2046 review: Forward Into the Past

[lemonberry]

Forward Into the Past
Wong Kar Wai’s ‘2046’ reaches back to his early ‘Days’

~ By ANDY KLEIN ~



~ The Big o hotel : Ziyi Zhang and Tony Leung Chiu Wai get all steamy on the roof ~


Despite its title and a number of scenes set in the titular year, Wong Kar Wai’s new 2046 is not exactly a science-fiction film. Most of the action takes place in Hong Kong in the mid-1960s; the futuristic stuff is a visualization of fiction being written by the central character, Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai).

Why 2046? Perhaps because that will be the final year of China’s current promise to allow Hong Kong a degree of autonomy. Or perhaps not. The number shows up repeatedly in the film: It is the hotel room in which a string of Chow’s female friends reside; in the future scenes, it is presented both as a locale and as the train that takes people there and rarely brings them back.

As is so often the case in Wong’s work, describing the plot is like trying to tame a blob of mercury. The film begins as Chow Mo Wan returns to Hong Kong in 1966, after living a few years in Singapore. He runs into an old fling (Carina Lau Ka Ling), sometimes named Lulu, other times Mimi. She claims not to remember him, and for a few moments the film seems to be turning into Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad. (In fact, I’m pretty sure the dialogue includes a few directly lifted lines.)

When he goes to visit her in room 2046, he discovers she has moved. He ends up renting 2047 and getting involved with 2046’s next tenant, Bai Ling (Ziyi Zhang), a glamorous call girl. But he is haunted by the memory of lost love Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung); he is resigned to a series of uncommitted romps. When Bai Ling bails on him, Chow hangs out, more or less platonically, with Wang Jing Wen (Faye Wong), his landlord’s daughter, who in turn loves a Japanese man, much to her father’s disapproval. He also runs into another ex, a tough, sad-faced gambler (Gong Li), whose name, he belatedly discovers, is also Su Li Zhen.

He parties, he has affairs, he writes, he remembers. Most particularly, the latter – which is why the order of the narrative is not, on a single viewing, entirely clear. The film shifts without warning from being in the present to recalling the past to fantasizing a dystopian future.

To make all this more confusing, even though 2046 was not originally conceived as a sequel, it transformed into one during the process of shooting and editing. Chow is the same character Leung played in Wong’s last feature, In the Mood for Love (2000), which was all about his possibly unconsummated affair with Cheung’s Su Li Zhen.

But wait! There’s more.

Not only do characters from In the Mood for Love reappear; so do characters from Wong’s 1991 Days of Being Wild, a film that, to my eyes at least, never previously showed any direct connection to In the Mood for Love. One of the more curious accomplishments of 2046 is that it retroactively develops a story relationship between the two older films. Did any American critics notice in 2000 that Cheung’s character in In the Mood for Love had the same name as her character in Days of Being Wild? Was Wong planning on binding the two stories together at some point? Or did he just think that the name suited Cheung?

In a sense then, 2046 is arguably the third film in a series … or a simultaneous sequel to two earlier, separate stories. One of the most baffling elements in Days of Being Wild was the final two-minute scene, in which we saw Leung – who ’til then hadn’t been in the film at all – getting duded up for a night on the town. This was supposed to be a transitional teaser for a sequel, but Days was a commercial flop (despite winning a shelf-full of awards), and the sequel was abandoned. That scene fits in perfectly here – it’s Chow Mo Wan heading out to meet someone, perhaps that mysterious gambler.

Was this all planned in advance? I doubt it. Wong is famous for shooting with either no real script … or with so many different conflicting drafts that there might as well be no script. His basic technique is to show up on the set with the cast and crew and make stuff up as he goes along, then shoot and shoot until cast members have to leave, with the intention of assembling it all into something satisfying during postproduction.

In that light, it’s likelier that, on its own power, Wong’s oeuvre is turning into a spontaneous, organic supermovie that comprises all of his features. Even Wong’s 1994 period swordsman epic, Ashes of Time, which would seem impossible to blend into his other, more contemporary romances, could be revealed some day to have been a martial-arts novel being written by Chow.

The point of all of this is that, while 2046 can stand alone as a narrative, the experience of watching it is hugely enhanced if you’re familiar with the rest of Wong’s work … or at least with Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love.

Still, for those coming in cold, 2046 creates the sort of dreamy, drifting, reflective mood that Wong is a master at. He deliberately unmoors the movie from expectations of plot structure, but gets away with it because of the luscious visual textures he creates, with the help of longtime collaborators Christopher Doyle – possibly the greatest cinematographer currently working – and editor/production designer William Chang Suk-Ping.

Wong’s languorous pacing is clearly not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. In truth, with the exception of Chungking Express, I was immune to the charms of his early work for years. I didn’t really get onboard until Happy Together (1997), and my enthusiasm was solidified with In the Mood for Love. While it could be that Wong’s films are simply getting better all the time, it’s likelier – based on my revised opinion of Days of Being Wild – that it took me that long to get used to his unique (or at least unusual) stylistic idiom.

As usual, he gets extraordinary work from his players. Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Hero; House of Flying Daggers) has played a sexy warrior before, but here she’s a toughie in heels and tight dresses; her Bai Ling might seem irredeemably cheap if it weren’t that the fresh-faced Zhang still has the poignant air of an adolescent reveling in her recently discovered sexual power but not knowing quite what she wants to do with it.

Finally, though, it is Leung – who is in nearly every scene except for one solid 15-minute swatch of futuristic stuff right near the middle – whose performance is the center of the whole film. In the last 15 years – from John Woo’s Hard-Boiled (1992) through commercial crowdpleasers like Dr. Mack (1995) to his more recent work in Hero (2002), Infernal Affairs (2002), and his four films for Wong – Leung has amassed a résumé of brilliant performances in virtually every style and genre. (Okay: except for Westerns.) He is that rare and valuable talent – a consummate actor with movie-star presence and looks.



2046. Written, produced, and directed by Wong Kar Wai. With Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ziyi Zhang, Faye Wong, Gong Li, Carina Lau Ka Ling, Chang Chen, and Kimura Takuya. Opens Fri. at the Nuart.

8-4-05

[Desiree2]

I highly agree to the final conclusion!
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Kind Regards,
Desiree


宁死不屈。

[Gathoni]

I agree with that too! That's a powerful recap of Tony's talents! Very impressive
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The strengthening of faith comes through staying with it in the hour of trial.

[Guest]