2046

THE ORIGINS OF THE MOVIE

What does the number "2046" mean?
In 1997, when Hong Kong returned to China, Hong Kong was told that
everything would remain unchanged for 50 years. 2046 would be the
last year of this promise. Director Wong was fascinated by the
promise and the number. He wondered what kind of love story it would be
if it were mixed with the number. He also asked himself what in this
world would remain unchanged. In our daily lives, when we fall in
love, we often ask ourselves, "Would he/she remain faithful?
Would I remain the same?"
The film 2046 begins with this number.

Directed by one of Hong Kong's most renowned filmmakers, Wong Kar Wai,
2046 is a co-production between the Shanghai Film Studio and Jet Tone
Films Ltd. According to director Wong, "The story for 2046 came to
me at the same time as we were working on IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE,
but while some of the characters have similarities, 2046 in not a
sequel." Continuing on he said,"In fact, the feelings and issues that
the characters in 2046 articulate and contend with are deeper and
more sincere requiring a different approach to portraying them. I
found that as I looked around and saw people I knew being in and out
of love, and others never being able to capture or recapture love,
something spoke to me."

"As I thought about what it meant to love and be loved, 2046 is what
came to me. 2046 is about a man who attempts to leave behind his past;
to bury that which he cannot forget yet the burden of what he has to
carry makes it almost impossible to move beyond what he has done and
seen. All of us in a conscious or unconscious way leave behind
memories in order to begin new lives. Some maybe do it only once;
others do it constantly. My film is about such a man whose love was
refused by a woman he loved. Subsequently he turned down the
love of another woman and lost a chance to begin again. He began
unconsciously and for various reasons to reject every new
opportunity to find love. It may sound trite but as we see in 2046,
love truly is a matter of timing."


SYNOPSIS

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. Everyone who went
there had the same intention... to recapture their lost
memories.
It was said that in 2046, nothing ever changed. Nobody knew
for sure if it was true, because nobody who went there had
ever come back - except for one.
He was there. He chose to leave. He wanted to change.


For more info, visit http://www.wkw2046.com/(Official site) or http://www.2046.jp/ (Jap site)


Overall, this show has got quite a good feel to it and I would recommend it to anyone who likes Wong Kar Wai's films. They've got a strong cast, good acting, nice costumes, nice music and good cinematography. A piece of advice, don't try to decipher everything in the show... just watch it normally, and try to enjoy the show. If you can't figure out everything, then wait for the DVD :) oh, did I forget to mention that it's a 2HR show...or slightly longer? Part of it might be a little draggy due to the story going back and forth and shots focusing on certain characters but I guess we could overlook these minor flaws :p


A comment which I find worth reading:
Date: 30 September 2004
Summary: strong start, but weak finish gets lost in 2046

In 1999, when Wong Kar Wai began shooting SUMMER IN BEIJING, word was already going around that he was at the same time starting work on a film with the working title 2046. Through the grapevine, it was rumored that 2046's plot revolved around Hong Kong 50 years after the 1997 handover. When China announced to the world she was going to reclaim the former British Colony (owing credit to the infamous Opium war and assorted atrocities in the 1800's), it also declared that Hong Kong was to remain sovereign for the first 50 years after the handover. This made for a world of opportunities for Wong Kar Wai to explore and create, for the 6.5 million population in the city were constantly being bombarded by discussions and debates of HK's future on television and assorted media.

2 years later, China becomes a much more viable market for film distribution to the outside world. Film industrialists around the world starts making sure subject matters won't be deemed subversive to China's film board... this continues today.

5 years down the road, SUMMER IN BEIJING never went anywhere, IN THE MOOD OF LOVE (2001) became Wong's trophy picture that shined above all his previous work... that is, until CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2001) came along and upstaged Wong both at the Academy Awards, as well as that year's Hong Kong film awards.

What happened to 2046 then? What happened to the cast that supposedly had Bjork starring alongside Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Fei Wong, and Japanese pop idol (yet a well qualified actor) Takuya Kimura? What happened to the plot about Hong Kong 50 years after the Turnover back to China?

Pushing all the above aside, I step back into 2046 - the 2004 version, which I'd just watched last night. The film opens with Takuya Kimura's voice over detailing his visit to 2046, and being the only one who has ever decided to leave. He is the lone passenger on the train back to a time which he does not specify. We know there are androids on the train who are either servants to the lone passenger, or perhaps they are en route to their own time as well... we don't know, and it doesn't matter.

The 60 minutes that follow are, to my delight, just as good as any other of Wong's best work in drawing the audience into a world of mystique romantic melancholy. We find out Takuya Kimura the passenger is a fictitious character penned by Tony Leung's character Chow Mo-Wan - a reprise and continuation to the storyline so well built-up in IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2001). To make a long story short, his rendezvous with Maggie Cheung in IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2001) pushed him into a state of longing for something that "could have been" but never went further than a few intimate moments in the room 2046. Leung's character goes through a series of women in an attempt perhaps to free himself of the pain of having lost Maggie Cheung, which as I would deduce, was at best unrequited love, and if nothing else, the first of the series of affairs he would have after he finds out his wife has left with another man.

In the first act, Tony runs into LuLu (Carina Lau), they have another one of these platonic moments at her room discussing how she's been searching for her true love - a bird with no legs. I must say as a fan of Wong's DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990), I was delighted to see an attempt to actually link these scenes and characters back to a movie he made more than 14 years ago. He even uses the same music made so famous by DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990). Leung's voice-over explains how he first met Lulu back in Singapore. She was a dance-hall girl working there after failing to find her boyfriend - a Chinese man of Filipino descent.

If you've watched DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990), you'll know what I'm getting at. But I'll stop that point here... In any case, I loved this part.

Moving on, we find out Fei Wong is the hotel owner's daughter who's staying at 2046. Tony Leung returns to Hong Kong after another failed fling with gambler BLACK WIDOW (Gong Li)... which by the way is one of the weakest plot-points/links in the film. Leung goes back to the hotel hoping to live in the same room (2046), hoping to relive his memories with Maggie Cheung. The room is now inhabited by Fei Wong, and Leung moves into 2047. It is here at the hotel where he befriends Fei Wong and learns of her father's condemnation of her relationship with Japanese businessman Takuya Kimura. Kimura hopes Fei would leave with him back to Japan... I must say these scenes show us some of the Takuya Kimura finest moments on the silver screen. Members of the audience, and probably fans of Kimura, were actually ooohing and oowing all over the house. Contrary to previous reports of how his screen time is negligible, I must argue that it's not the "duration," but the quality of his scenes and performance that makes his part shine.

Btw, something must have happened between Cheung and Wong Kar Wai. They shot so much, but she's in 3 shots... I speculate some dispute must have taken place to cause this.

Back to the story... Leung meets Zhang Ziyi - another tenant at the hotel who also goes through men like Wong Kar Wai with film stock. They meet, and she ends up falling for him... but only to be rejected.

The rest of the story revels around Leung's flashbacks of Zhang, Gong Li, Fei Wong, and his continuation of the novel 2046, which upon collaboration with Fei Wong (also an aspiring writer in the movie), is later named 2047.

The first half of the movie is fantastic, and serves as a great example of cinema in its most romantic yet subtle form. Visually breath-taking shots, good dialogue, and great music... But what happens toward the last 1/3 of the movie becomes a contrived patchwork of montages, soundbite vignettes that leads us nowhere. I for one, never would argue that a film or story could not close with an open-ending. But this one is just NOT IT. As a fan of Wong's previous work (not including FALLEN ANGEL (1995), that is), and even the most loyal fanatic of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE would think of the last 1/3 of the movie as convoluted and incomplete like a screening of Wong's daily rushes (if he practices this, that is).

At one point of the story, Leung sends his completed draft of 2047 - the novel, to Fei Wong. Fei Wong writes back with the comment, "the ending is too sad. Can you try to change it to a happier ending?"

We see Leung trying to start with the revision.

This is where I, if ever I had the chance of working with Wong Kar Wai, would suggest:

Keep the scene with Tony Leung trying to write, cut the Intertitles showing passage of time, use all the shots of the women and people Tony Leung have come across and created in the time and moments that affected him, keep the Zhang Ziyi scene at the end, cut the Gongli scene at the end, and close with the movie showing Leung start to write, but on a different sheet of paper, with a smile... He is writing a letter to Fei Wong.

a soundbite from Maggie Cheung's character wouldn't hurt in the above sequence.

Voice-over: "I guess some things just cannot be changed... even in fiction... because I no longer know what it is I have lost."

side-shot of Tony Leung putting the book manuscript back in the envelope. He is smiling as he writes... fade to black.

something like that... or anything but what's there now.