2046 (2004) Reviews

• A gorgeous, poignant film.

  myfavoriteartform2006-01-01

  2046 was directed by Kar Wai Wong, who also directed In the Mood for Love. This film is also lyrical, deliberately paced, and very romantic. Without giving too much away, the film takes place in Hong Kong and Singapore in the 60's. The main character, Chow, is a writer and womanizer. Part of the story takes place in his work, a science fiction tale called 2046. The story is told out of sequence, with past and present jumbled. In a clever use of irony, we gradually understand that the future is being used to tell the past. Some scenes are presented early, in a way that is confusing until the context is presented later. There are 3 female characters who are in his life, and the story is segmented accordingly. The cinematography is beautiful. Interestingly, Wong uses 3 colors nearly exclusively: Blood red, sea green, and yellow. Sometimes he will use light to make those colors stand out, other times it is the objects themselves which are in that color. I would characterize the story as one of love and loss. There is one poignant scene where, after he realizes what has been happening, he states that timing is crucial in love. The film is well acted, the characters are understandable if not necessarily ones we can identify with, and the story gradually allows itself to be revealed, a peek here and a peek there, until all the pieces fall into place. Turn off the lights, cuddle up with a glass of wine, and see this one. Well worth it.

• Mesmerizing

  ken_lee542004-10-20

  Review: 2046 (2004) By Ken Lee Several years in the making and highly anticipated, _2046_ (2004) should pacify director Wong Kar Wai's fans, at least, for its end-of-an-era feel and look. At its core, this is a decidedly (or deceptively) simple movie, in spite of its fractured and non-linear narrative. It tells the tale of an emotionally wrecked man, Chow Mo Wan (played by Tony Leung), a reprised character from Wong's critically acclaimed earlier oeuver, _In the Mood for Love (2000)_, and the many beautiful women he keeps and fails to keep, in a time-space continuance that is laden with sepia-tinted memories: a monologue, if you will, of Chow's torrid love affairs, love spats, and the ensuing heartbreaks resulting, no doubt, from the pangs of a failed liaison Chow is trying to escape. It'd appear that the failed relation with Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) in _In the Mood for Love_, who has a "special appearance" in this film, has changed Chow irrevocably, which is key to understanding Chow's troubled soul. But it is not a sequel necessarily, per se, to _In the Mood for Love_. This film can still be watched on its own, though it'd certainly help if you could link moments in _2046_ to the director's earlier works, for it's laden with jumbled continuity (take the character of Lulu, for example, first seen in _Days of Being Wild (1991)_), hidden meanings (read: Neo-Godardian) and other fun stuff, sorta an insider's joke, if you dig such esoteric things. But I digress. And it's been said that this is a culmination of all the previous filmic experience of director Wong (bordering on narcissism); hence its "end-of-an-era" feel and look is duly appreciated and a point well taken. In _2046_, Chow's isn't an easily likable character owing to the frailty and the vagaries of his own personal emotions and peccadilloes, but that makes him only human and real, and his character, believable. Take the following exchange: Su Lizhen (Gong Li) to Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung): Do you know my past? Professional gambler Su (she who is of the same name as that of Maggie's character in _In the Mood for Love_) asked Chow, dissonantly, questioning the latter essentially whether there is a future for the both of them, if he cannot forget his past. And it's for the same reason, or so we're led to believe, that Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) is left devastated, as Chow cannot treat her any differently from the scores of other women he's seeing; hence eliciting the following memorable line from Bai which I'm sure speaks to most of us one way or another: Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) to Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung): You may not like me. But I'll like you all the same. What fools we are made by love. :) Contrasting Chow as a man who dwells in the past and in need of closure to move on, Tak (Kimura Takuya) isn't ambiguous when it comes to matters of the heart. Tak (Kimura Takuya) to Wang Jingwen (Faye Wong): I do not know what your answer may be. (I dread to know.) But I need to know. Here is a man who is not afraid to love and says his love. And he needs to know if his love is unrequited. And in seeking happiness, the message seems to be that there is no other way. Now why does this remind me of all the sorry tales with which we are all-too-familiar with men-who-cannot-commit-or-decide? :) And so the film is thusly replete with impressions of repeated variations of the same theme: the pointlessness of returning to the past. Which is why we have the following line: Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) to Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung): Why can't it be like before? (The same reason why nobody returns on the 2046 train, in Chow's sci-fi novel of the same name. Seen in this light, it is also a double-entendre for director Wong: Why can't this film be like the one before in the form of _In the Mood for Love_? Where does he go from here?) Those familiar with Wong's earlier works will notice his signatures throughout: quick cutting, slow motion, fast motion, freeze frames, black and white, tilt shots, color filters, neon-sign lighting, aided ably by three able cinematographers. Production value of _2046_ is expectedly top-notch. Music by Shigeru Umebayashi is haunting and sets the right mood. Zhang Suping (William Chang Suk Ping) does a wonderful job in creating an enrapturing atmosphere set in the late '60s. How great it is, in an otherwise desolate world of unease, vulnerability, hopelessness, and pathos, we have directors such as Wong to feast our senses. Highly recommended.

• Cumulative force of these moments cannot be described

  joesnuff2006-01-19

  I love story with impact, new ideas and rich characters. I love exploring the mechanics of the thing. There are few films like 2046 proposing radical new ways of vicariously experiencing time and place. Easily misunderstood or confusing, it can be. Understanding and completing the 'story' in these kinds of films doesn't occur in the films themselves. We complete them in the realm of reflection, experience, and assumptions made in how to reflect, collect, categorize, and morph them with our own life stories. Sometimes these films are just a call to empathize with the filmmaker. Wong Kar Kai is a filmmaker who calls for a personal empathy. He works to capture all the unique dynamics of romance, and how they bend our sense of time and space. He turns his camera every which angle to try and find new vocabulary for telling a story. Well, he doesn't tell stories, he asks whether stories are found in relationships. We get pieces of stories on top of hidden stories, our focus shifts from "story" to emergent feelings out of the glimpses. This is sophisticated, and scary when unprepared for the exotic nature. We want the familiar, but are given delicately meandering puzzles, opaque hints at beginnings, middles, and endings. Just like we don't always know at what point our own stories are unfolding. But we know the emotional states as they are lived. Since 2046 lacks many standard cadences, it is a struggle to follow the statement through the movements. These are not even vignettes, these are a seamless series of leaps that push and pull like the emotions of day to day life. They have an indecisive flux we hope is asymptotically reaching a conclusion, but they just keep coalescing and spilling over into the imagined future from where no one has yet returned. Once we think we have moved beyond the past do we then realize that we create an unknown future by attempting to reconstruct the past in the present. And so the main character is a writer of 'fiction' (this very movie) who through the process of embedding real life circumstances into his science fiction he also tries to determine if there is a destination this is all heading. 2046 is a place you visit to relive unchanging memories so that you will never change. Alternately, 2046 is also a time existent only within a science fiction novel when people will access substitute lovers without the haunts of what broke them in the past. So they think. He has already been damaged by the loss of an impossible standard that cannot be met by another (see In the Mood for Love first!). So in his novel, lovers become characters. Feelings become fictional ornamentations in the future. In the present, he cannot connect with the women who come and go. In the fiction, the lack of connection is simply a matter of technological limitations. Think about what happens in the aftermath of a failed relationship or a missed opportunity. We may grieve, but also sometimes we obsessively construct a future fantasy based on what should have happened if things had gone right; if only some vital detail didn't change things how it did. We inhabit that imagined future and interact with our counterpart ghost, making plans and times and places accordingly. We might use this process as a shield and a warning. Or it sabotages, taking on a life of its own as a mental blueprint, directing the actual present and perceptions of new companions. Lush, poetic cinematography fills each second of this film to great mood inducing effects. In 1960's Hong Kong, where the bulk of the events take place, the dynamics of romantic encounters hide in unassuming corners of that society, only brought to light by looking at the normal world in very abnormal ways. One almost gets the impression that set pieces and abstract designations were literally dreamed up. The camera often cramps our frame of vision. Various off-center closeups which in a sense shut out the outside world, but paradoxically bring it all in to bear. There are many places where the camera does not seem to have a good shot of a character or an event, we the viewers were just unlucky to miss the opportunity of getting the full revelation of something. And it frustrates; we want to know everything but get very little by way of visual exposition. We are forced to work on the clues, the voice overs, the symmetrical accidents in different centuries and different countries. This is not analogous to idly putting together a complex puzzle set, this is reconstructing a mystery while at the same time being on the verge of shedding tears at the quiet understanding that it isn't a mystery, it's life with a character who mediates between reality and fantasy to deal with it all. I know the kinds of things this film is about, but I've never looked at them from this stance before. As is often the case, the artist (here the writer/filmmaker) is just the one who experiences what the rest of us experience and talks about its secrets rather than conceals them. See this film if you want to know how it's possible to visually show the invisible, inner turbulence and romantic visions that tend to hide from the outside world. On the whole, 2046 weaves in the present a future fiction invaded by the past, bred by the throes of confronting the human faces of opportunities that appear, disappear, reappear and fade and collapse into each other.

• A piece of tragic mind in a sad moment

  philaychan2004-10-13

  There is a strong tragic feeling the film has given me. The destiny of Tony Leung is sad, trapped in the past and the future, trying to escape the present time. There are certain scenes and shots imposing this sad sentiment. The still-picture-like shooting blended with heart striking music has created a space where audiences can go in and feel it. Coincidentally, I have seen this kind of shots in Godard's 'Ten Minutes Order' short film - a sigh of life. I remember once in an interview Wong Kar Wai admitted he was much influenced by Godard. I really see it in this film. The interesting thing of this film is the director has gathered different elements from his previous films. Carina Lau is the same character she played in 'The Days being Wild', Faye Wong is from 'Chung King Express', Tony Leung has adopted some personalities of the character in 'Happy Together'; and the futuristic story '2046' is same as 'Fallen Angels', particularly the absurdity. It's like a retrospect of the director's previous works viewed at another angle. The main part of the story where Tony Leung gets caught with Zhang Zi Yi, is the negative contrast for Tony Leung's tragic destiny. His true love, no matter Maggie Cheung, Gong Li or Faye Wong, is only in the past or future. What he has at present is something he doesn't like, trying to escape. In 'In the Mood for Love', he doesn't have the courage to take the love with Maggie Cheung because they both are married. Now in 2046 both Zhang Zi Yi and he are singles but still he doesn't have courage to take it because he is not in the mood for love again, instead he chooses to start an indecent relationship with her. The film carries the same symbol as 'In the Mood for Love' – limited space in reality. The love between Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung started in those two adjacent apartments, now Zhang Zi Yi and Tony Leung live in the small hotel in two adjacent rooms, start their relationship. Life repeats once again in the similar environment, the only difference is the choice of Tony Leung. The symbol of 'limited space in reality' is interpreted, as an element constituting the routine of life; the attitude and choice of a person in this routine is the final ingredient making up the tragic ending. Apart from the tragic feeling, the film imposes time and space metaphor. Tony Leung basically lives in the past and future with all his love and sentiment put in these two non-existent time/space. He has no present life in this sense. The 2046 space, though not realistically existing in the film, is actually somewhere in the mind of people. Everyone in the film has such a space in his/her mind, and so are we all. We don't recognize it only because we don't want to admit it. A film about the past, future and present is certainly not easy to master. Although the futuristic part is too robotic, the overall impact the film has is significant and remarkable. Not only Tony Leung chooses to escape the present time, the film doesn't pass through the present age either. It's another metaphor that we all dwell on the past and future trying to escape the present age, forget it as much as possible, for it's too bitter to taste and think about. Someone chooses to dream about the future and remember the past so sweetly passing everyday. Someone does it in an opposite manner. It could be the piece of mind, or it could be the moment that determines what it would be. What I see in 2046 is a piece of tragic mind in a sad moment.

• Behind every memory, there are traces of tears

  Bigprisc2004-10-16

  I went to watch 2046 after reading millions and millions of interviews and reviews... seriously, it was really difficult to keep an open mind about a movie as talked about as this... imagine 5 years of anticipation. I started watching trying my very best to keep an open mind, but after a while... i realize i din have to, gradually, my mind just goes on this journey with the story, gone were the reviews and interviews and comments. During the movie, i did not think about anything else except wat was happening in the movie. There is so much in this movie that i think i could write a novel about it. This movie is about perceptions and memories. how a memory can dictate the way a person lives his or her life. The stories of the many girls are seen thru the eyes of the charismatic and talented Tony Leung. There are many girls in his life. All these girls have a story, a story as seen and perceived by Zhou Mu Yun. The first story would definitely be the story of the first Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung) and Zhou Mu Yun, this is the story that shaped Zhou's life, even though in this movie, Maggie only appears in a few shots. but the basis is all laid out in "In the Mood for Love". The second story is lulu's (Carina Lau) story. The meeting described by Zhou took place in the time span after "Days of Being Wild". I find it such a pity that Wong Kar Wai edited out so much of Lulu's story. I would really wish to have seen more of it. Then there is the story of the second Su Li Zhen in Singapore. The mysterious woman who wears one black glove. Zhou finds new solace in her. Using her to fill up the gap left by the first Su. The saddest story in in movie will have to be Bai Yun's(ZHang ZiYi). She definite loves Zhou with all her heart, but he treats her like a pro. At some point in the movie, i wanted to slap both Bai and Zhou. Bai for being so lovelorn, and Zhou for being so stupid, the girls he love wouldn't leave with him, now the girl that loves him so much, he refused her over and over. The last, and definitely my favourite story would definitely be Wong Jing Wen's(Faye Wong), any mandarin speaking person would know that Wong Jing Wen is the moniker Faye Wong went with when she first started singing. Anyway... all these while i never thought Faye could act, but i guess with no anticipation, there wont be disappointment. And Faye proved that her portrayal of the hotel proprietor's daughter. Wong is the only woman in the movie that is not romantically linked to Zhou, although it was hinted that he was in love with her. Wong and her Japanese boyfriend(Takuya Kimura) were in love but Proprietor Wong refused to even meet the boy. Undaunted Takuya asked Wong to leave with him, but her refusal to give him an answer span the very basis of 2046, which Zhou aptly named "2047" in the movie. *grinz* *Self-Indulgent Note* I am the Biggest fan of the late Jeanette Lin Tsai from the 50's Cathay era. And i have always felt that Faye looks a whole lot like her. But i will be kissing the ground that Wong Kar Wai step on, because he managed to capture Jeanette Lin's essence in Faye. Unwittingly no doubt, but it helped me indulged in a memory that i wish to forever keep in 2046.