Willing to pay the price for cinematic perfection

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Willing to pay the price for cinematic perfection

Thu 30 Dec 2004
STEPHEN APPLEBAUM

WONG KAR-WAI has taken so long to make his new film, 2046, that people began to joke he wouldn’t finish it until 2046. A version of the film - a sequel of sorts to the highly-acclaimed In The Mood For Love - was screened in competition in Cannes last May. However, despite the director’s claim that it was finished, it was evident that the qualities which made it appear "mysterious" to some critics were in fact a sign that Wong still had work to do on the film.

Not entirely surprisingly, 2046 was pulled from the Edinburgh Film Festival a few months later - it was to be the closing-night film - and replaced with EJ-Yong’s Korean film, Untold Scandal. The movie’s sales agent, Fortissimo, blamed the UK distributor, Metro Tartan, for offering it without its permission.

Finally, in November, a version that felt more complete was screened at the London Film Festival, and the film will get a full release in January.

It is London where I meet Wong, and I can’t resist reminding the director that he said the film was finished in Cannes.

"We had to rush to Cannes and the screening was actually the first chance for me to look at the film," he says. "Even though I noticed the sound was not perfect and there were some scenes missing because the CGI work was not finished, I knew the film was there. To me, it was complete."

I am not entirely convinced but I do know that I like the latest version a lot. I had a lukewarm response to the film in Cannes though it may not have been entirely 2046 that was the problem, but rather a combination of the hype that attended it and the pretentious disquisitions on what the film ‘meant’ from fawning critics who refused to acknowledge that it lacked substance, shape and coherence.

Some of these were so convinced of the film’s ‘mysteriousness’ that they immediately went back to watch it again. Life is too short, frankly.

This is not the first time that one of Wong’s productions has turned into a Sisyphean trial of endurance. His previous film, In the Mood for Love, was supposed to have been a quick six-month shoot, but instead dragged on for another nine. The one before that, Happy Together, had also spiralled out of control. But, if working on one of his films is difficult for the actors, Wong appears to suffer just as much. Making 2046, he said in Cannes, was "like being in jail for four years".

Wong claims he is after perfection, which is time-consuming. "You’re trying to get the best things that you can ever have conceived, and you’re always trying to make it better. So you change things every day until you say ‘stop’ because you don’t want to have regrets afterwards. And I will try anything, take any risks - steal, cheat, whatever - to make that possible. It’s kind of a sickness," he says. "It’s not healthy, and people should avoid doing it."

However, some of the factors that held up work on the film, such as the Sars epidemic in Hong Kong, were beyond Wong’s control. "We had to stop production because all the team of 2046 come from different countries and they had to go back to their homes for safety reasons," he says. "You have to understand that during the four years it took to make the film, it was like 90 per cent waiting and 10 per cent work. So you have a lot of time to reflect on what you’re doing and that’s worse, because you want to change more."

In the meantime he fitted in a BMW commercial, a pop video for DJ Shadow and, together with one of his 2046 stars, Gong Li, one-third of the short-film triptych Eros (Michelangelo Antonioni and Steven Soderbergh directed the other episodes). Despite these diversions, Wong admits that the obstacles he faced making 2046 - actors’ schedules, permits, locations, financing - occasionally made him want to throw in the towel.

"There were certain moments where we were so frustrated that we’d think, ‘We should just let it go.’ But somehow you feel that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. It is a luxury to be able to work on a film for this long - you just have to pay the price."

So what does a Wong film that took almost half a decade to make look and feel like? A lot like In the Mood for Love. Which is not surprising, as Wong was contractually obliged to work on both films simultaneously.

"It was like falling in love with two women at the same time," he sighed, when I met him in 2000. "But we actually benefited from that because sometimes while we were making 2046, we found a location, a corridor, something that we thought should be in In the Mood for Love. The films are so inter-related now; they are like two different chapters of the same film."

Indeed, 2046 is a sort of continuation of In the Mood for Love. Tony Leung’s character, Chow Mo-Wan, is now a cynical, unemployed journalist (Leung says Wong told him to play a "[Charles] Bukowski kind of man, very dark, very mean") who spends his time drinking, gambling and seducing women in 1960s Hong Kong. The first one he goes home with lives in room 2046 of a seedy hotel. He moves into the room next door and sets to work on a science fiction novel about a futuristic city called 2046, where people go to recapture their lost memories. He becomes involved with the new occupant of room 2046, a beautiful taxi dancer called Bai Ling (Zhan Zyi), and then after that affair fizzles out, moves on to a shadowy Cambodian professional gambler played by Gong Li.

2046 is more than just a room number. When the Chinese government took Hong Kong back in 1997, they promised there would be no changes for 50 years. 2046 is the year this promise ends. The film, though, shows the dangers of being stuck in the past. Because of his obsession with his married lover from In the Mood for Love, Chow is unable to move on; his is a state of melancholy inertia. Is Wong saying to the people of Hong Kong that 2046 should not be viewed with fear and apprehension, because change need not necessarily be bad?

"Exactly," he says. "Chow’s problem is that he wants to hold on to everything and doesn’t want to change. Whereas most of the characters in the film have goals, he just reacts to everything that happens to him. He is very passive; I don’t want to be attracted, I don’t want to change. The thing is he then realises he needs to find a direction for himself.

"I think the same thing applies to the people in Hong Kong. They try to hold on to everything, but it’s a very passive gesture. The world is changing, so you have to change. You have to have a direction."

Unlike Chow, Wong is a husband of 17 years, with two children. However, the more you know about him, the more autobiographical his films appear. When Wong moved to Hong Kong, he became separated from his siblings who were trapped on the mainland following the Cultural Revolution. He communicated with them by letter, and this is echoed in 2046 by separated lovers who conduct an epistolary romance.

"I don’t think that’s conscious but of course there’s something that’s inspired by my childhood. I like letters, and I like people who write letters. Also, I think the communication between people in those days is something that is more genuine than today. You really have to make the effort to write something."

Wong’s films are a way of bottling drops of time. He made In the Mood for Love, he says, because he wanted to capture Hong Kong in the 1960s before it changed beyond recognition. Now, his new film is a way of creating a personal 2046. "But the thing is you can’t stay there forever. Once you have it, it’s fine; then you have to go ahead and look for new experiences and challenges."

True to his word, his next film, a thriller called The Lady from Shanghai (not a remake of the Orson Welles film), will star Nicole Kidman and will be his first shot partly in English. Wong smiles when I tell him Kidman has said she has found a way to speed up his process. "She said that? I don’t think so. There is no script and it will be in the same spirit as before."

Wong is also planning a film about Bruce Lee and his kung-fu master. ("I like Bruce Lee a lot, I think he’s very charismatic. Then I realised the master is very charismatic and I’m curious because I know how good Bruce Lee is, how good his master is.") First, though, Tony Leung, who plays Lee’s teacher, must hone his martial arts skills, which will give Wong time to complete a script.

"It will have a real story, with more structure, and we will have some information to work with," Leung told Newsweek in June. "Can you imagine Wong Kar-Wai doing a kung fu-movie? I told him, ‘I might die before you finish that movie!’"

• 2046 is released on 14 January

http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1473652004

[Taurus]

[eliza bennet]

Thank you for the article!

[Gathoni]

at least 14th January is more reasonable than 2046, some of us if not all will not be around to view it