I stumbled on the film 2046 around the time Memoirs of a Geisha was entering theaters, while researching the actress Zihi Zhang (lead role in Memoirs as well as House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and others). I've taken an interest in the style of Chinese films ever since I saw Hero (though I must admit, I hated Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). It opened my eyes to a new school of cinematography that focused on the poetry of filming more then simply entertainment. For one, Hero expressed it's story through a series of minimalist scenes and ideas, reptition, and images of beauty. I came to deeply respect and be intruiged with how these films touched me both intellectually and spiritually, representing philisophies that are ill-represented in Hollywood films and a canvas that focused on truth and beauty.
It was only recently that I came to stumble upon 2046, as I said before, and from the looks of it, I really had no idea what the movie was about, nor did I know that it was in fact a sequal. All I knew was that it looked highly artistic in style, and a sci-fi at that (which in fact was the product of bad advertising because in fact, it wasn't a sci-fi at all, it took place in 1960s Hong Kong).
And as my interest slowly blossomed I rented the prequal to 2046, originally submitted to the Cannes film festival in 2000, "In the Mood for Love." Firstly, the movie was told in a way that I wasn't expecting. It seemed to take the approach of telling a story through emotions, objects, and body language then through dialogue and actions. It was a film with a focus on the blossoming relationship between Mr. Chow and Ms. Chan, both married individuals who live next to one another in apartments during the 1950s and come to realize jointly that their spouses are cheating on them for one another. In a sense, they agree never to be like their spouses but the film follows their relationship and their emotions in being in this situation; it is a film that follows the day to day living of these two individuals, but focuses on their feelings.
The soundtrack is sparse and the entire film is a collage of events and images, but in this sense of minimalist style, a glance, the turn of a head, a touch, a tear all send shivers down your spine. In this sense, if I was at all interested in pursuing cinematography as a career, this film would have pushed me to the limit with it's style (much imitating the film-noir style of older films), but most importantly, how it expressed it's story through images and reptition. How Mr. Chow and Ms. Chan always pass one another in the same ally every night and then his head slowly sways to look in her direction; the night Ms. Chan decides not to go out and see Mr. Chow and how she finally accepts the invitation of her neighbours to eat with them, and the longing expression on her face as she gazes into the night, a glass in her hand, and the strife within her at what she wishes to do.
In essence, the story is told as if viewing a series of memories, not completely connected from a sequential stand-point, but rather deeply laced with the lense of passion and sentiment and told through a progression of feeling. It is something that I feel that I cannot express well enough, but I urge you that if you have any interest in these types of films that I highly recommend you sample this one (only at one hour and a half long).
2046 is a different matter though; and I have recently found out that it is a sequal to both In the Mood for Love and a film the director Wong Kar-wai made in the early 90s as some of the characters in that appear as well. It follows Mr. Chow's deteriation of spirit with his increase in indulgence, uncaring, smoking, and drinking take hold of his life, but follows his observations and his subtle feelings throughout his writing of a story to express his situation entitled 2047 (but about the year 2046).
From the start, you get your first impressions of Mr. Chow as an entirely new person (a personality completely changed from the kind, sentimental, and loving person you see from the first film) and his sexual relations with various women. However, it is the repeted theme of the story that you begin to see Mr. Chow's true feelings about the people around him, his situation and connection to the first film (2046 is the name of the hotel room he stayed in when he worked on a story to be published with Ms. Chan). He admits to himself that people he meets in real life are repeatidly making their way into his stories, and you begin to see how he really feels about these people as he writes about himself and others. In another sense, I liked the film, but not the disintegration of Mr. Chow as I knew him.
However, it is some of the images and scenes that are most memorable from the films. Music is used so sparingly that when it is used, it adds an entirely new demension to the scene, that when the theme begins, it can move you to tears with its power. The camera angles are experimented with giving you a feeling of being an observer of the scene, sometimes placed underneath beds, sometimes behind a window, sometimes on a counter; in one sense, these are two films where I felt I truly got to know its characters as if they were real people, not the stereotypical, one-sided personalities that exist in most films.
Watching these culminates into a poetry on the lurking hopes, dreams, motivations, thoughts, feelings, desires, fears, fantasies (especially 2046), and realities of love and relationships. I hope I have at least inspired a curiosity of these films. They have been the most influential I have watched in a long time and my thoughts continually return to those characters and settings, and they will definitely be stories that will influence my writing to come. I made this post to share them with you and if you were interested and saw them, to discuss it a little.
