Heimweh/Homesickness/鄉愁
While flipping through Zitty randomly last Wednesday I noticed that Woody Allen's Manhattan was screening at Lichtblick Kino in Prenzlauerberg, a tiny dive of a cinema presently running a Woody Allen retrospective. I'm embarassed to say I'd never seen the movie before--nor have I (get ready to gag) ever seen any other Woody Allen movie. There, that's my confession--for how can any self-respecting New Yorker have gone without memorizing one or two key lines from Annie Hall or Stardust Memories? I'd only ever seen Zelig, but that was part of a random Bioethics class I took in high school as an exercise in gullibility by way of a mockumentary. So late on a Mittwoch abend I ventured to Kastanienallee by myself, and for 5 euros (4 for the ticket, 1 for the bottle of Beck's) I gained entry to the screening room that sat about 50 people total. All the seats were taken, the lights dimmed, then--the clarinet, the orchestra, the city, the glory, the beauty!"Kapitel Eins. Er war in New York verliebt. Er hat sie übertrieblich vergöttet--nein, es heißt, er hat sie übertrieblich idealisiert. Ja." And so on and so forth, a German Woody Allen stuttered and mumbled and ranted his way through two hours of wry comedy puncutated by lovely Gershwin tunes. I could only sit there and smile with my mouth half open as I marveled at how photogenic New York was. And I remembered realizing how magical a New York night could be, how endless the possibilities and recognizing that yes, one could wander over to the Brooklyn Bridge at three in the morning after picking up a burger at a diner if one wanted to. Or wander into the Planetarium randomly. Or ride through Central Park in a horse and buggy at night. (Okay, the last thing not really, but still...) It was certainly weird to see this canonical film about New York auf deutsch, and some of the translations I'm sure didn't quite carry over ("mir geht es fabelhaft"), and the woman who dubbed Diane Keaton was annoying as hell, but still--that's quite something, to see Manhattan for the first time in Berlin in German. This wave of New York Nostalgia couldn't have come at a worse time. I was just wishing to myself that spring could truly bloom in Berlin as it is already doing in New York. It must be so warm there by now. I can see the crowds of people milling around Sheep Meadow, the Saturday street fairs, and most of all at Columbia--chilling on the Low Steps, dudes throwing Frisbees, random stickball games, endless barbeques on the Van Am Quad.
I rode all the way home piping Ella Fitzgerald sings Gershwin from my iPod: "Autumn in New York," "Prelude to a Kiss," "Tenderly," and of course, "Manhattan"...I felt pangs of homesickness with every step of the way back to my apartment from the U-Bahn station. I know I've only been living there for three years but I definitely consider it my home. No longer second to Hong Kong, but rather a city to call my own--in fact, a place I probably know better, but in different ways, than Hong Kong. Actually the film made me realize how privileged I was to live in such a wonderful city with its wonderful[ly neurotic] people. So what if the film romanticizes the City to an absurd extent? That's what kitsch is for, and that's why kitsch is healthy--Jane Jacobs would say the myth of the City makes it liveable, but I actually believe that New York is a place where myth turns into reality. That's why I love it. It's gritty and terrible at times, but that's what's charming about it. That despite all its flaws, it's so damn fun and exciting and crazy.
Friday night I did indeed go to the Salon Noir at the Neue Nationalgalerie for In the Mood for Love, aka. my all-time favorite obsession, I mean, movie. I want to be Maggie Cheung. Or at least be able to wear her cheong-sams and have a torrid non-affair with Tony Leung in 1960s Hong Kong when street hawkers sold peanut candy and amahs toted bamboo poles and people (not tourists) had to ride the ferry everywhere. My mom told me that she remembered when all the women wore cheong-sams normally just to work and stuff. They're so beautiful because they're so sexy in a demure kind of way. Subtle and high-collared, yet they emphasize every womanly curve--so much more provocative than something entirely low-cut or skimpy, for example.
I'd looked forward so much to hearing Cantonese again, so needless to say it was quite a rude shock to hear them speaking German. Thank goodness there isn't a whole lot of talking in Wong Kar-Wai films. I still reveled in the gorgeous colors, the languid long shots, the pregnant pauses and the beautifully tragic music. The movie itself was filmed in Bangkok and Macau because streets like the ones Wong Kar-Wai wanted to film simply don't exist in money-obsessed, glitzy, Cyberported-out Hong Kong anymore. Eventhough I never actually knew the Hong Kong portrayed in the film, it's still romantic to think that those streets could have been the places that my parents roamed in as children and teens. I know it's absurd to say I got homesick from seeing what is in a sense a mythical city for me, but I still recognized that same tragic aura fromr the damp and claustrophobic alleys of old Hong Kong, the quaint mom and pop grocery stores and grimy smoky diners.
I guess it's just my form of Ostalgie.
posted by joyce @ 12:30 PM
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