Chungking Express throws you into a version of Hong Kong that feels alive and unstable at the same time. The film follows two loosely connected stories that drift through the city with a mix of romance, melancholy, and impulse. The editing is what stands out in this film. The step printing and the fragmented cuts make ordinary moments feel stretched out or compressed, almost like the characters experience the city in a different rhythm than everyone around them.
The style gave me a sense of drifting with them. The cops, the woman in the blonde wig, Faye in the snack bar, they all move through the city with a kind of emotional blur. The editing captures that feeling better than dialogue ever could. Even when nothing important happens, the images keep shifting. Faces smear across the screen and the city lights streak behind moving bodies. That technique turns loneliness into something visible.
I liked how the film breaks itself in half too. The two stories do not connect in a traditional way, but the editing creates a link through mood. Hong Kong feels crowded and bright but also strangely empty. The film makes that contradiction work because the cuts never let the viewer settle into a stable sense of time. I finished the movie with the feeling that its form expresses something the characters cannot say. The fractured structure becomes the story.
From the moment the camera prowls through the slum and the underground fight arena in Monkey Man, Patel forces us to see India’s stacked system of power not as a distant cultural curiosity, but as a brutal architecture. The cinematography does heavy lifting: oppressive low-angles, jagged handheld shots, stark contrast between light and shadow. All of it works to embed the caste system, not just thematically but physically. As Patel himself explains: “I was like, ‘I can use a genre that I love so dearly … to talk about the caste system of India.’” When you see the hero fighting through kitchen floors, back rooms, then penthouses, it isn’t just spectacle. It’s a visual indictment, and not one that’s a subtle allegory; it is loud and unapologetic.
The editing amplifies that critique. Cut to raw bones, cut to ritual, cut to violence. Each transition hits like a message: the exploited become beasts, the gods become corrupt lords, and the viewer is forced to track this movement. The film doesn’t lull into comfort. Instead, it jumps—from clandestine matches to inflated political rallies, from masks to megaphones. Patel says he wanted “real violence … real trauma …” The timing of edits emphasises that the system’s brutality is cyclical. The oppressed fight, they ascend; the ascendants become oppressors. The cut-and-paste structure of action becomes the mirror of systemic churn.
Genre is where Patel earns his argument. He takes the revenge-action template (think John Wick) and injects it with mythology (the monkey-god Hanuman) and with the very real politics of caste and corruption. He says the hero isn’t “the guy who you knew was going to take on a hundred men.” He’s the marginalised. The underdog. That choice says everything. Genre serves the critique: spectacle draws in the mainstream; the content punches back. It refuses to let violence be pure adrenaline—it makes it a statement. And by doing so, the film picks a side: the side of the oppressed against the entrenched elite.
Which brings us to the real-world stakes: Monkey Man is not just set in India; it is speaking to India—and the backlash proves the point. The film’s theatrical release in India remains stalled, amid reports that the Central Board of Film Certification has delayed or avoided screenings because the content is politically charged. Patel links this delay to real frustration: “We’re talking about religion and how religion can weaponise a large mass of people … it came from a place of rage too, against what was happening in India.” In other words, the system this film critiques is still fighting for control over the narrative. The censorship becomes part of the message. The elite refuse to let the message out—and that refusal confirms the film’s point.
Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows is surely a classical demonstration of continuity editing, using lots of dissolves, fade-ins, and match-on-action, etc. The techniques of shooting/editing is also our main topic for this week.
However, when I was watching the film, I cannot help myself from thinking about the mise-en-scène, particularly the symbolisms of each prop/object. There were lots of occasions when we see one’s facial features clearly but not the other one (due to lighting), when the two of them were having a conversation. Why is that? There were also different animals that appeared, including pigeon and dears. Why these animals? Mirrors also seem to be symbolic. Why did the production team make these choices?
The article talked about the scene when Cary visits Ron’s mill for the first time. As she tries to ascend the stairs, a pigeon flies out, causing her to lose balance and fall into Ron’s arms. The article claims the half-climbed steps as a common device used by Sirk. Although Cary has made the decision to walk on a path that would deviate her from her previous Bourgeois lifestyle, she is only capable of proceeding halfway into Ron’s Bohemian lifestyle. This foreshadows how she had to give up marrying Ron for consideration of her children and her community’s comments.
Ultimately though, she did fall back into Ron’s arms, in this mill which would later turn into a bedroom.
Animals
Speaking of pigeons, I was also confused of its possible symbolic meaning, as well as the deer that appeared multiple times. The article provides an insightful explanation.
On Ron’s car, there is a scene when Cary hesitates her marriage with Ron. When Ron speaks how a man has to make his own decisions, Cary responds that “And you want me to be a man”. The article claims that what might be truer to say is that Cary wants Ron to be a woman. The movie ended with a shot of Ron laying on the bed then pivoting to a deer outside the window(an animal that is associated with Ron). If the pigeon represents Ron’s challenging sexuality, then the deer implies that the male has become a “meekly submissive creature, signaling Cary’s transition from passive object to dominant subject.”
Mirror
Screenshot from the film at time 00:06:22.
In a review of All That Heaven Allows by criterion.com, All That Heaven Allows: An Articulate Screen, a specific occasion where mirror appears is discussed. This is when the audience first get introduced to the children. On the very right stands a vase containing the branches Ron cut for her earlier, where on the left we see Cary. However, between the branch and Cary intrudes the 2 children. This also acts as a foreshadow of how later in the film Kay and Ned would stand against the marriage between Cary and Ron.
Screenshot from the film at time 01:15:36.
Later when Cary and her children celebrates Christmas, Ned bought a television for Cary, with the deliveryman saying “Life’s parade at your fingertips,” but ultimately serves as the “last refuge for lonely women.”
Library of Congress Film Essay, An academic paper published by the University of Kent, commented this scene by how accurately the deliveryman’s last line captured Cary’s state of emotion as she gazes emptily at the screen. “Yet to be turned on, the machine simply mirrors her own image: a woman lost, lonely and bereft, and something beyond a technological fix.”
In conclusion, I think that the mirrors function as a reflection of the bourgeois culture. For the first mirror that got us to know Kay and Ned, the fact that Ron’s branches stood outside of the mirror’s frame tells that he is not part of the clubbing, partying culture. Having Cary emptily staring into the television screen, the film might also try to criticize the loneliness and solidarity beneath the bourgeoisie’s fancy socialization.
Chapter 6 in Film Art: An Introduction discusses editing and how the relationship between shots controls the timing and impact of the action. There are 4 dimensions of film editing: graphic relations, rhythmic relations, spatial relations, and temporal relations.
Shots can be linked via a graphic match, which entails linking shots with similar shapes, color, composition, or movement. Graphic discontinuities can be used to create contrast between shots.
The patterning of shot lengths gives the film its rhythm. Flash frames accent certain actions in a shot, giving weight to that specific action.
Editing can show where characters and objects are in a certain space. The Kuleshov effect, also called constructive editing, cuts together portions of space in a way that implies different emotions depending on what is shown. Another way to show space is analytical editing, which breaks an establishing shot into closer shots.
Editing can control the timing of an action, thus creating an order of events that affect the story, known as chronology. Flashbacks give a glimpse into the past, while flashforwards reveal future events before switching back to the present.
I recently watched Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, 2024), a black comedy about the male friendship between Craig, played by Tim Robinson, and Austin, played by Paul Rudd.
While watching, I noticed that the film makes creative use of temporal relations. In the Toad Trip scene, elliptical editing was used to show an action quicker than it would take in real life.
Craig lies down on the ground to get ready for his trip. We cut to a close up of the toad and we see Craig sit up and lick the toad. We then cut away to T-Boy, and when we cut back to Craig, we catch him at the tail end of lying back on the ground. Finally, we cut back to T-Boy, who has just finished putting the toad back in the carrier and closing the lid.
In this scene, the actions are presented on screen quicker than they would take in real life. The actions of T-Boy are implied because they are nonessential to the scene. The 180 degree rule is also in play during this scene. The camera never crosses the axis of action, and the characters are in a shot/reverse shot sequence.
