"2046" is the title of a 2004 film directed by Wong Kar-Wai, and insofar as it can be said to have been "written," since there was no screenplay, he is also credited for that) is one of five (or more) recent movies about writers as deeply-flawed recent movies (with "Capote," "Infamous," "Ask the Dust," and "The Squid and the Whale"). Chris Doyle's cinematography and the performances of Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Faye Wong, and Gong Li in it are impressive, but there is much that is offputting, particularly for those wanting comprehensible plots.
In contrast to in In the Mood for Love in which the writer Chow Mo Wan (Leung) finds and fails to secure the love of his life (Maggie Cheung), herein he has become a bitter philanderer, though the futuristic tale (2046, which is scheduled to be the last year of Hong Kong semi-autonomy within the PRC) is a romantic tale of impossible love...for a robot. According to Wong, "2046" "is about how a person deals with his love stories in the past." But, being a writer, Chow doesn't really deal with them. He uses them for his writing, blurring what happened.
Cheung reappears, though the focus is on three other strained relationships between Chow and women--a professional gambler played by Li Gong, the daughter of the owner of the hotel where he lives (played by Faye Wong) who is in love with a Japanese businessman (played by Japanese tv star Kimura Takuya) who stays in the hotel when in Hong Kong, and a prostitute (do I mean "dance-hall hostess?) played by the now-ubiquitous Zhang Ziyi.
I am considerably less wowed by the near-opacity of Wong's high-art-decoration, saturated colors, and affectless--or affect-low--characters than others are, though I certainly see the affinity with the alienation of humans in Michelangelo Antonioni's films that led to pairing Wong and Antonioni short films in Eros (in which the follower far outdoes his revered "master").
Some of the films that Wong has directed since Chungking Express are making that less-than-translucent portrait of love failures seem better and better to my retrospect (though there's much that I like in "Fallen Angels" and "Happy Together" and found his part of Eros the best part). Admittedly, "2046" is less opaque than "The Ashes of Time"—but then few films ever made are more opaque than "Ashes of Time" is!
Characters speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese at each other, a part of "talking past" that is lost on those depending upon the English subtitles that do not distinguish who is speaking which language. The English subtitles are grammatical, and a DVD extra shows that Tony Leung is quite comfortable in English
I am clearly not on the same wavelength as Wong. For fervent championing of "2046" (and more details) readers are referred to the epinion by jayococker and the void 99.
In addition to hearing Wong and Leung in English at a Toronto press conference, the DVD includes an extra explaining the numerology is very useful. In addition to being the year that Hong Kong is to be completely assimilated into the PRC, it is the number of the door to the room of the Zhang Yiyi character, and the title of the scifi book Chow was writing, and, and, and...
BTW, Wong says "2046" is an "echo" of "In the Mood for Love" rather than a sequel, whatever that distinction might mean!
The visuals owe much to Production designer/costume designer/editor William (Chang Suk) Ping and art director Alfred (Wai Ming) Yau. Obviously, major stars from Hong Kong, China, and Japan want to work with Wong, and Wong has made Tony Leung his onscreen alter ego. And the results have awed many (albeit not me; I'll take the worst Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige over the best Wong Kar-Wai and Hou Hsiao-Hsien!)
The soundtrack, like that for "In the Mood for Love," features Nat King Cole (Christmas Song)... along with Dean Martin (Sway), Connie Francis (Siboney), and Maria Callas and Angela Gheorghiu singing Bellini (Gheorghiu "Casta Diva from "Norma," Callas a less famous aria from "Il Pirata").
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...More at HotMovieSale.com
A Hong Kong writer finds inspiration from the women he s encountered in his past in this futuristic story of love and memory from Wong Kar Wai, who co...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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