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Audio Format: DD 5.1, DD 2.0
Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1(Anamorphic)
Languages: English
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Region Code: 1
Year Made: 2007
Running Time: 97
Release Date: 07/01/2008
It’s a strange thing - and something that makes him almost unique among directors working today - but the best thing about Wong Kar-wai’s films is that he never actually makes the film he sets out to make. In the extra features of Happy Together, In The Mood For Love and 2046 DVDs for example, you can see fragments of the films he originally intended to make, but fortunately didn’t, since the original thin idea was just a springboard for exploring something less tangible, less easily transcribed into a screenplay, something that the genius of the Wong Kar-wai could develop into an immeasurably greater film.
There are undoubtedly good reasons for this, but the primary reason must almost certainly be that the great Hong Kong director is making his first feature film in English. It’s something that has tripped up many international directors in the past, who come to Hollywood and feel the need to either do an inferior remake one of their best films or make up a patchwork of their greatest hits. My Blueberry Nights feels like a remake of Chungking Express, with the best bits of Happy Together thrown in there and maybe a scene or two from Fallen Angels. Although My Blueberry Nights technically retains its independent status, when you have major Hollywood stars on board, sticking to the script and a shooting schedule is probably a contractual obligation, leaving the director little room for the improvisational style he is famed for - or notorious for, since the films consequently can take 3 or 4 years to finish.
It’s the end of Chungking Express that seems to be the starting point for My Blueberry Nights only transposed to a fast-food bar in New York where Jeremy (Jude Law) knows his customers by their regular order rather than by their actual name. Jeremy sees the relationships that are formed there, but also witnesses the sadness of the break-ups, keeping sets of keys left behind by their owners when things turn sour, holding them in a jar behind the counter. Keeping a set of his own keys there, Jeremy’s café has become like a holding place for broken relationships, one unchanging certainty that will always be there should anyone ever want to find their way back. Few ever do. One such example is Elizabeth (Norah Jones). Nursing a broken heart, Elizabeth finds solace in the café’s blueberry pie, feeling some kinship with the only dish left on the shelf untouched at the end of each day.
Undecided about whether to hold out hope for her boyfriend coming back, she decides to take off on a 300 day trip around America to find herself. Working as a waitress as Betty, Lizzie and Beth in places as diverse as Memphis and Nevada, she encounters several other lonely people in difficult relationships – a drunken cop Arnie (David Strathairn) who sits at a bar in the belief that his wayward wife (Rachel Weisz) will come back to him, and Leslie (Natalie Portman), a seemingly tough, independent gambler who also has a past she is running away from. Elizabeth regularly sends Jeremy postcards of her travels, and he waits for her as she goes “California dreaming”, hoping that one day she might return for some blueberry pie.
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