"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Favorite Characters: Cop 663 (Chungking Express)



Slash possibly 633?  This character is in a similar situation to Lulu/Mimi in Days of Being Wild, with characters addressing him differently at different points of the film, except he never even gets a name, just a number.  Still, whoever he is (I’m gonna go with IMDb and use 663,) he’s great and definitely deserving of his own write-up.  Before we get started, here’s my A Little TLC(w) addition to my Chungking Express review.  Recommend?  In General – Yes.  It’s lovely and sweet, and despite the hardcore angst of some of the characters, it’s probably Wong Kar-wai’s most optimistic film.  Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Absolutely.  Leung is terrific as this lovelorn, inattentive cop, very charming” (a few Cop 663-related spoilers.)

The first thing you notice about Cop 663 is that he’s set in his ways.  We’re introduced to him at the midnight express, where he buys the same takeout order for his girlfriend every time, it never occurring to him that she might like something different.  Even though he’s been dating a stewardess, he’s not one for straying far from home, he frequents the same food stalls every day, and his cupboards at home are filled with stacks of identical cans.  It’s not that he’s resistant to change – when change does start creeping into his life, it takes him a ridiculously long time to even notice – more that he’s caught in his own inertia.  What he’s been doing works for him, so why try something new?

He’s very even-keeled, deceptively so considering how melancholy he is when he’s at home.  When his girlfriend leaves him, saying she “needs a change,” he quietly jokes that the midnight express owner is to blame, having convinced him to switch up his takeout order and put the idea of change into her head.  But he doesn’t get angry, and he doesn’t recoil at the thought of change for himself.  Instead, he just quietly carries on.  His same-old same-old routine might not have worked out the way he’d hoped, but it’s all he has, and so he stays the course.  This extends to keeping his ex’s uniform neatly ironed and occasionally pretending that she’s still in the apartment, hiding to teasing him the way she used to.  These moments don’t have the same air of denial about them that Cop 223 does in the first half of the film.  Whereas 223 is cheerfully/desperately trying to convince himself it’s not over, Cop 663 has no such illusions.  He knows she’s not coming back, but he takes unhappy comfort in those memories of her, and sometimes, he allows himself to pretend he believes there’s still something between them.

Not to say that Cop 663 handles his heartbreak more healthily than Cop 223.  223 has all kinds of issues, and I can’t imagine anyone needs to spend more than a few minutes with him before seeing through his fake-happy façade, but while Cop 663 holds himself together a lot better in front of others, he’s still got it bad.  I love the gentle montage of him going around his apartment “consoling” his soap, his dish towel, and his stuffed animals.  Cop 223 tries to push his emotions away, but Cop 663 engages with his by projecting them onto something else.  In his eyes, his whole apartment is crying, and even when Faye starts surreptiously brightening up the place, he still finds ways to read moroseness into it.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and the film itself, strikes a really great balance with this character.  The portrayal here is just knowing enough to be lightly poking fun at 663’s continued mooning, and you can’t help but smile at him chiding his bar of soap for letting itself “waste away” in its depression.  But at the same time, Leung’s performance is so low-key and earnest that, even at his most absurdly angsty, he’s never outright laughable.  There’s just the right mix of honest heartbreak and quiet humor here.

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