By taking images over and treating them like autonomous material, Wong Kar-wai set himself up as the most contemporary filmmaker of his time. He films the huge flow of contemporary images from the inside, hones them to an almost dizzying point of seductiveness, but talks also about the damage they do. Individuals are alone, orphaned, unfit for love, unable to exert the slightest influence on reality. His films works like prisms—collecting the luminous reflections of cityscapes and the somber psyches of his characters, diffracting them in the brightly colored facets of a video clip. There remains what is the true measure of any great filmmaker: a perfectly articulated vision of the state of the world, here and today.