| FUTURES AND PASTS : Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 [5?/10] |
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| Sunday, 13 March 2005 | |
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Wong Kar-Wai's notoriously long-gestating 2046 is a quasi-followup to his international arthouse hit In the Mood for Love (2000) - this is, however, a rare instance when knowledge of the "original" might actually be a hindrance for anyone trying to understand the "sequel." Because while Mood didn't exactly overburden itself in terms of plot, 2046 sees Wong moving beyond narrative altogether - and while it's commendable that a film-maker should seek out new ground, many viewers will find themselves baffled, bored and generally left behind. The results of Wong's experimentations are best approached as a series of stylish variations on a small number of themes concerning love, loss, regret and memory. attempts to puzzle out the (protracted) goings-on in terms of conventional story-telling are probably doomed to failure. Any resulting headaches will, however, be soothed by the sheer, ravishing gorgeousness of Christopher Doyle's swooningly luminous cinematography, William Chang Suk Ping's production design and costumes, and Alfred Yau Wai Ming's art direction. Though it might make more sense in four decades' time, from the perspective of 2005 2046 is sadly ‘big, beautiful - and a bust,' (to steal Danny Peary's description of Dune in The Guide for the Film Fanatic.) In interviews, Wong has stated that his choice of the year 2046 isn't an arbitrary - this is the year when Hong Kong will fully become a part of China, as the Beijing government promised to allow the colony a 50-year-period of adjustment following the handover from the UK in 1997. Perversely, there's no mention of this in the (overlong) film itself. Synopsising what does go on in 2046 is a difficult and ultimately pointless task. Tony Leung Chiu Wai reprises his Mood role as Chow, a journalist in late-sixties Hong Kong who entertains aspirations to become a ‘serious' writer. In the aftermath of his love-affair with Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung) (which was the subject of the first film) he throws himself into his short stories. These are illustrated in episodes which punctuate the main narrative - most notably a futuristic tale about people travelling to the year 2046 aboard an ultra-high-tech ‘train.' Among the passengers is Chow's dashing alter-ego ‘cc1966' (Chang Chen) who forms an attachment with android stewardess ‘wjw1967' (Faye Wong) - in the real world, wjw1967's counterpart Wang Jing Wen, an acquaintance of Chow's who helps him out with his writing. There's some spark of a romance between the two, but Chowclearly still hasn't gotten over Su Li-Zhen - who reappears in lightly fictionalised form as black-gloved gambler (played by Gong Li.) Slinking through the narrative, meanwhile, is the gorgeous, mysterious figure of Bai Ling (Ziyi Zhang)... One of the main problems with 2046 lies in Chow, the central figure around whom all the narrative threads slowly revolve. From all available evidence, this self-obsessed, chain-smoking moper isn't any great shakes as a writer - something of a problem in a film which is essentially a lavishly illustrated tour of his creative imagination. Whereas the women we see (filtered through his perspective) are vivacious and intriguing, Chow is relatively two-dimensional and somewhat dull - and Leung Chiu Wai doesn't have enough charisma to compensate (in the way that Takeshi Kaneshiro dominated the screen in Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels.) Chow is clearly intended as a surrogate for Wong Kar-Wai himself, but 2046 might have come off better if we'd been able to spend more time with the female characters who too quickly spin in and out of Chow's orbit - Cheung, so alluring in Mood, is conspicuously underused. Faye Wong, meanwhile, has thankfully calmed down a fair bit since her wearingly hyperactive turn in Wong Kar-Wai's Chung King Express a decade ago, and the brief sequence in which Wang Jing Wen and Chow collaborate on a lowbrow martial-arts adventure has an energy and humour all too lacking elsewhere in what is otherwise a somewhat humourless, austere and repetitive picture. Wong Kar-Wai's technique of repelaying certain pieces of popular music on his soundtracks is again in evidence - Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song obtains multiple airings this time as Chow experiences a series of melancholy Christmas Eves. But the cumulative effect somehow isn't anywhere near so striking as the countless blasts of California Dreamin' from Chung King Express. This is typical of the film as a whole - despite all the right elements seemingly being in place, 2046 just never quite comes together. The experience is rather like watching a virtuouso magician who can't quite remember the words for a particular elaborate spell - at each attempt changing a word here and a phrase there in the increasingly desperate, vain hope that one of them will work the trick. But his (new) clothes are beautiful. Neil Young 11th March, 2005 2046 : [5?/10] : China (‘Hong Kong') 2004 : WONG Kar-Wai : 120 mins seen at Hebden Bridge Picture House, Hebden Bridge (UK), 3rd March 2005 - public show |
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