chungking express soundtrack track listing

Whisper of the Heart comprises, along with Only Yesterday, Ocean Waves, and From Up on Poppy Hill, the small yet profound coming-of-age realism subgenre in the Studio Ghibli canon.

Whisper of the Heart and Chungking Express – released just a year apart – might seem totally dissimilar, but share a distinctive commonality in their central female characters’ respective attachments to a particular diegetic song, used to tell us about how they relate to their wider urban environment. Neither can we divorce the images of the callous massacre of a Vietnamese village in Apocalypse Now from the fascistic connotations of Wagner’s accompanying “Ride of the Valkyries”. We cannot appreciate the malaise of colonial Calcutta in India Song without the desultory eponymous melody recurring throughout. A particularly interesting – and possibly under-appreciated – function of music is its depiction of both place and how characters feel about a place.

One of the first things that come to mind when we think of a film we love might be its stirring orchestral score, its zany soundtrack, or evocative sonic symbols. Music has always played a critical role in film, serving as an emotional and aesthetic heartbeat pulsing alongside and supporting its narrative core.

Chungking express soundtrack track listing