2046 Poster

2046 (2004)

Drama | SciFi 
Rayting:   7.5/10 51.3K votes
Country: Hong Kong | China
Language: Cantonese | Japanese
Release date: 3 February 2005

Several women enter a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years, after the author has lost the woman he considers his one true love.

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jotix100 3 September 2005

Kar Wai Wong is without a doubt, one of the best directors today. That said, with "2046" he achieves something of an impressive feat with this film that keeps reminding us of his previous "In the Mood for Love", which in comparison, pales next to this new installment of Mr. Wong's take about the life of the character of the previous film. The gorgeous cinematography of Christopher Doyle, Kwan Pun Leung and Yiu-Fai-Lai has a rich texture throughout the film and the haunting musical score by Peer Raben and Shiguru Umebayashi fits the movie like a glove.

Some people commenting in this forum have expressed the view of Mr. Wong's film being futuristic because the way the film starts. But basically, those futuristic sequences last so little on the screen that it might be a misnomer for "2046" to be deemed about the future, when in reality we are taken back to the sixties when Mr. Chow is seen so much in love with Bai Ling.

Mr. Wong gives us a vivid account of what the two lovers had together, but he also takes us back when something is revealed about Mr. Chow we never knew about his involvement with SuLi Zheng, the mysterious woman who is lucky in winning for him an enormous amount, but while he falls in love with her, she coolly lets him go.

We are also shown Wong Jing Wen, who Mr. Chow had a passionate love affair with, in the previous film. It appears the involvement they both had is now clearly forgotten, or maybe it wasn't as important as it once appeared to be.

The director's technique calls for an infinite amount of medium shots, usually over the shoulder of the person that listens. As a matter of fact, there is hardly any scenery in the film since most of the action either takes place while the characters are seen in conversation, or in bed where some of the torrid encounters take place. The futuristic scenes seem to be a sort of limbo where the characters, like the beautiful Android, seems to in in a world of her own.

The best asset in the film is the music the director adds to the different scenes. Some of the music is nostalgic, some operatic, or depending on whatever is being emphasized at the moment. The music enhances the action in ways that make the film hard to forget.

The best thing the director has in the film is the enormously talented Tony Leung. Mr. Leung is an actor that is always interesting to see in anything. In this film, Mr. Wong and his main actor show how attuned they both are to their collaboration. Ziyi Zhang is tremendously appealing as Bai Ling, the woman that loved intensely and suddenly finds herself on her own after the affair ended. Gong Li is seen briefly as SuLi Zheng, the mysterious woman with the one black globe he meets in Singapore. Also Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau contributed to the film as the women in Mr. Chow's life.

"2046" is a hypnotic piece of film making because the magnificent style which Kar Wai Wong gives to everything in the film to achieve this moody piece that examines love relationships in ways that are seldom seen in the movies.

Masako-2 2 November 2004

Fmovies: The movie was well above my expectation and definitely worth a wait. Tony Leung plays the same man with "In the Mood for Love" but has a different character. The movie is also vaguely related to "Days of Being Wild" in 1990, co-starred by Leslie Cheung and Maggie Cheng. All three films are about the mixture of hustle-bustle and weariness of Hong Kong in 1960s.

Tony's performance in this film was again brilliant. Faye Wong performed in WKW film for the first time in 10 years (since "Chung King Express" in 1994, also co-starred by Tony Leung) and made this film one of a kind. Mysterious gambler Gong Li was also attractive. Zhang Ziyi gave me a positive surprise. The film's technical level (costumes, music, photography etc.) is also very high. Someone suggested 2004 Cannes Palm d'Or should have gone to this film instead of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and now I can totally agree.

The number "2046" is the metaphor of Hong Kong's destiny, which implies the last year of status-quo for 50 years guaranteed by Chinese government.

CihanVercan 23 September 2008

A journalist quits his job, when his novels became top-seller. To be able to finish his last novel he needed inspiration, so he revisits a cheap motel which he has lived bittersweet memories with his ex-love, 2 years ago in 1967. The story takes place in 1969 in the same motel, once the novelist decided to stay there.

The novel he was writing has been a science fiction at first. Whereas, he's driven by a serendipity that the name of this novel "2046" is also the room number in which he and his ex has shared a love. Into that room, now a harlot settles in. He enriches his novel by putting himself as the true love of this harlot staying in room 2046. As destiny would have it, when the harlot meets him she really falls in love with him. By courtesy of her swallowing his bait, the novelist subjoins an erotic component into his novel. Let's gather together the first phase of the movie: We have one man and two woman. First woman left him 2 years ago, and he is still in love with her. Then at the present time, the second woman falls in love with him.

The second phase is the vengeance of the novelist from the woman he loved in 1967. This phase forms the essence of the novel: The future in the year 2046. Future is under the control of dreamers. Everybody who can dream and who can love, can travel into 2046 deep in their heart to recapture their lost memories. The novelist never goes there, 'cause he knows that if he goes once, he would never return to the present time, and would stay stuck in the future, living in the memories. Instead of making himself gone, he sends her inconstant love into 2046 as an android woman. Living as an android, the woman doesn't have a heart. But a young man falls in love with her. She yearns for him so much, but she could never express her feelings nor the look in her eyes could ever change; since she has no heart no more. She realizes that she deserves to be loved, and denies herself. She begins suffering of the love she remained lighthearted to the novelist 79 years ago. Witnessing her repentance, the novelist forgives her love; and wants her back at the present time in 1969.

At the last phase the novelist loses himself before his love finds him. Because his novel concludes to an ending which he doesn't have the love for her true love anymore, he depletes his inspirations to finish his novel without the memories of his past love. When she returns to him, he stands indifferent.

An amazing story layering ahead, including tons of short stories inside, and the director Wong Kar Wai uses a giddy and ravishing cinematography for use of symbolism. It's the viewers' duty to solve the puzzles of the storyline, to match the short stories with their attributions and to set in order of the straight-going novel versus unsteadily progressing movie; which altogether I shared with you above.

Both director and the writer of 2046, Wong Kar Wai presents a novel adaptation in the movie, and a movie adaptation in the novel; in conclusion a mixture of two arts on silver screen.

Quinoa1984 11 August 2005

2046 fmovies. I read different takes on 2046 and its connection to its predecessor by writer/director Wong Kar-Wai, In the Mood for Love. Some said you had to see it before 2046, although the general consensus was that the unusual romanticism and little details in both films, and actors like Tony Leung and Maggie Chung, made the only real connection(s) (Wong himself has said ironically to see 2046 before In the Mood for Love). It seems, after seeing the film, that he was correct; I had seen half of In the Mood for Love a while back, and I did get an idea of what I might expect, but the fact is is that 2046 really does work fine as a film on its own terms. It's a story that at first seems like it will be style over substance, and at times it is, but the substance is usually very intriguing, and keeps attention. It isn't a perfect film, and towards the end it starts to lag, but such criticisms are made up for by the attributes.

We learn from the narrator and lead character, Chow (Leung), that there is a place, if not a time, called 2046, where people don't leave unless they fall in love. But, for the bulk of the film, the film is not set in any kind of futuristic setting that might be assumed on the outset of going into the film. It's set in late 60's Hong Kong, where Chow writes lurid fantasy stories. He takes room 2046 after seeing a woman, Su (Li Gong), in the room. He feels that this place is where he, like others, can go to "lose memories" ("All memories are traces of tears", a title-card reads), which spurs him on the start writing a sci-fi novel with the room's title.

During his stay, he meets two women that effect him: an abused girl, at first acting aloof, Lulu/Mimi (Carina Lau), leaves and the later comes back in the film as a kind of writing assistant for Chow. The more significant woman, however, is in the form of call-girl Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi, a woman so gorgeous it borders on the unreal), who like the others takes room 2047, and becomes Chow's "drinking buddy". But this soon turns to playfulness, to a side affair. Although there is much else that goes on in the film, this has some of the best material, with wonderful dialog and style giving room for perhaps th best performance I've seen from Ziyi yet.

This is not all to the film, though it could've been and been as successful. The women in Wong's films, like with Hitchcock or even Antonioni or Godard (all directors he was obviously inspired by for his own original stance), are crucial to how it turns out. These women express everything Wong desires, abandons, represses, flirts, and acts cool with. They spur on almost every one of his creative pieces (he gives a short story of 2047 to one, who wonders why the ending is so sad, to which he cannot create a happy one), and all of the things he'd rather not forget. Without the strong performances from them all, in particular Ziyi, Lau and Cheung, the drama just wouldn't be there, and certainly the style giving much weight to the film would become over-cooked and pretentious.

The style, of which, was something I took various notes of while I watched, scribbling bits, elements, colors and shots that caught my eyes: the greens in the halls, the brightness of outside on the porch, the black and white scene in the cab (one of my favorites), and of course the futuristic visualization scenes of Chow's own 2046. What's curious about the real sci-fi type scenes is that they make little sense aside from the central point- finding

gradyharp 2 January 2006

Kar Wai Wong is more than a film director (though he is one of the finest directors working today!): he is a visual, poetic, creative and daring artist capable of more cinematic miracles in one isolated film than most directors achieve in a lifetime. '2046' is a visually stunning, intellectually challenging, emotionally charged view of love and lust in today's kinetically dysfunctional society.

There is no one way to interpret this non-linear film and therein lies much of its rewards. The main character Chow (Tony Leung) is a writer and a libertine who has pushed his vacuous life around with his hormones and though he has had many affairs he has failed to find the illusory 'love'. He has lived in Singapore and Hong Kong, makes his living writing columns of newspapers while his novels formulate in his mind. One of his novels is called '2046', the title based on the room number in a hotel where he witnessed a bizarre incident involving a gorgeous woman, and resulted in his moving into the adjoining room 2047 where is meets the hotel manager's daughter in love with a Filipino Japanese man her father loathes. He desires this unattainable woman and fuses her with a fictional 'android' in his novel which now uses '2046' as a year or time or place where people go to find memories. He continues to encounter women for whom he desires more than surface relationships (there is a stunning lady gambler cameo who represents everything he lusts and longs for, etc) but he is never able to find his tenuous ideal: his memory is his only source of consolation.

The actors in every role include many of the finest actors available: Li Gong, Ziyi Zhang, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung, Takuya Kimura, Chen Chang, and of course Tony Leung. But it is Kar Wai Wong, the writer, director, choreographer, colorist, visionary that makes this excursion into the interstices of the mind/imagination so overwhelmingly satisfying. Whether the viewer elects to view the story as a continuation of the director's previous films, or as reality vs memory, fiction vs imagination, sci-fi excursion, or simply a plethora of vignettes about the challenges of finding love in a world geared toward instant gratification, this is a magnificent achievement. In many ways the sound track could be turned off (though the beautiful musical score by Peer Raben and Shigeru Umebayashi with a lot of help from Maria Callas! would be missed), and the inventive cinematography and visual image manipulations by Christopher Doyle, Pung-Leung Kwan and Yiu-Fai Lai such as the constant dividing of the screen into triptychs and diptychs would remain some of the most beautiful photographic images on film.

This is not an easy film to follow and it is most assuredly one that will grow in importance with repeated viewings. The comparison with Alain Resnais' 'Last Year at Marienbad' suggests its potency. But free the mind and enter into the world of '2046' for one of the most satisfying cinematic achievements of the recent past. Very highly recommended. Grady Harp

Bigprisc 16 October 2004

I went to watch 2046 after reading millions and millions of interviews and reviews... seriously, it was really difficult to keep an open mind about a movie as talked about as this... imagine 5 years of anticipation.

I started watching trying my very best to keep an open mind, but after a while... i realize i din have to, gradually, my mind just goes on this journey with the story, gone were the reviews and interviews and comments. During the movie, i did not think about anything else except wat was happening in the movie. There is so much in this movie that i think i could write a novel about it.

This movie is about perceptions and memories. how a memory can dictate the way a person lives his or her life. The stories of the many girls are seen thru the eyes of the charismatic and talented Tony Leung. There are many girls in his life. All these girls have a story, a story as seen and perceived by Zhou Mu Yun.

The first story would definitely be the story of the first Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung) and Zhou Mu Yun, this is the story that shaped Zhou's life, even though in this movie, Maggie only appears in a few shots. but the basis is all laid out in "In the Mood for Love".

The second story is lulu's (Carina Lau) story. The meeting described by Zhou took place in the time span after "Days of Being Wild". I find it such a pity that Wong Kar Wai edited out so much of Lulu's story. I would really wish to have seen more of it.

Then there is the story of the second Su Li Zhen in Singapore. The mysterious woman who wears one black glove. Zhou finds new solace in her. Using her to fill up the gap left by the first Su.

The saddest story in in movie will have to be Bai Yun's(ZHang ZiYi). She definite loves Zhou with all her heart, but he treats her like a pro. At some point in the movie, i wanted to slap both Bai and Zhou. Bai for being so lovelorn, and Zhou for being so stupid, the girls he love wouldn't leave with him, now the girl that loves him so much, he refused her over and over.

The last, and definitely my favourite story would definitely be Wong Jing Wen's(Faye Wong), any mandarin speaking person would know that Wong Jing Wen is the moniker Faye Wong went with when she first started singing. Anyway... all these while i never thought Faye could act, but i guess with no anticipation, there wont be disappointment. And Faye proved that her portrayal of the hotel proprietor's daughter. Wong is the only woman in the movie that is not romantically linked to Zhou, although it was hinted that he was in love with her. Wong and her Japanese boyfriend(Takuya Kimura) were in love but Proprietor Wong refused to even meet the boy. Undaunted Takuya asked Wong to leave with him, but her refusal to give him an answer span the very basis of 2046, which Zhou aptly named "2047" in the movie. *grinz*

*Self-Indulgent Note* I am the Biggest fan of the late Jeanette Lin Tsai from the 50's Cathay era. And i have always felt that Faye looks a whole lot like her. But i will be kissing the ground that Wong Kar Wai step on, because he managed to capture Jeanette Lin's essence in Faye. Unwittingly no doubt, but it helped me indulged in a memory that i wish to forever keep in 2046.

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