Hey folks, Harry here... Wong Kar Wai's films are for those that know to discover them and to share them. They're not films that can be jammed into the swollen gullets of mass consumers. His films are like $1000 dollars brandy in the best sifter ever. Something to swirl around, enjoy the fragrance - and ultimately to be intoxicated by. For now, I yearn to just dream in the colors of his worlds. Wht a dream indeed....
Dear Harry,
I always enjoy your site, so this time I'll try to contribute a bit: a review of 2046, Wong Kar.Wai's latest flick, that started here in Taipei a few days ago.
Before seeing this, I had to forget about all the expectations that had piled up before: This was my most anticipated movie since Matrix Reloaded, and we know how this ended. Just a few words about it, and skip the paragraph if you want to come to the film directly. The title was inspired by the Chinese government's assertion that within fifty years after the handing-over, nothing would change in Hongkong. I read somewhere that production or pre-production had already started before "In the mood for love", Wong's 2000 film, and that "Mood" was intended to be a quickie inbetween, when "2046" met an impasse. This would explain why the number is so conspicuously visible on a hotel room door in "Mood". After Cannes 2000, "2046" was announced as a sci-fi flick about three warrior couples with names like Darth Vader and Robocop, and Björk was supposed to be in it. However, what followed were years of obscure filming, endless re-scheduling and re-locating, and actors standing in front of cameras without knowing what kind of movie they're in. To me it seems that at some point Tony Leung's character from "In the Mood for Love", a writer, hijacked the frame story which grew over the sci-fi stuff until the film became a fully developed sequel to "Mood".
Everything that had been shot before was seemingly compressed into one hallucinatory sequence, starring Chang Chen, that summarizes Chow?s novel "2046". It's great and makes you long for an entire film in that manner, but I trust Wong's insight that it didn't work. There is still a sci-fi episode in it, but it is made to fit the rest. Then the film went to Cannes, pissed people off because it was in late, and garnered no awards in response, but rather mixed reviews. (Which is sad: Maybe Moore is making history with "Fahrenheit", but let the real great artists collect the awards.)
But now the movie. Five minutes into it, and I indeed forgot the wait. It's gorgeous. For Wong Kar-Wai afficionados: It's the 60's nostalgia of "In the mood for love" combined with the labyrinthine narrative of "Ashes of time". It is soaked with unfulfilled longing, with loss and desire as the condition of everything we see, with the sadness left by a great lost opportunity. It is a dream-like flow of scenes and visions that touch very subtly instead of hammering their point home. Every actor, especially the actresses, seem to be so much better than in every other movie I've seen them in. Gong Li, Zhang Zhiyi and Faye Wong all act as if the film was all theirs. Visually it's easily the most beautiful film Wong has made, each frame being hypnotic and delicate. Chow (Tony Leung) is a writer who tries to forget the love of his life (his affair with Su (Maggie Cheung) was dealt with in "Mood"). His life has lost its center, and so has narrative: He has become a unscrupulous womanzier who hides his feelings behind a Clark Gable-moustache and sees fragments of his lost love in every woman he meets. The story itself is fragmented and jumps between years and between fact and fiction. The episodes mostly do not follow chronology, but rather their emotional sequence in Chow's inner world.
He strikes up a relationship with girlish and seductive Bai (Zhang Zhiyi) whom he treats like a doll , which she is in a way, but one with real feelings. He meets another Su, a mysterious gambler weighed down by her own history. He befriends his landlord's daughter, a gifted writer; for her he writes a science-fiction story, featuring her and her Japanese boyfriend, but which is more about himself. By the way, don't look for special effects here: They would only distract. Even the few views of the future megacity will hardly satisfy CGI fans: They look blurred and double-exposed, because they are not supposed to look like reality, but rather like the vague imagination of a writer.
Also, don't expect to grasp everything on first view. Many people seem to expect that from first viewings, calling "pretentious arthouse crap" whenever a films demands more from a viewer than he can get within two hours. This film, with its acting, its visuals, its dialogue, is just wonderful to look at the first time. But it's clear that it will unfold after two or three viewings. It's just a matter of going with the flow; then it becomes entirely plausible.
And I'm looking forward to go again.
Best,
Guido
