Call me Kafka, but this blossay is absurd.

Fallen Angels as Existential Expression and Absurd Art

Now before I start blowing your mind, I want to offer a few suggestions. If you get lost or confused about what I am discussing, I would suggest a quick peruse of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on existentialism and their article on existential aesthetics (I’ll link them below). The article on existential ethics is my main source for this paper (other than the movie of course!) so anytime it seems like something needs to be cited that isn’t, consider this paragraph the honorary citation.

With that out of the way, allow me to dive right into things.

Fallen Angels is one of those movies that make me wonder why they aren’t a million more movies just like it. The cinematography is astounding, the editing is beautifully disorienting, its soundtrack is perfect, and the acting is absolutely phenomenal. Of course, my favorite aspect of Fallen Angels is also exactly why there aren’t more films like it; its existential and absurd nature. Audiences tend to react to Kafkaesque things negatively, and although a negative reaction may be the desired reaction of the artist, it doesn’t always make people want to spend a bunch of money. Thus, existential films would likely remain low on the priority list of production companies.

But I digress. As interesting as it would be to analyze why films like Fallen Angels are not more common, it is not the purpose of this blossay, and I am certainly not an economist. What I aim to achieve with this blossay is to articulate what makes Fallen Angels existential and absurd art.

According to existentialism, human beings exist in a way that is different from other living beings. Not only does the human being exist, but he or she is aware of this fact. Furthermore, he or she is can also choose how he or she will use this existence or being, and thus how their being relates to the universe. Existentialism can be used to explain freedom as a how a being chooses to actively engage in the external world. Twentieth century thinkers in existentialism assert that freedom allows for the ability to reveal features of the existent world, at least under ideal conditions. Because artistic expression and creation is an example of free human activity, and that it allows for the being to explore and express the surrounding universe and its fundamental features, artistic creation can be in and of itself existentialist. This is especially true when the artist is devoting his creations to expressing the absurdity and despair found in the human condition.

Film, being a part of the larger umbrella of ‘art’, allows this same pursuit of existential themes as shown by the various playwrights and novelists of the twentieth century. However, the creation of film (and all art) is in ways inherently a demonstration of existential themes as well. Albert Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus (in the section titled “Absurd Creation”), “There is not mystery in human creation. Will performs this miracle.” The mere action of deciding to create at all, regardless of what its final form is (or even if the creation is unsuccessful at manifesting itself in a tangible form) is fundamentally existentialist. The being decides that their active engagement with universe at that moment is going to be creation (or the attempt of creation) of a film, or music, or a novel, or whatever! By using their will freely, and by using this will to engage in the world in some manner, existentialism comes into play.

On a less general level, film can also be a wonderful tool for revelatory communication. For example, when done correctly, art can reveal certain significant features of the world, such as man’s (and woman’s!) relationship and place in the universe. How effectively an art form or artistic creation does this, how well it communicates in a revelatory fashion, is how twentieth century existentialists, such as Sartre and de Beauvoir, judged said art form or artistic creation. To quote the SEP entry that I linked below, “…every aesthetic ordering of the world brings with it a conception of human freedom and suggests ways to use it.” To existentialists, there is no meaningful difference between philosophical and artistic creation. Both are extremely capable of revealing human freedom, responsibility, and despair.

Fallen Angels does this revelatory communication phenomenally through its central narratives, its development of the main characters, and through the aesthetic cinematic choices. The movie follows three separate storylines (which I will not go over in this essay, as I assume you are familiar with them). Granted, they are related, and even overlap and interact, but they are never really the same story. The movie switches perspective over and over, following only one character’s perspective at a time. Even when two main characters are in the same scene the perspective remains on only one. The intense focus on singular characters desperately attempting to achieve satisfying human connection and relationships instead of any real focus on the already existing relationships between the characters creates a sense of individualism and isolation that is very familiar to those well versed in existentialism.

With the storylines focusing on the lack of relationships to other humans, the characters show this isolation in different ways. Ho Chi Moo is isolated from others by his literal inability to communicate. Even his monologues are in Mandarin instead of Cantonese. Charlie uses him as an emotional tool, somebody that she can cry on, instead of ever treating him like a human. Ho Chi Moo becomes a means, not and ends in and of himself. He thus becomes alienated from himself, if I may borrow from Marxist rhetoric and theory. Ho Chi Moo is existential in his infinite isolation, from others in communication, from society by language (assuming that we can read into him speaking Mandarin), and from himself through modern day alienation.

              Wong Chi-Ming’s partner (I’ll get to Wong Chi-Ming in a little bit) reveals a different form of isolation and despair. She is hopelessly obsessed with a person she never interacts with face to face. Or, maybe more accurately, she is taking somebody who exists, and creating a persona around him that fulfills (or would fulfill) all of her desires and needs. She is externalizing herself by projecting attractive qualities onto him, alienating herself from herself. (Again, this is a Marxist concept, but that’s okay. Marxist themes are hidden all over in the underpinnings of existentialism, as both deal with the flaws of modern society, and the main thinkers of existentialism, Sartre and Camus, were both socialists.) When she has Wong Chi-Ming killed, she was committing metaphysical suicide.

Wong Chi-Ming fills a role that is especially interesting. He has no real relationships, not even coming close to one with Blondie (who I am not actually convinced is a real person. I think she is actually just an invented personification of Western-influenced desires, but that’s neither here nor there. Perhaps a blog post on that in the future?) whom he just uses for hedonistic pleasures. His reasoning for being an assassin was that he was lazy. He doesn’t like to make his own decisions or choices, so he has a partner to do that for him. SEP put it perfectly in their article. “On the existentialists’ outlook, the only positive feature of “human reality,” strictly speaking, is responsibility towards others and towards oneself… Many human beings refuse the burden and flee from their ontological responsibility by accepting pre-given roles.” Running from his own agency, he became an empty shell of a man. He may not be alone or despairing like the other characters, but he is not happy. He is flat. He is essence-less. He is nothing.

The way the movie was constructed was also very existential. It communicated the isolation of the characters in very subtle ways that would be subconsciously noticed by the audience. Although there are numerous examples of this, there are a few particular shots that are mimicked throughout the film that show this exceptionally well that I wish to touch on. The first shot is a head on shot, often with a wide fish-eye lens, usually at a medium to close-up perspective. One character is looking straightforward, usually at nothing in particular, positioned on the right or left side of the screen. Over the character’s shoulder is either some sort of action or event that is going on at the same time, or another character. The one character will (almost) never look at the second character (there is also very little back and forth conversation. Most of it is one-sided). The shot helps set a tone of apathy and isolation towards others and their surroundings, as well as just a general inability to make human connections.

The second shot happens far less frequently, but is still very interesting. The shot shows how subtle decisions can have a larger effect on the totality of the movie. The shot is most obvious during the scenes in which Ho Chi-Ming’s partner masturbates on his bed. It shows her isolation and utter aloneness. That scene takes a more complex meaning if you notice when the same camera angle is repeated later in the film. When Ho Chi-Ming is in his apartment for the first time in the film, he is laying in his bed in a similar position, smoking a cigarette, watching TV. It is only then that it becomes apparent that in the masturbation scenes, the TV is on in the background and she is similarly smoking a cigarette (cigarettes are actually a major commonality in the film that I wish to give more thought to. Again, perhaps another blog post is in order). It gives both scenes a feeling of not just isolation, but also of boredom. It makes it seem like they were on that bed, because they simply had nothing better to do

Finally, the use of the extremely wide fish-eye lens added a very unique feeling to a movie. As the camera focused in on a character, that character seemed very close to the viewer. It was almost as if the character is being pressed up against the audience. It makes it hard to take your vision off the character to see what else is going on in the scene. The rest of the screen that wasn’t being filled with the character seemed very far away. This added a weird feeling of a second character being 10 feet away from the central character even though in “real life” the second character might be only a few feet away. It added a very isolating and surreal quality to the film and showed how a physical closeness to someone wasn’t enough to allow for a human connection to be made. The isolation of the characters in the film is not a physical one; it is a mental or metaphysical isolation.

Of course, my interpretation of Fallen Angels could very well be entirely different from you even though we both experienced the same film. This is unsurprising. To quote the SEP entry, “Many existentialists insist that the ways in which human consciousness ‘intends’ the world (that is, imposes a certain order and regularity in external phenomena) is intrinsically dependent on the values the person has set for herself. A mountain climber views a mountain in a way radically different from an intellectual who has devoted his or her life to books… In other words, behind every perception there is a value influencing the perception in advance and thus ultimately determining its precise content,” But, that is okay. What really makes Fallen Angels so cool is its Kafkaesque nature. So, although I have a drastically different background from you, and possibly had a very different conclusion on the content of the movie, we still had the same rudimentary experience. By using fast, frantic cuts, random black and white scenes, strange music, extreme close-ups, tilted frames, and more (I could literally go on and on) the audience was immersed in a relatable experience. We may have viewed the same mountain and gotten different interpretations of it, but we all had to climb it and we all got tired. This tiring, almost hopeless experience is what makes Fallen Angels a work of absurd art.

According to Camus, “the ‘absurd’ mainly designates this resistance of the world to our endeavors. Whilst we crave for sense and harmony, the world has nothing to offer but chaos and a random play of blind forces. All our efforts to impose order and sense upon a world that can ultimately accommodate neither are therefore doomed to fail. The absurd, then, denominates both the most fundamental state of the world and the absurdity of human attempts at overcoming this basic fact,” Camus talks about absurd art at great length in the final two sections of his book The Myth of Sisyphus (I’m sure you can find a free PDF of it online). The basic concept of absurd art is that the work of art causes you to experience the absurd on a more tangible, miniature level. Ideally, the work of art is entirely and utterly hopeless. There is nothing within the piece itself to make the audience want to continue onward, so anything that incites a person to continue with the piece is being projected onto it by that same person. In other words, the motivation for finishing the piece is not inherent to the work of art. The motivation is being brought in by the piece’s participants.

Although Camus doesn’t give any examples of purely absurd artworks, in fact he isn’t convinced that they are even completely possible to create; he does cite Kafka as being the closest thing to an absurd artist. He says that the only reason why Kafka’s writings aren’t truly absurd is because there is always a tiny bit of hope in them. To anyone who has read (or tried to read) Kafka’s book The Trial, that statement is hilarious. By extension, any work of art that can be described as Kafkaesque is, at least a little bit, an absurd work of art. ‘Kafkaesque’ is defined by dictionary.com as ‘marked by senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity’. His pieces are frustrating, depressing, confusing, and disturbing in ways that one typically would not be disturbed. The experience of watching Fallen Angels is all of those things, and thus, Fallen Angels can be described as an absurd piece of art.

The examination of the whole is where real meaning is found, at least to existentialists. So, even if you disagree with some of my more specific claims, I ask that you think about what I am saying in this blossay overall, and about how you feel about Fallen Angels as a whole. Try not to get caught up over specific grievances because, as Sartre put it, “The hundred thousand words aligned in a book can be read one by one without the meaning of the book emerging; meaning is not the sum of the words, but its organic totality.”