storyline as time-diluting sets of leitmotifs; this time most notably is Cat Power’s recent title track The Greatest.

Norah Jones is not Faye Wong (the dream girl of Chungking). Wong’s second go at transforming pop star to film star falls short. Jones’s lackluster Elizabeth reads like a half-cooked actress’s big break. When placed before a booze-stunk David Straithairn or a high rollin’ Natalie Portman, Jones is simply eaten up. True, she is the blueberry pie within the narrative, but alas her performance comes across a shade blue as well.

Don’t fault Norah, she never claimed to be this brand of performer, she only allowed herself to be part of Wong’s experiment. Also experimented with is similarly airy pianist Cat Power, who plays opposite Law as a former flame. Power’s entrancing moment floats in and out of this film with a gust of the mysterious found in Wong’s finest scenes. Curiosity lingers with Cat Power’s Katya in a way that it does not with the rest. Is it this curiosity that is missing everywhere else in Blueberry? Has Wong spelled out his main players a bit too much?

Maybe Faye Wong was not Faye Wong. Without justifying xenophobes, subtitled films are different from vernacular ones since they force the spectator to read. The act of reading (working) can make audiences feel more involved with a film, but it certainly distances them as well. Subtitles are undeniably an obstacle. Translation removes eloquence and nuance from an original script, focusing exclusively on just giving the gist. The resulting boiled-down text seeks to keep the audience on pace while alleviating as much work as possible. And so, films usually suffer in translation. However, the films of Wong Kar Wai seem to be an exception.

Wong’s characters are often muted, and when they do speak, dialogue reads like simple poetry across the bottom of the screen. There is a difference between reading poetry and hearing it spoken. Unfortunately verbalizing can sometimes (often) be deprecating to the piece. Such is the result in My Blueberry Nights. You know how people always say the book was better than the movie? Well, WKW in the local vernacular kind of factors into that saying as well.

Reading the dialogue while soaking up his lush imagery and simultaneously feeling his obsessively compiled mix-tape of a score-- that is the WKW experience. That is how his Western audiences have always received and cherished his work. My Blueberry Nights is Wong inviting Westerners to taste his work in a more familiar language.

The result is rich with fluffy blurs of vivid colors in a shallow focus. The dreamy aesthetics of this film are without a doubt stunning. Nevertheless, even with such top-notch presentation, the substance of My Blueberry Nights comes across bubbly and flat. It needs a little something.

And so, I’ve tried it, and I think I’ll have the usual, please.

My Blueberry Nights starts off with a limited release on April 4th.