Abstract

Menglong [朦胧] is an artistic device used in the making of the film poem “The Heart of Spring.” Menglong is understood as a unique aesthetic and profound philosophical idea in Chinese poetry. Broadly it means blurred and indistinct or understandable yet indescribable. In analyzing the menglong essence of Li Shangyin’s [李商隐] writing to film poetry, I demonstrate how everyday objects, emotion, narrative, editing, and sound can be opened to uniquely open-ended forms of expression. The protean nature and interfaces of these elements in the context of menglong, I suggest, propose a distinctive, culturally resourced approach to composing film poetry.