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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.
9/10
