2046

2046

There is something wrong about it but I cant exactly pinpoint what is wrong. Yes, the story is thought-provoking, the acting is perfect, the atmosphere is there, but what went wrong?

Unlike other Wong Kar Wai's movies, 2046 attempts to tie in three central stories and spawning another two more stories instead of his usual one-two central theme. 2046 is also unusually long at 2 hours with Wong saying that his version of 2046 was actually 5 hours long. Maybe what went wrong was that he was working with such a long time frame that he needed it to be as short as possible. Paradoxical? Wong is not used to making such long and complex movies that to him, 2 hours is not enough to fit everything properly.

The editing was also rather unlike most other Christopher Doyle's works. Doyle and Wong are both sticklers for smoothness and flow which seemed to be almost non-existent in this piece, but I suspect that the jarringness of this piece can be attributed to the censors and not them though it really didnt do them any justice.

But this film depicts William Chang at his best. Im so in awe with him, his charaters all seemed to have become another person with a life of themselves and I must give him due credit. He was blasted in In the Mood for Love for the overdressing of Maggie Cheung, but in 2046, his characters were supposed to be very well dressed and he really did a good job. Still, one thing that didnt really go well with the visuals was the haircut of the female characters. It made Tony Leung look pathetically short. This is in context that the female leads arent Taiwanese (show hosts, ha!)(can you get the joke? ie. short).

Tony Leung really became Zhou, his character. I didnt see any trace of Leung in the film, he was all of Zhou. The making out scenes were also well shot, he was all natural that I really wonder how he could actually shoot that scene without reacting. hehe... But there was one thing lacking. Height. Stage presence. His female counterparts were not only tall and had high hairs that he was made dwarfed by comparison. Big pity...

I was amazed by Takuya Kimura's performance. What I can say to him is that, all the years waiting and all the time spent on shooting the scenes were all worthed it man! I never knew he could act from his heart. All along I thought that he was some pretty faced Japanese actor/singer/entertainer/money-making-machine/female-attracting-magnet, but he is more than that. Wong really squeezed Kimura dry emotionally! If only Kimura could act just like how he did in 2046, he would not only sell shows he can also start winning acting awards. He also had great chemistry with Faye Wong that, well, I really hope I can see more of them collaborating in other projects in the future.

Faye Wong. We all know she cant act. She can only stand around and be herself. Her character is just like her and perhaps that was the reason Wong wrote her in. But I liked her better as the robot. There is a sad feeling that she emits out from her eyes and that gave the robot some sort of an emotional edge. In comparison with Carina Lau, the other robot, Faye Wong the robot seemed much sadder and more of a character.

Zhang Ziyi was rather disappointing. She looked really professional in all the making out scenes with Leung, but there was something very distracting about her. As we all know, Wong likes to shoot his actors close up so as to capture the slightest change in their facial expression, but he didnt take into account that pimples can be very distracting. That was so for Zhang. I spent more time thinking that her pimples were damn ugly than thinking that she had acted well. And the funny thing was that shots from different time periods show different pimples.

And the whole idea of the elarborate dressing did not do any justice to Gong Li either. She and Zhang looked pretty much the same as they shared the same types of flat Chinese face. And the use of this sort of white makeup only flattened their faces even more. And without the distinction of other features, they dont look much different from each other which might not spell out good for Zhang as she was made to look much older as she should be.

The only person in the whole show that looked really good was Chang Chen who sadly had very little screen time no thanks to the censor who made a mess out of the montage. If it werent the fault of the censors then I shall conclude that Doyle just dont know how to do a good montage. Sadly disappointing...

Another very bad thing about the film was the pathetic Mandrain dubbing. Why cant we just watch the film as it is instead of having to endure some other person delivering Leung's lines?!

Still, there are many subjects to ponder over in this Wong outing...

What is it up with the reference of Singapore? And when in Singapore watching the film, the reference just seemed rather funny too us and drew quite a bit of laughter, but I strongly suspect that there is a deeper undertone to the meaning of Singapore in the film. Especially when we realise that 2046 is not the future but a place. Could Singapore be the opposite of 2046. Leung's character goes to Singapore in search of Su Lizhen but goes to 2046 to forget her... And while Faye Wong's Huang Jingwen want to go to 2046, Zhang's Bai Ling want to go to Singapore... Think about it...

On the whole, maybe it was because I had too high hopes on 2046 that I cant help feeling disappointed with this piece, but its nonetheless a fresh piece of Wong Kar Wai trying to be innovative yet true to himself. I would disagree with all those saying that Wong is pretentious and his movies are all made with the Western art house critics in mind cos it is so NOT true! Just watch all of Wong's movies and you can see that he is being himself and really wants to do what he wants to do!

Id take a leaf from here and go back in thoughts of 2046, I still think that there is something up with Singapore...