A brief but sweet journey back to the past

[news]

A brief but sweet journey back to the past
By Baby A. Gil
The Philippine Star 12/17/2004



I do not know if the leading film festival in the world has ever done it before. I mean wait for the print of a particular movie like they did for Wong Kar Wai’s 2046. After all filmmakers are known to beg, cajole, threaten, do anything just to get their pictures shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Now it was not that Wong almost didn’t make it because he was unwilling to show his latest piece at this year’s Cannes. It was just that it took him too long making the film. I read somewhere that he spent five years doing this one. When Cannes called and said "time is up, we need the print, " Wong was not yet ready and was late sending his hurriedly finished work.

The result has a haphazard feel to it. It seems like Wong shot 2046 with the script written inside his head. "I want this," "I must have that," "No, let me change that," "I think I’ve found it," "No, this one looks better," "I need a reshoot," etc. etc. was probably the way he was thinking while making the movie. Why, he cannot even make up his mind as to who his leading lady is. Still, I do not think anybody, even the members of his brilliant cast complained. They were, after all, at work with a genius. They were making a movie with Wong Kar Wai, Cannes Film Festival winner for Happy Together, acclaimed director of Chungking Express, Fallen Angels and the gorgeous I’m in the Mood for Love.

Given this situation and Wong’s stream of consciousness style of filmmaking, 2046 does not make for easy viewing. It is longer than usual and made by a director more concerned with his ideas than with pleasing his audience. However, if the moviegoer has seen and admired his other works, then he will find himself in familiar territory with conflicts, settings and even lots of faces he has seen before. In truth, 2046 can be considered a sequel to I’m in the Mood for Love where its theme of non-commitment, pent-up emotions and unresolved puzzles are viewed on a larger canvas. The first film follows characters during their day-to-day existence in a cramped apartment building. 2046 has moved to a hotel and beyond, into the future.

Tony Leung is Chow who likes the ladies but never allows his feelings to get the better of him. He attracts them, beds them and gets rid of them. In fact, his closest relationship with a woman is his friendship with the prim and proper Jingwen, whom he allows into his private world only because she is in love with someone else. So room number 2046 with its creaking bed, is witness to a succession of these women. This disturbs his neighbor, a prostitute played with elfin charm by Zhang Ziyi who complains, but then ends up as another female on Chow’s indiscreet bed. Not only that, contrary to her usual practice, she allows herself to fall deeply in love with him.

Chow, however, remains aloof. The reason for his refusal to commit himself to any relationship is because he is still hurting from his failed affairs with two women both named Su Liz Chen. One was a gambler played by Gong Li and the other, played by Maggie Cheung, was his married neighbor in I’m in the Mood for Love. Maybe that is why he is writing a sci-fi novel set in the year 2046 where people can go to recapture their lost memories and maybe get another chance.

The plot seems so simple but this is a film by Wong Kar Wai who does not have the inclination to tell his stories the usual way. What he does is explore what happens to Chow and the people around him in the past, the present, the future, etc. etc. jumping from one time frame to another with only the faces of his women guiding the viewer through his romantic odyssey. If it is the robot Jingwein, then it must be 2046. If it is Su Liz Chen in Shanghai then it must be 1967.

The approach is unconventional but when you get down to it, this is really how the human mind works. We make films inside our heads. We reflect on a situation today. We are reminded of what brought it about. Then we wonder what it will be like in the future. Of course, in this personal film we have the capacity to change what we do not like and improve on anything. We look better and move in nicer surroundings and if it concerns past loves then even the gross, the ugly and the shitty become romantic.

Not as romantic as Wong sees things. Like an adept magician, this guy can turn a nondescript corner into paradise and a brief glance into anguished desire. He plays with words, music and images that tug at the heart with the ache one feels for a lost love. It is just too bad that such beauty lacks coherence some of the time and Wong has to resort to explaining what is taking place.

I have always felt that the use of a voice-over narrator in a film is the last recourse of a director who either has to compress a very long story to tell or is unable to put visible order in his work through normal editing. I believe that Wong is guilty of the latter, but he has such a gift for language that the narrated bits enhance the pleasure of the viewer and are by themselves a poetic experience. Ok, it can be cheesy at times but what romantic film does not have such moments?

Forget that and 2046 will take you back to the delicious heartbreak of Casablanca, the poetry of St. Vincent Millay, the fiction of Du Maurier and the languorous time when lovers swayed to the rhythm of Siboney. Not quite what Wong Kar Wai intended. Remember, he wanted to take us to the year 2046. But why dream of the uncertain future when there is the past for the taking and the memories are heady, brief and sweet?

http://www.philstar.com/philstar/News200412171704.htm