I’m a massive Wong Kar Wai fan, so it was inevitable that I’d be dashing out to see 2046 (well maybe not quite dashing, since it opened a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve only just seen it).
The genesis of this film has been well reported with its gestation taking a good five years (I believe it’s true that he made the magnificent In The Mood For Love after he’d begun 2046).
Tony Leung is the star – well actually Christopher Doyle’s camera work is the real star – and he’s accompanied by some Chinese cinema’s most stellar (and most beautiful) names. We’ve got Gong Li (from Shanghai Triad amongst many others), Faye Wong (from one of my favourite films, Chungking Express, also from Wong Kar Wai), Ziyi Zhang (recently seen in House of Flying Daggers, but also, of course, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and the peerless Maggie Cheung (from numerous films including many Jackie Chan films including the Police Story trilogy as well as a several previous Wong Kar Wai films including the aforementioned In The Mood For Love).
The plot is not easy to explain. Leung is a writer who makes his living writing pulp columns of a sleazy nature. He lives in a hotel adjacent to room 2046 (2047 in fact). But it’s the occupents of room 2046 who capture his attention as we progress at a stately pace through the latters years of 60s Hong Kong. He narrates the story back to us, from the viewpoint of his science fiction story set in the year 2046 when “nothing changes”.
So that’s pretty clear then! If that attempt at a plot synopsis isn’t clear enough for you, then you’re probably not going to like this film.
It’s meandering and ponderous, and very touching. As I say, it looks incredibly beautiful with nearly all the shots having something or other so close to the camera that it’s out of focus, so that we appear to be discrete voyeurs viewing the scenes as they play out. The music is exceptional as usual. I find that I just about always have to pick up the soundtrack to a Wong Kar Wai film – usually a blend of the familiar and the unusual. This was no exception, and on exiting the cinema, a swift trip to the Picaddilly Circus Virgin Megastore (previously Tower Records) was called for.
NB It’s probably worth not doing what I did, and arriving late to buy your ticket at the Curzon Soho, condemning you to the seats in the first couple of rows of screen 3. To say that you’ll get a cricked neck is putting it mildly, and if you happen to be unfortunate enough to have a seat on the end of the row (say 11, 12 or 13) then it might be worth coming back another day.