2046

by Jenna Ng

Jenna Ng is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at University College London. She is currently writing her research thesis on the notion of epiphany in digital cinema.

Conceived as a quasi-sequel to In the Mood for Love (2000), Wong Kar-Wai’s latest film, 2046 (2005) follows up on the story of Chow Mo-Wan (played by Tony Leung), the male protagonist of Mood. Having left for Singapore after his failed love affair with Slz1960 (Maggie Cheung) at the end of Mood, in 2046 Chow returns to Hong Kong, spending his days writing soft pornography for tabloid newspapers, drinking at nightclubs and conducting affairs with numerous women, including neighbouring lodger Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). Along the way, he co-writes with Jingwen (Faye Wong) a science-fiction novel titled (but of course) “2046”, where life and heartache feed into art and comfort taken only from the echoes of memories.

Weaving themes of meetings, farewells, dreams, ennui, love, memory and regret, the emotional depths of 2046 are evocatively reflected in its cinematography (by Wong’s long-time collaborator, Christopher Doyle). The visuals are always characteristically lush and rich, be they the saturated brashness of the hotel, the blue-grey half-night of twilight, the heavy, tendrilled cigarette smoke of a crowded Chinese restaurant or the garishness of the neon signs. Wong’s film soundtracks have always been diverse and eclectic (take, as random examples, the motley collection of tango music, symphonic main tracks and operatic arias in Mood, or the samba-tango-’50s oldies compilation in Happy Together) and 2046 is no different. Underscored by a haunting main theme on strings composed by Shigeru Umebayashi (whose riff, however, sounds distractingly similar to Eric Serra’s main theme for Léon), Doyle’s cinematography is always amplified by the application of music in culturally contrasting contexts, whereby sound is placed against image in bizarre juxtaposition: Maria Callas singing a dramatic Italian aria above a family row in Mandarin between a strict Chinese father and his daughter; a sultry Spanish number accompanying Bai Ling admiring herself in her cheong-sum; a Dean Martin Christmas carol playing in a Hong Kong bar filled with Cantonese-speaking customers. The result is a strange sense of alienation, an ambience of the unheimlich, a cinematic evocation of reminiscence: in a film about remembering, this is surely the sound (and sensation) of memory on film—a slow-dance between familiar and unfamiliar, known and unknown.

It is tempting to try and pick apart the film: what is the meaning of “2046”? The title of a science-fiction novel? A political implication (2046 is the final year of Hong Kong’s self-governance as promised by China)? A hotel room number (2046 is the number of the hotel room in which Lulu (Carina Lau), a bar hostess, killed herself, and Bai Ling subsequently stays)? A memory (it is also Chow’s hotel room number at the end of Mood)? The implications and connections are ponderous, complex and potentially endless. Yet, I do not believe that mining for the meanings of the film should be its main endeavour, for 2046 is ultimately a very odd kind of sequel: while it continues Chow’s story from Mood, more significantly, it also remembers the first film and thus, in the presentation of its cinematic synchronicities, expresses the film’s dominant expressions of longing and memory. Many shots in 2046 are cinematically reminiscent of Mood in terms of composition, rhythm and camera angles—for example, the low shots of Chow passing Su Lizhen (Gong Li) at the stairwell, the oblique shot of their shadows on the walls as they walk down the street and the close shot of the handbag dangling from the arm are all similar to the corresponding shots of Chow and Slz 1960 in Mood. There are many identical motifs as well: how Jingwen and Slz 1960 both have a fondness for martial arts novels; how Bai Ling, like Chow, yearns for a new start in Singapore to forget an unsuccessful love affair; how Chow’s colleague, Ah Ping (Ping Lam Siu), tries to pick up Bai Ling through Chow just as he had tried to get close to Slz 1960 in Mood; and, of course, the similarity of names between Su Lizhen and Slz1960, the only women for whom Chow had feelings. Enmeshed in reminiscence, the mystery surrounding “2046” becomes, instead, the triumph of the film, for memories do not have the logic of the event; they are only reflections in a mind stricken with nostalgia and loss. Adrienne Rich writes in her poem, “Eastern War Time: 9”: “Memory speaks:/ You cannot live on me alone/ You cannot live without me/ I’m nothing if I’m just a roll of film stills from a vanished world……” Thus lies the double bind of memory: the dilemma of both being unable to live on yet without—the double anguish of presence and absence, the dichotomy whereby sustenance and death/loss co-exist simultaneously.

Despite its heavy-going contents, it is to Wong’s credit that he does not make 2046 tedious or over-melodramatic, but constantly treats its themes with gossamer subtlety. Consider, for example, the meeting between Chow and Lulu, a bar hostess he met in Singapore: Chow, leaning close to Lulu, whispering their memories into her ear; Lulu staring straight ahead, seemingly immobile and expressionless. Only with the slow, almost imperceptible zooming in of the camera do we suddenly see her eyes are awash with tears. This is certainly one of his best films to date—one which mourns lost love not because it is lost but because it is remembered.

2046

Director Links

IMDB

They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?