64 years ago today, a one-of-a-kind film artist was born.
Christopher Doyle, originally from Australia but wholeheartedly belonging to his adoptive Asian culture of Hong Kong and Taiwan, is one of the greatest living cinematographers working today. He’s also the first DP to come to mind if you’re ever thinking about having a drink with one, a plaudit he’d probably hold in higher regard than any praise of cinematic artistry laid on him. He has one of the most eclectic CVs of any cinematographer working today (can
Emmanuel Lubezki boast that he was a cow herder, oil driller and doctor of medicine before picking up a camera? Don’t think so) and if you were to discuss where he gets his inspiration from, cinema isn’t even on the list. Dance, theatre, literature, “
Francis Bacon talking about the bars that he likes,” engaging and breaking up with beautiful women; all of these come before any direct cinematic influence for the genuine maverick and notorious wild card that is Chris Doyle. Breaking technical rules, using mistakes to his advantage, and proudly preserving his
reputation as “the fucking
Keith Richards of cinematography,” Doyle’s images in the blistering Asian cinema of the nineties and early aughts helped redefine Eastern cinematic culture and language. His trophy case boasts awards from
Cannes,
Venice,
AFI, loads of
Golden Horse and
Hong Kong Film Awards, but, insanely enough, he’s never even been nominated for an
Oscar. Although, considering
his thoughts on American cinema and the Hollywood system, he’s probably doesn’t give two shits about that.
Doyle is, of course, most famous for his collaborations with Hong Kong auteur and directing legendWong Kar-Wai. I’m not sure if any cinematographer was as instrumental in creating a director’s reputation and name as Doyle was for Wong. Their seven collaborations (together with Wong’s long-time production designer, William Chang), offer some of the most vivid, immediate, energetic, inventive and groundbreaking cinematic experiences in contemporary cinema – most notable for bringing the neon world of Hong Kong to colorful and visually jaw-dropping life. Seeing himself more as a collaborator than a cinematographer, Doyle’s images are suffused with symbolic visuals and a sensitive engagement with the actors; so many of his shots bottling the essence of the film’s themes, messages, and emotions.
To celebrate the work of an unpretentious genius and one of the most unique eyes of cinema, I’ve hand-picked 10 shots from Doyle’s Chinese and Hong Kong oeuvre, sticking to his most popular and artistically creative years. Take “best” with a grain of salt (and some lemon and tequila since we’re celebrating), since there are dozens of other films Doyle has worked on before and after Wong Kar-Wai, and outside of his sandbox in Hong Kong, which offer an array of dazzling and inventive techniques. Beauty is also in the eye of the beholder, etc.
For reasons explained below, these 10 shots define Chris Doyle’s commandeering art for me. Oh, and in case you’re wondering; for the purposes of this article, a shot is any uncut take as seen in the finished film.
Late Night Chat – “Days of Being Wild” (1991)
The first of seven films Wong Kar-Wai and Chris Doyle made together, “Days of Being Wild” is also the first in the loose trilogy that follows the fates of
Maggie Cheung‘s Su Li-zhen and
Tony Leung‘s Chow. For this shot, Su feels jilted from the pangs of first love after realizing that the man she fell for, Yuddy (
Leslie Cheung), is no longer a part of her life. She meets a kind-hearted and soft-spoken security guard (
Andy Lau) who comforts her by listening and sharing his own story. They take a late night stroll by the streetcar tracks, the wet concrete glistening after the rain and the film’s most predominant colour — green, here lit up by the railway signals — bouncing off in a way that foreshadows one of Doyle and Wong’s trademarks: the urban jungle. It’s a reverse tracking shot, (smooth on a dolly, unlike Doyle’s upcoming handheld tracking shots that have a rougher, but more intimate, effect), that lasts almost a full minute and a half. Already finding a way of capturing Su Li-zhen’s incandescent characteristics, Doyle’s camera positions itself as a gentle observer, green wilderness taking a backseat to an incredibly sincere and authentic moment between two souls. We’re also witnessing the early origins of Cheung’s iconic wistfulness through the film’s thoughtful introduction of one of the most poignant characters in modern cinema. Lights from the off-screen traffic and streetcars at times eclipse the actors in total darkness, and at others illuminate them in bright white light, almost as if orchestrated by the ebbs and flows of personal sadness and regret in the conversation.
A Style is Born – “Chungking Express” (1994)
The legend of how “Chungking Express” came to be is now as famous as the film itself, and stands as the greatest example of Doyle and Wong’s improvised and spontaneous modus operandi. Shot in two months, as a breather from editing his
wuxia epic “
Ashes of Time,” “Chungking Express” ended up being the film that put Wong on the international map, many still hailing it as his quintessential film. Would this have been the case without Chris Doyle? The film is an atomic blast of creative energy; exhilarating, vibrant, inventive – it coaxes us with its visually provocative use of neon colours smudged and smeared with perfectly imperfect and abstract focus. He may be the Keith Richards of cinematographers behind the camera, but through the lens, Doyle is cinema’s
Jackson Pollock; an action painter of the most vivid kind, creating a language that spawned litters of copycats and wannabes. There’s no better moment in any film that celebrates this harder than the infamous shot from the opening chase sequence of “Chungking Express.” Lasting only a fleeting 2 seconds, Hong Kong’s neon nightlife is rendered a blur while Cop. 223 (
Takeshi Kaneshiro) pursues a nameless villain right before he’s about to brush past
Brigitte Lin’s femme fatale. As with most every film from this list, choosing the best shot from “Chungking Express” is practically impossible, because so many of Doyle’s shots engrave themselves on the frontal lobe – think of
Faye Wong’s fixated stare at Tony Leung while the crowd speeds past in the foreground, or all those magical escalator reflections. But, as a tone-setter so early in the film, this must have been the one that knocked people out with its inventive and audacious use of light, colour and focus; creating cinematic texture and redefining the way people thought of “motion” in motion pictures. W
ith Wai-Keung Lau.
Cagey Conversation – “Ashes of Times” (1994) 
Wong’s
wuxia tale can be confusing if you’re into straightforward plotlines and linear character action. Its plotline is as confusing to follow, as its visual telling is resplendent to behold. With every frame, the film seems to vie for the number one spot on Wong Kar-Wai’s best-shot films. Its aggressively saturated yellow hues at times leave the impression that Doyle’s greatest tool was not the camera, but the sun and a magnifying glass. Scorched desert landscapes pierce through the screen, reflections sumptuously melt into each other like smooth liquid puddles of spilt oil, but one standout shot screams artistic bravado with such a high pitch, it just about drowns everything else. The scene sees Brigitte Lin’s Yang and Leslie Cheung’s Feng discussing – what else? – love. The shot, lasting almost a full minute and a half, observes Lin and Feng’s movements behind a couple of bamboo birdcages (the film’s most prominent symbol) as they discuss the possibility of Yang’s brother Yin having some sick infatuation with his sister. The kick is that Yang and Yin are the same person, and the shadow-dance on the actors’ faces – created by daylight shining through the revolving cages – captures this trickery as evocatively as it symbolizes Feng and Yang’s entrapped destinies. Doyle’s hand-held movements glide behind the birdcages, creating a sense of palpable space – the entrapped atmosphere perfectly complimenting the cagey conversation while literally keeping the viewer captive like a caged bird.
Neon Pleasures – “Fallen Angels” (1995) 
Moaning with pleasure, with back-up vocals courtesy of
Laurie Anderson‘s sexy psycho-punk ballad ‘Speak My Language,’ a woman in fishnet stockings and a black leather dress masturbates on the bed. Doyle’s wide angle lensing and compositions, the neon-lit shady streets of Hong Kong after dark, and the assassin’s narrow apartment that we keep coming back to gives “Fallen Angels” a sexy, sleazy, and lurid varnish. Lasting well over a full minute, this single take is the camera at its most perverse, and the single greatest symbolic representation of the film’s intense effect on the viewer. By turning us into voyeurs and creeps who lurk behind beds and watch with some excitement (Doyle’s handheld motions see to that) as a sexy assassin contractor (
Michele Reis) pleasures herself, Doyle and Wong turn the audience on by turning the image into something to fetishize over. I seriously doubt that a homosexual man or a heterosexual woman watching this scene could deny the lasciviousness that drips from every corner of the frame. Of course, as with every brilliant Doyle shot, this particular one serves multiple purposes. Doyle’s use of deep focus ensures that the green clock in the background dominates part of the frame, reminding us of one of Wong’s most re-occurring symbols (to
quote the man himself: “all of
Wong Kar-wai‘s films are pretty much about time”). A little later in the film, a near-identical angle sees the same woman sprawled out on the same bed, making similar motions. This time, when the camera cuts to her face we see that she’s crying, making the effect all the more powerfully because of our association with this earlier scene. Pleasure and pain, color and sex, music and mood; all are fused together through Doyle’s brilliantly angled hand-held shot.
It’s Too Late – “Temptress Moon” (1996)
Legend has it that Chris Doyle drank a bottle and a half of whiskey a day during the shoot of “Temptress Moon,”
Chen Kaige‘s period piece. Seeing how fast and loose the camera moves within the film’s gorgeous golden complexions, there is a definite feeling of unhinged liberty at play, as if Doyle really is under some toxic influence. The result is a whirl of sumptuously contrasted shadow and light with Doyle’s camera at its most balletic; so visually striking is the picture, in fact, that the aesthetics dominate over plot, which Kaige purposefully made opaque and not unlike the construction of a dream. The overexposed lighting creates a sort of veil through which the engrossing tracking shots are allowed to breathe, and none are quite as effective as the one that captures the climactic farewell between the doomed central lovers Ruyi (
Gong Li) and Zhongliang (
Leslie Cheung). Lasting a full 3 minutes, the camera starts with Zhongliang’s desperate pleas for Ruyi to reconsider her decision to marry someone else. But it’s too late. Pulling backwards, pushing forwards, shaking as if scared in a moment of duress, the camera chooses to stick by Ruyi’s side and her defiant convictions. As she slowly walks away from the crushed Zhongliang, deflated Chinese lanterns from bygone times decorating the background, the sun dances on her face – at one point making her tear glisten, diamond-like. Gong Li’s performance is remarkable; her sigh that signals the end of the shot lingers, echoes and cuts our hearts in the deep dead center. It’s a genius shot; using motion and light to epitomize the essence of the film in 3 minutes while giving the two central characters a glorious send-off. If there was ever a case to be made for drinking on the job…
The Tango – “Happy Together” (1997)
Wong’s “Happy Together” is the same story him and Doyle have been creating throughout their time together, a story about love, loss, looking back and moving on. This time it’s depicted through a same-sex relationship and the emotionally charged connection between two lovers: Ho (Leslie Cheung) and Lai (Tony Leung). They’re in Argentina, trying to rekindle their relationship, and this particular scene – which, unsurprisingly, produced the most prominent marketing image for the film – sees them reunited after the umpteenth break-up, with Ho teaching Lai the tango. Lai thinks he finally got his footing, and after a gorgeous shot of some debris and unfinished construction work under an overcast sky, we get this minute-long handheld shot of the two of them dancing in the kitchen. Bathed in sunlight as they frolic more than tango, the two lovers can’t keep their hands off each other and we, in turn, can’t keep our eyes off of them. The shadows created by the most ordinary objects (a pot, a pan, and a kettle) add to the exotic mystic, as we bear witness to the peak of a passionate love story. Doyle’s insistence of operating the camera himself places emphasis on the “witnessing” aspect of the shot, as his slight motions and variations seem to make the camera dance along with the characters, the way your feet involuntarily tap to the beat of a song you love.
Astor Piazzolla‘s accordion tango is the mood-enhancer, Leung and Cheung exude the chemistry, but what drapes this moment in nostalgia and turns their love into a chimera, is all Doyle.
Missed Connections – “In the Mood for Love” (2000)
As the most celebrated film from one of the greatest director-cinematographer pairings in the history of cinema, “In the Mood for Love” is miraculous in how it captures Wong’s grand themes of loneliness, longing and love. So deeply felt are these emotions, that almost every composition and flow of action feels serendipitous. Music, acting, mise en scène, framing, dialogue, the sumptuous and never-garish reds and blues, Doyle’s observant camera; everything syncs to create something timeless and extraordinary. This shot, lasting just over 30 seconds on screen, sees our central characters Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) at the peak of their happiness together, working together on Chow’s story. In one of the film’s iconic slo-mo montages while
‘Yumeji’s Theme‘ seduces us through the speakers, the camera is positioned behind Chow and starts to pan right, captures her looking at him, continues to move behind her, and lingers for a beat or two while framing him in deep concentration. Lingering for a beat, it returns the same way, behind her, capturing
her fixated focus at work now, before ending back on his left side, and him – his concentration briefly broken – glancing up at her. Crucially, both are reflected in a mirror, so while the camera glides to the music (or the music follows the camera’s movements) the two of them are doubled, so that we are, in a way, looking at four people. It’s a masterful shot because in 30 seconds it captures the essence of Wong’s themes; the duplicitous nature of their connection (their respective spouses, whom we never see, are having an affair with each other), the missed connection symbolized in the longing gaze while the other is not looking, and the half-circular tender swing of the camera movement returning to where it came (a signature motion that’s everywhere in the film) reminding us how retracting steps and mirrored movements are integral to understanding the nature of the film’s emotional flow.
This fantastic video essay goes into greater depth regarding the frames-within-frames construction in the film.
With Ping Bin Lee & Pung-Leung Kwan
“Why didn’t you block my sword?” – “Hero” (2002)
Director
Zhang Yimou comes from a cinematographic background, so when he paired up with Christopher Doyle for his martial arts epic “Hero,” visual beauty was a given. Every frame, every composition, in this film is lush, wondrous, and awesome in the true sense of the word. Each version of the central story is unabashedly adorned by a single color – red, blue and white – while the present is bedecked in black, and flashback scenes are as green as evergreen. Doyle shoots the colors in a way that devours the screen, so that key fight sequences – the one in the forest or the one on the lake, for example – resonate in our minds in shades of red and blue. The beauty contained in every shot is impressive even for masters like Doyle and Yimou, but it’s in the white version where I’ve found my favorite shot. Shooting in the desert must be one of the greatest challenges a cinematographer can face, and in
an interview with filmdetail, he calls it “finding the sculpture in the stone.” When Broken Sword (Tony Leung) gives his life so that the woman he loves, Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), can understand that letting the King live is more important – it’s the most heartbreakingly pure and essentially heroic moment of the film. She lets out a primal scream, and it cuts to this incredible wide shot of the elemental desert landscape, with the sky and its pinkish hue above them, and a powerful gust of wind – nature’s silent symbolizer – blowing their corporal connection away. At once dreamlike, emotional and primeval; the shot goes to show that, in the hands of a master DP, a stunning film like “Hero” can contain scenes with the least amount of flashy color and still visualize intense emotion, on a cosmic scale.
Twisted Nutrition – “Three… Extremes: Dumplings” (2004)
There was no way of talking about one of Doyle’s more brilliantly twisted shots without completely spoiling “Dumplings.” Originally shot as a short for director
Fruit Chen as part of a horror anthology “Three…Extremes” (the other two shorts are directed by
Park Chan-Wook and
Takashi Miike, by the way, so the whole thing is well worth checking out), “Dumplings” is about desperate Mrs. Li (
Miriam Yeung) who seeks the help from an unsettling medicine woman (
Bai Ling), known for her special, youth-restoring dumplings recipe. During the film’s pivotal moment, Li finds out what the special ingredient is (aborted fetuses!), runs away, tries to vomit it all out of her mind, but is suddenly compelled to return. What follows is a discombobulated sequence of blurred cuts, distorted angles and lopsided framing before the shot in question makes us simultaneously recoil in horror and marvel at its genial composition. Shot underneath Mei’s glass table, the two women stare at the red speck in the center, the tiny humanoid form that goes ever-so-slightly in and out of focus and acts like a branding iron that burns the moment into our retinas. “Nothing in the world can beat this nutrition,” extols Mei, as she leans for a closer look at one point and her face gets contorted through the fetal blood. It’s truly horrific stuff, and Doyle compliments the disturbing themes with an appropriately disturbing angle, confirming that the colour red can provoke revulsion just as easily as passion.
Christmas Dinner – “2046” (2004)
For fans of Wong and Doyle’s films, “2046” is a bittersweet affair. Taking close to 5 years to complete, feeling like a contractual obligation more than any of their previous, ad hoc efforts, this spiritual and futuristic sequel to “In the Mood for Love” follows Mr. Chow (Leung) after his life-changing encounter with Su-Li Zhen (Cheung). Even if it was the film that effectively broke Doyle and Wong up, “2046” is still one of the best shot “unnecessary” sequels in contemporary cinema, and this scene – featuring Wong stalwarts Tony Leung and Faye Wong as Jing-wen – gives the greatest ballast to an unwavering and tonally off-kilter picture. It is the distant and futuristic relative to the “In The Mood for Love” entry; a tracking shot that sways from side to side and captures two people and their reflections in the same shot. For almost a full minute and a half, the space covered by the uninterrupted shot is the length of a dinner table but by magnifying, duplicating and refracting the actors with lambent reflection, the ground covered feels much larger. Instilling an epic nature into something as intimate and everyday as a dinner conversation is one of Doyle’s many uncanny abilities, and here, with a little help from
Nat King Cole and two brilliant screen performers, loneliness and the sense of doomed romance are once again in wedlock. They’re both alone on Christmas Eve, and Chow – who has turned into something of a womanizing selfish former shell of the man we once knew – is on the verge of doing the most selfless thing in the film; helping Jing-wen reunite with her Japanese boyfriend. The reflections – futuristic in their shapes, perhaps even digitized – signal the evolution of the same story from “In the Mood,” as Chow looks at the one woman who reminds him of Su Li-zhen the most, and decides that the right thing to do – no matter how close they’ve grown and become part of each other’s lives – is to let her go.
A fitting final shot to bring this article to an end. Doyle
often cites breaks ups, and the depression that usually follows them, as the greatest creative stimulant to his best work.
The films mentioned above overflow with shots that contain tiny worlds, so here’s hoping that this article encourages readers to seek out and revisit all of them. Any film, even if they are shot-for-shot remakes by Gus Van Sant (“Psycho”) or ‘lesser’ exports by the likes of Jim Jarmsuch (“Limits of Control”), Jon Favreau (“Made”) and M. Night Shyamalan (“Lady in the Water”) are worth seeing because of Christopher Doyle’s inventive use of tracking, composition, and lighting. Special mention has to be made for “Rabbit Proof-Fence” (2002) and “Last Life in the Universe” (2003) which contain shots that nearly made it on here. Even still, we’ll all still secretly hoping that Wong and Doyle make-up and create something special again because they really turned out some magical stuff together.
Got any favorite Doyle shots you want to get off your chest? Thoughts on anything we’ve discussed, or about the idea of going to bars in lieu of watching movies for artistic inspiration? You know where to sound off!
