There is probably nothing remarkable about this scene whatsoever. Yet it has lingered long in my mind from the first time I saw it, like the metaphorical bird that permeates the dialogue of this beautiful and stunning film and Wong's later effort, 2046 (which, in a way, follows on from this). And what more can you ask from a scene than that.
As impossible to ignore as it is to forget, this simple, yet perfectly put together, scene is stamped by a beautiful, tired, languid monologue, by Andy Lau's sweet and heartbroken cop as he wanders towards a different and seemingly emotionless future ("and I went off to join the army") through the rainswept streets of early 1960's Hong-Kong with 'Perfidia' taking over the moment Lau's words fall off and into the rushing, lonely, drains. It is a moment which offers the perfect symmetry of music, emotion and word, Lau's quiet and understated, but destroyed and sick, words echoed perfectly by the dolorous, plangent, chords of Perfidia, as the rain falls and falls and a distant future awaits.
It is also the film's pivotal moment, the instant where the film's two main male protagonists become irreversibly destined to meet and it is sublimely done. Wong leaves his viewers with the emotional equivilant of being hit by a sunami and yet left waiting desperately for the next one to hit. This is one of his most underrated, least watched, least studied, and least understood films, but it is still genius. It's a beautiful, languid, hazy, film, which lives on through its dazzling use of filters, song, rhythms, chords, words and performances. All are irresitibly intertwined in this one single moment of timeless and echo-drenched brilliance.
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