2046 Reviews

(MU) It begins where "In the mood for love" ends and add 3 or 4 stories that doesn't improves the whole film. There's also the futuristic story that is wasted...

Wong Kar Wai is one of those directors which I admire even though I’m eventually I’m not really a complete fan of their work (Bergman is definitely one of those as well). I mean, concerning Wong Kar Wai, I have seen 7 of his movies and even though I enjoyed all of them, I only really loved ‘Chungking Express’. Anyway, this movie was more or less a sequel to his previous feature ‘In the mood for love’ but it was still a really different beast altogether and probably his least accessible directing effort, at least among the ones I have seen so far. I mean, ‘In the mood for love’ was actually pretty straight-forward which was probably its appeal but, this time, the whole thing was pretty messy, convoluted and really really hard to follow. Furthermore, the pacing was really slow which didn’t help either. Still, like everything directed by Kar Wai, there was still something mesmerizing about the whole thing. First of all, there was a great cast (Tony Leung Chiu Wai , Gong Li, Maggie Cheung), especially Tony Leung, what an amazing actor, even more impressive and fascinating when working with Kar Wai. Eventually, the biggest appeal with this feature was the directing. Indeed, even though I barely could follow what was going on, it was visually so striking, it was quite fascinating to behold. To conclude, even though the whole thing was rather alienating, I still enjoyed it and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Wong Kar Wai’s work.

''Every passenger going to 2046 has the same intention: to recapture lost memories. Because nothing ever changes in 2046.''

He was a writer. He thought he wrote about the future but it really was the past. In his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while...

Tony Leung Chiu Wai: Chow Mo-wan

Li Gong: Su Li-zhen

2046(2004) is a combination of ideas, a story of a man who transitions through time envisioning a futuristic creation of a world revolving round the number 2046 and a train that conveys us to memories. Granted 2046 is actually a room number; we all assume it's a year which ironically it does evolve into.



Let me start by saying this of the man behind directing 2046: Kar Wai Wong is more than just a film director (though he is among the finest directors working in this day and age): he is a visual, poetic, creative and daring artist capable of cinematic miracles in one isolated film than most directors achieve in a lifetime. 2046 is a visually stunning, intellectually challenging, emotionally charged view of love and lust in today's kinetically dysfunctional society.

There is no one way to interpret this non-linear film and therein lies much of its rewards. The main character Chow (Tony Leung) is a writer and a libertine whom has pushed his vacuous life around with his hormones and though he has had many affairs he has failed to find the illusory love. He has lived in Singapore and Hong Kong, makes his living writing columns of newspapers while his novels formulate in his mind. One of his novels happens to be called 2046; the title based on the room number in a hotel where he witnessed a bizarre incident involving a gorgeous woman, resulting in his moving into the adjoining room 2047 where he meets the hotel manager's daughter in love with a Filipino Japanese man her father hates.
He desires this unattainable woman and fuses her with a fictional android in his novel which now uses 2046 as a year, time or place where people go to find memories. He continues to encounter women for whom he desires more than surface relationships (there is a stunning lady gambler cameo who represents everything he lusts and longs for) but he is never able to find his tenuous ideal: his memory is his only source of consolation.

The actors include many of the finest available: Li Gong, Ziyi Zhang, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung, Takuya Kimura, Chen Chang, and of course Tony Leung.
But again it is Kar Wai Wong, the writer, director, choreographer, colourist, visionary that makes this excursion into the intricacies of the mind/imagination so overwhelmingly satisfying. Whether the viewer elects to view the story as a continuation of the director's previous films, or as reality vs memory, fiction vs imagination, sci-fi excursion, or simply a plethora of vignettes about the challenges of finding love in a world geared toward instant gratification, this is a magnificent achievement. In many ways the sound track could be turned off (though the beautiful musical score by Peer Raben and Shigeru Umebayashi with help from Maria Callas would sadly be lost), and the inventive cinematography, visual image manipulations by Christopher Doyle, Pung-Leung Kwan and Yiu-Fai Lai such as the constant dividing of the screen into triptychs and diptychs would remain some of the most beautiful photographic images rendered upon film.

I saw this in the movie house with my boyfriend and I am quite sure that I slept more than half of its running time. The whole futuristic thing was really boring. Hahaha. But I do know that the director of 2046 is fucking A. That's why I really want to see this film again. So that I can make a better review. Pardon me. :)

"2046" is awash in such wrenching and charming tears. If everyone in this film weeps, including Chow's counterpart - a character in his hallucinatory science-fiction story that works as a parallel to his own story - it's because everyone is also captive to memory. In "2046," memory isn't just a favorite snapshot, a blast from the past. It is where everyone lives, whether they want to or not, whether giggling in a tawdry Hong Kong hotel in 1967, hurtling through the atmosphere on a train in the future or sitting in a darkened movie theater. Like film itself, memory freezes time. Memory turns finite moments into spaces - a hotel room, say - that we return to again and again. It gives us a glimpse of the eternal and, like art at its most sublime, like this film, a means for transcendence.

By MANOHLA DARGIS
NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW

I want the last two hours of my life back. Boring, pointless and slow. Oh so slow. Although a 2 hour length film, to me this felt like it went for 4 hours. 4 painfully drawn out hours. Every time I thought it was about to end (which happened a lot) it would unfortunately continue. I'm still trying to figure out not only the point to this film but if there was any lesson to be taken away from it. I believe there is a lesson to be learnt in every story but I fail to see it in this one.
A movie I'm going to, hopefully, forget soon and be all the happier for it.