2046
2046 is a delirious slice of melancholy that may be just about the most ravishing thing you've seen on the big screen since... Well, it's ostensible prequel, In the Mood for Love. There's not much that really connects the two, save for their main character Chow Mo Wan, played by Tony Leung, who in the first film embarked upon an intense – though only once consummated – love affair with his next door neighbour Su Li Zhen after they discover that their respective spouses are, too, indulging in extra-curricular activities.
Now several years later, in the mid 1960s, Chow returns to Hong Kong, from which he fled at the end of the affair, and takes a room in an insalubrious hotel. Asking the hotelier for room 2046 – the number holds special memories – he gets refused, for it is already occupied. Instead he takes up residence next door, eking out a life by writing trashy novels and embarking on a string of meaningless affairs, including a tumultuous relationship with his next-door neighbour, courtesan Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). Nothing endures since he's fixated on the past, and instead he pours his heart into a sci-fi novel he is writing, in which people can travel on a train to the year 2046, to a place where nothing ever changes and memories can be stored indefinitely.
Some might question whether Chow really has it that bad. Whereas the first film encapsulated the recklessness in restraint of clandestine love, this one revels in the abandon of the self in the useless passion of glamorous nights, one night stands and gambling. Hong Kong in the sixties looks a lot more fun than England in the so-called noughties. And there reaches a certain point when you think that if you see him swanning around a club one more time, with another ravishing woman on his arm, you might just walk out of the cinema. Angst never looked like that round my way. But then again, the flipside to this is a prodigious amount of solitary cigarette smoking, and painful lonesome christmases (again, really worse than Auntie Ethel?). Every character, despite the sheen, is damaged in some way, and enigmatic, such as the woman who always wears one black glove and shares a name with chow's old flame.
As you may expect from a film with such introverted themes, it's claustrophobic at times. Though it was reputedly shot on locations all over the far east, you'd be hard pressed to tell given the predominance of dark, seedy interior shots. Scenes on the hotel roof afford the only glimpses of open sky and other exteriors are dark, though always beautifully shot, striated with cinematographer christopher doyle's trademark slicing rain.
Five years in the making, and featuring a panoply of Asian cinema's stars, 2046 is unfortunately less focused than its prequel – unsurprising given the Maggie Cheung-shaped hole at its core. If I've not made a great job of describing the film that's because it's an amorphous blob; but it's also mesmeric, dreamlike and defies description. It's been less well received than In the Mood for Love, so I guess it's the sort of thing where you just have to suck it and see. My view, though, is that it's a beautiful study of obsession and lost love that manages to be both intensely stylised yet acutely realistic in its portrayal of hurt and regret. Wong Kar Wai fans will see echoes of his previous work in every minute, and as a cinematic feast taking on the theme of how the past can strangle the future, it's unmissable.
Now several years later, in the mid 1960s, Chow returns to Hong Kong, from which he fled at the end of the affair, and takes a room in an insalubrious hotel. Asking the hotelier for room 2046 – the number holds special memories – he gets refused, for it is already occupied. Instead he takes up residence next door, eking out a life by writing trashy novels and embarking on a string of meaningless affairs, including a tumultuous relationship with his next-door neighbour, courtesan Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). Nothing endures since he's fixated on the past, and instead he pours his heart into a sci-fi novel he is writing, in which people can travel on a train to the year 2046, to a place where nothing ever changes and memories can be stored indefinitely.
Some might question whether Chow really has it that bad. Whereas the first film encapsulated the recklessness in restraint of clandestine love, this one revels in the abandon of the self in the useless passion of glamorous nights, one night stands and gambling. Hong Kong in the sixties looks a lot more fun than England in the so-called noughties. And there reaches a certain point when you think that if you see him swanning around a club one more time, with another ravishing woman on his arm, you might just walk out of the cinema. Angst never looked like that round my way. But then again, the flipside to this is a prodigious amount of solitary cigarette smoking, and painful lonesome christmases (again, really worse than Auntie Ethel?). Every character, despite the sheen, is damaged in some way, and enigmatic, such as the woman who always wears one black glove and shares a name with chow's old flame.
As you may expect from a film with such introverted themes, it's claustrophobic at times. Though it was reputedly shot on locations all over the far east, you'd be hard pressed to tell given the predominance of dark, seedy interior shots. Scenes on the hotel roof afford the only glimpses of open sky and other exteriors are dark, though always beautifully shot, striated with cinematographer christopher doyle's trademark slicing rain.
Five years in the making, and featuring a panoply of Asian cinema's stars, 2046 is unfortunately less focused than its prequel – unsurprising given the Maggie Cheung-shaped hole at its core. If I've not made a great job of describing the film that's because it's an amorphous blob; but it's also mesmeric, dreamlike and defies description. It's been less well received than In the Mood for Love, so I guess it's the sort of thing where you just have to suck it and see. My view, though, is that it's a beautiful study of obsession and lost love that manages to be both intensely stylised yet acutely realistic in its portrayal of hurt and regret. Wong Kar Wai fans will see echoes of his previous work in every minute, and as a cinematic feast taking on the theme of how the past can strangle the future, it's unmissable.
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