2046

While watching a press screening of Wong Kar Wai's 2046, which is slow at times, one of the critics in the audience nodded off several times and snored audibly behind me. (Perhaps they were merely looking for a cool, dark place to rest, regardless of what was screened.) I wondered what would have happened had they seen a screening of Wong's previous In the Mood for Love, of which this film serves as a sort of companion piece. Fall into a coma? Their loss. While the film was in production there were rumors about difficulties, that it was a mess, yet while it does at times feel as if Wong's "sentences" aren't always finished, the final product is still extraordinarily beautiful and easily one of the best films of the year. It's not quite a masterpiece but it's masterful, a moving painting, a rhapsody, not a ballad. Wong seems more influenced by Antonioni than by other HK filmmakers.

Tony Leung plays Chow, a lounge lizard-looking writer who holes up in a room at the fading Hotel Oriental. The room number he ends up in is 2046; it's a common misconception that the film, given the title, is directly and literally science fiction set in the future - but there is an allegorical sci-fi story within the story, and the title is Wong's playful way of setting this up. (And, of course, the title number/year are also a nod to the year that Hong Kong is officially "free.") Indeed, the passage of time is an essential element here, and in Chow's case time is measured in the four women he has a relationship with. And in the retro-futuristic sci-fi story he concocts, set on a dreamlike train that travels through time to the year 2046, he uses a fantasy variation on the woman he seems ultimately to fall hardest for (singer Faye Wong, playing the motelkeeper's daughter). Both the concocted "future" and the "real present" (1960s) are filmed in Wong's (and cinematographer Chris Doyle's) trademark bright watercolors - red, yellow, aquamarine, a swirly acid trip of alternating soft and harsh colors that reflect the conflicting moods of Chow as he slouches through his hallowed life.

It's really the work of the actors that adds weight and depth to 2046. This is an astonishingly appealing cast; besides Wong's alter ego Leung, there's the best and brightest of China's actress pool, with Zhang Yiyi giving her best performance to date as a giggly escort, the lovely singer Wong, frequent Zhang Yimou ingenue Gong Li, seductive Carina Lau, and Maggie Cheung, here playing "Slz1960" instead of In the Mood's Su Li-zhen, her name futurized but still some semblance of that previous film's character. There are also moments of wry humor, especially around Chow's struggles to write, and in the result of his struggles, and with the motel keeper's vain efforts to keep his daughters out of (man) trouble. There's heartbreak lurking underneath all of their characters that gives the film more emotional intensity than it could have.

As other critics have noted, his films are less about love than the failure or the aftermath of love, and this is certainly true in 2046 - he's more interested in the gaps of time between relationships, and the way people spin off or spiral downward from them. It's perhaps a mite too long and I found myself more engaged with some of the relationships than others, wanting more of the writing and a little less moping around. But, again, plot is not the thing here; it's texture. The film's an untamed, occasionally messy masterwork, of mood, emotions, color, composition. A striking oasis of art in a cinematic red desert. It's definitely worth staying awake for.

Comments

[Dennis Cozzalio]

I'm finally going to get out to see 2046 tomorrow night, and I couldn't be happier about it. I found CHUNGKING EXPRESS really annoying when it made it to U.S. theaters however many years ago-- the movie made me kinda frosty toward the prospect of further investment in Wong Kar-wai. But IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE changed all that. I think your observation that Wong's films, particularly ITMFL, are about "the failure or the aftermath of love... he's more interested in the gaps of time between relationships, and the way people spin off or spiral downward from them" is right on the money. And that's a far more interesting subject, and a much more difficult one to approach and examine. That's why romantic comedies (and dramas) usually end with a clinch-- because the journey to consummation of obsession is easier to document (and assumed by the likes of Nora Ephron to be more fun) than the sustenance of such a relationship, how people in love learn to live with, or without each other. I'll check in again after I've had the chance to see Ziyi Zhang et al swirl across the Panavision screen for myself.

[Craig P]

Very well said, Dennis. Thanks for the comments/response! I look forward to hearing what you think of 2046. As with In the Mood, it's put some people I know to sleep while enrapturing others - I'm somewhere in between but think it a beautiful work of art nonetheless. And the line-up of beautiful actresses doesn't hurt, either.

And I agree, he does take a different, more difficult, more interesting approach to relationships than most Western films, which follow the same pattern and cover the same pre-marriage period of romance over and over again, ad nauseum. I respect the fact that he's at least trying something different.

Enjoy!