In his text, Mutations, Rem Koolhaas discusses Chinese cities as spaces of rapid urban changes that result in mutations. Not only is the physical space of the city itself is changing, but the changing nature of change itself is reflected in modern Chinese cinema which feature bizarre relationships and erratic behaviors in the characters that inhabit these urban spaces. The heritage and history of a space has been subverted by the logic of global tourism in which historical artifacts are now rendered for ahistorical utility. Due to the process of global tourism, urban spaces have now become too complex to be directly represented. In fact, the city seems to have disappeared altogether in modern Chinese cinema due to a radical disconnection between the image and the real. This disappearance is a symptom of a past that threatens to disappear day by day as the cityscape continues to mutate. What we get instead is an indirect mediated resemblance found in the affective relationships between characters in modern cinema, in which the city has found a way into the representation by indirectly influencing the behavior of the characters. By focusing on the contradictions, anomalies, and eccentricities of the characters on the screen, we are able to discern a spatial memory that reveals an affective space that we are all a part of.

In 1997, the United Kingdom handed over Hong Kong to China. Leading up to the handover, there were a lot of secret negotiations that Hong Kong itself was not aware of, despite its own fate hanging in the balance. The atmosphere of secrecy that permeates the political mood of the time manifests itself in Infernal Affairs, directed by Andrew Lau. A noir drama in which information is a type of currency, secrecy then becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse as two moles face off against each other in a Hong Kong that is barely recognizable as a space of information and communication technology. The opening sequence of the film takes us through sweeping shots of fire and brimstone, close-ups of Buddhist statues, and a title card of a Buddhist scripture that reads, “The worse of the Eight Hells is called Continuous Hell. It has the meaning of Continuous Suffering.” The Buddhist moral framework preaches the doctrine of karma, which claims that if you have done something bad in this life, then in the afterlife you will be punished and forced to suffer for all of eternity as a form of moral retribution. Despite this reference to traditional Buddhist morality, the rest of the film depicts a world in which moral ambiguity is a prevalent characteristic of the characters who occupy this space.

The space of information produces affective relationships in which the characters are so immersed in information technology that they lose sight of their own identities. Tony Leung plays an undercover cop who infiltrates the Triad in order to aid the police force in catching the mob leader in the process of drug dealing. Andy Lau functions as Tony Leung’s foil in portraying an undercover mole sent by the mob to infiltrate the police force. The tension in the film revolves around the passing of information. Tony Leung communicates with Superintendent Wong using Morse code. Andy Lau keeps in touch with Triad boss Hon Sam through the use of cell phones and text messaging. The Buddhist moral framework has been overtaken by the world of information and communication technology. Just as there is no respite in the Buddhist hell, there is no respite from information in this urban space. Hell is no longer relegated to the afterlife, but exists in the modern world as the proliferation of information. Only information prevails as it flattens out the dichotomy between good and evil. We can no longer distinguish the good guys from the bad guys as identities become fluid and lost in the world of information.

Tony Leung and Andy Lau are forced to conceal their identities in order to carry out their respective missions. However, both characters relate to this absence of identity in very different ways. Throughout the movie, Tony Leung continually insists that his alias is only a mask and that his true identity is that of a policeman. Despite being forced to be a lackey for the mob, which involves sniffing cocaine and getting into violent fights with other gang members, Tony Leung still holds onto the traditional moral framework. Andy Lau does not grapple with any moral dilemmas on his end. Lau completely accepts the world of information and thrives on his ability to swiftly take on and discard multiple identities. Unlike Leung who desperately clings onto his true identity, Lau will kill in order to preserve his alias. In the film, the act of murder is tantamount to deleting a name in the computer. In other words, murder is the equivalent deleting of information. After Tony Leung threatens to reveal Andy Lau’s true identity, Lau hacks into his files and deletes them from the office computer, thereby effectively erasing the last vestiges of Leung’s true identity. Afterward, Lau also kills off the other mob mole in order to prevent anyone from revealing his true identity, thus giving himself a clean start as the “good guy.”

The ending of Infernal Affairs echoes the teachings of Li Yang in Crazy English. Li Yang claims that he struggled with learning English and in fact failed an English course in college. From there, Li Yang decides to conquer this obstacle by going on to become a charismatic teacher of American English. His star text parallels China’s process of globalization as it seeks to take on a global identity by discarding its traditional values. The will to learn English coupled with the drive toward globalization does not contradict China’s fanatical nationalism in that all is done for the sake of pushing China to the center of the global stage and spreading its influence to new frontiers. Li Yang’s Crazy English features mass bodies and synchronized voices shouting, “I like losing face!” This strange sentiment can be explained by the fact that the students, in choosing to discard traditional attitudes, are able to take on new identities in order to thrive in a globalized society in which learning English is crucial to embodying the global subjectivity. The language course replaces older Chinese character types with new ones. The Confucian gentleman is now replaced by the global figure of the media personnel/entrepreneur. In the same way that Andy Lau was able easily to discard his old identity in order to pursue a new one, so Li Yang enjoys losing face as a testament to his new global identity.

Where do I even start with this entry? I’ve been meaning to write about “5 cm Per Second” for the longest time, but I kept putting it off because just the task of it was so daunting. For me, watching 5 cm is such a personal experience that I can’t write about it without empathizing to the point of being vulnerable. People see the act of showing emotions as a vulnerability and they reprimand me for being so stupidly open with myself. On certain days, I agree with them. But when it comes down to it, I can’t write in any other way because my emotions are what move me to write and put these words down onto the screen; otherwise I wouldn’t have started blogging at all if I couldn’t write about the things that have touched me in some way, left their impressions on me, made me laugh or cry or think really hard until my head hurt.

This is the wiki summary of 5 cm Per Second: “a chain of short stories about their distance”

Upon graduating from elementary school, Takaki Tōno and his close friend Akari Shinohara drifted apart. Akari moved to Tochigi Prefecture due to her parents’ jobs, while Takaki attended a junior high in Tokyo. The two kept in contact by writing letters, but despite the special feelings that existed between them, the only thing that persisted was time.

5 cm per second made me cry so hard that I could barely catch my breath. And then afterwards, I ached for days every time I closed my eyes and recalled the aesthetics of it. Makoto Shinkai has been criticized for reusing the same fundamental plot [distance = QQ] in all of his works. While I do agree that he needs to experiment with new storylines for future productions, I think he rightly played to all of his strengths in 5 cm. I’m mesmerized and seduced by the concept of distance in 5 cm and how you can go so far but still not move at all from the point where life let you down and broke your heart. Shinkai is a prodigy of aesthetic grief. Everything, everything from the breathlessly beautiful settings, to the attention to tiny details that instilled nostalgia into the mundane, to the bare-bones dialogues delivered in all of their quiet wonder… all of these things consumed me whole, pulled me into Shinkai’s world of inevitability, made me hold my breath, sucking in as much air as I could contain and holding it all inside, feeling so full and empty all at once.

Kanae Sumita, in Cosmonaut [part II], said, “It must be so lonely, being in the dark, never knowing if you’ll ever bump into anything or find anyone. It’s too lonely like that, lifting your hands so earnestly towards the vast night sky.” In between the moments when I’ve fucked up and before I can pick myself back up, I wondered if life will always be like that, the endless search in the pitch blackness and the disappointments at every turn. Things don’t work out between Kanae and Takaki because he can’t see anything for himself beyond Akari. So then, what happens to those feelings that Kanae can’t convey? What becomes of them and where will they go now that it’s impossible to make them known to the person who matters most?

Melodrama theory would suggest that they go into the artwork itself. One such theory is that melodrama is an art medium that strives to express the inexpressible. The boundless regrets, the private suffering, the dreams that can’t be realized, all of these things that cannot be voiced appear within the anime in nonverbal, stylistic features that speak for the characters when they themselves cannot. When there is silence in the face of great suffering, there will be emotional excess. These excesses then get translated into the scenery, into the techni-colored skies, the vivid hues of sunlight reflecting off of chrome surfaces, and all the meticulous details that the artist painstakingly took the time to include in every frame. This is why just perceiving Shinkai’s artwork is emotionally taxing in and of itself, because it serves to be the interpreter of all the things that are too shameful or embarrassing or too heavy to be said out loud.

The sky caps from Cosmonaut are visual orgasms for my eyes. These skies with so many stars and crowded galaxies and the purple and blue astral gases, they stretch out into the darkness, wide-open spaces full of hollow minutes and empty years. For the characters, being under them, always gazing up at them, always wondering, feeling so small and strange, I can imagine their painful anxiety when they think about the future. And in the next part, it creeps up on them so suddenly that the momentum, the unwanted realization and unwilling acceptance of it, breaks them.

In the last part of 5 cm, Takaki has grown into a man, working and living on his own. He throws himself into his job and comes home to an empty apartment, floor littered with empty beer cans. His days are all the same. He lives like he’s not really living, always staring off into the distance, always looking jilted and so, so tired.

“Just by living one’s life, sadness accumulates here and there, be it in the sheets hung out in the sun to dry, the toothbrushes in the bathroom, and the history logs of mobile phones.”

The image of him sitting in his dark room, the soft glow of the TV, the rumpled bed sheets, all of that stayed with me long after I finished the movie. When I look to the future I can see those things for myself. And I felt devastated and relieved, all at once.

At the end of 5 cm per second, Takaki and Akari walk past each other and just as he was about to turn and look at her, a speeding train blocks his view, and he loses out again. So he stands and stares with all of his regrets and sorrows and resentments. He knows that it is her [how could he not] and he probably knows too that she has moved on and is now living a life that he is not [cannot be] apart of. And yet he’s still able to walk away from that scene with the softest smile on his face. Somehow, I think he must be so relieved. It’s like encountering a ghost and finding out that that girl from your memory isn’t the same anymore. She’s no longer a static figure. She’s grown and changed and fallen in love with someone else who isn’t you. And devastation and relief mixes together inside of you, propelling you forward, so that you can take it step and step and someday when you look back [it'll still hurt, it'll never stop hurting] you can see how far you’ve come and all the distance that you’ve put between then and now and how that has changed you.

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