2046
Dir: Wong Kar Wai

Critics seem to feel that Wong Kar Wai's latest film "2046" (2004) is inferior to his previous "In the Mood for Love," made four years earlier; that the former--endlessly tinkered with to the point that it was seriously late for its screening in Cannes--is essentially an amorphous, unfinished work that needs both serious tightening-up and developing. I feel differently; taken together, the two films seem to be stronger than if taken separately.

It's about Mr. Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a writer in the '60s living in a Hong Kong hotel, making love to a passing parade of impossibly beautiful women (Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Faye Wong, among others), obsessing about a neighboring hotel room with the number 2046 nailed to its door, and writing about a superfast train traveling in time to the year--you guessed it--2046.

It's a strange film, and stranger still is that many of the complaints critics leveled against "2046" I thought applied as well if not better to "Mood:" an emphasis on texture and atmosphere over actual plot, a dwelling on pose and beauty instead of honest characterization. But while "Mood" showed us (skip the rest of this paragraph if you haven't seen that film) a near-affair that was never consummated (I know, I know, the question isn't definitively answered, but for me it is--they couldn't have had sex, otherwise "Mood" would have no point, no real source of frustration or anguish), it never showed us the consequences: Maggie Cheung's Su Li and Tony Leung's Mr. Chow look longingly at each other before parting, but that's about it.

Wong lets the film speak out loud on their passion in their stead, through the use of seductive camera movements and ravishingly bright colors (thanks to Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, who often shoots for Hou Hsiao Hsien).

With "2046," the seductive moves and ravishing colors are gone (and somewhat missed); instead, we return to Doyle's traditional handheld camerawork (an identifying quality of almost all of Wong's previous pictures), recording not the emotional stasis of the previous film, but frenetic, purposeless activity covering up the hollowness within. Chow's encounter with Su Li has in effect transformed Chow into a heartless womanizer, and all other women suffer as a result.

The two lovers' story in "Mood" becomes moving in the context of "2046:" you can measure the depth of Chow's heartbreak by the number of hearts he breaks in response. It's like the line of corpses King Kong leaves in his wake, searching for his true love--the monster's passion is can be seen from the range and level of destruction he wreaks upon the city.

Some reservations: I'd have preferred the segments set in Chow's science-fiction story to reflect the style of future actually proposed back in the '60s (visions of the future are more rooted in the period they were conceived than in any real future) instead of what looks like a low-budget version of a Japanese electronic appliance commercial,complete with (admittedly beautifully lit) Power Ranger costumes. And I thought showing us the source of Chow's misogyny--his 'original trauma' in effect--in "2046" is a mistake: "Mood" is so clearly Chow's backstory that the differences in details seem jarring; worse, they seem like a waste of screen time, a re-treading of old ground (Wong seems to have included the sequence because he wasn't confident viewers will have seen "Mood" first).

Leaving it out would have either tightened the film or left room for yet another erotic episode (Michelle Yeoh, perhaps?); it would have also emphasized the film's dependence on the earlier work in completing its narrative structure, a conceit I would think Wong wouldn't mind using (of contemporary filmmakers, he seems one of the most carefree, one of the most eager to tinker around with narrative structure).

(The train in Chow's science-fiction story, incidentally, the one which travels to the year 2046 where nothing changes, lost memories are found, and no one ever leaves, reminds me of a similar train in J.G. Ballard's short story "Billennium"--coincidence, or does Wong read Ballard?)

"2046" doesn't exactly do miracles; it doesn't convert me into a rabid Wong fan (my favorite remains "Happy Together" (1997), where the heartbreak I felt was truly heartbreaking), but in following "Mood" with this picture Wong fits missing pieces into place, allows the overall structure to emerge for a clearer view, and causes both films to be (to my eyes, anyway) redeemed. So it may all be worth it, after all.

Note: First published in High Life Magazine, January 2006.
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