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2046
R0 - Hong Kong - Mei Ah Review written by and copyright: Pat Pilon (11th January 2005). |
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The Film
 I count myself extremely lucky. This was the opening movie of the Busan International Film Festival in October 2004. The premiere had many Korean stars, as well as the movie's writer/director, Wong Kar-Wai (Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels), and star, Tony Leung (Fighting for Love, Chungking Express). I was among those in attendence. I'll never forget it. Mr. Wong had his sunglasses, as usual, even though it was dark and the entire female population of the Takuya Kimura fanclub seemed to be seated in the seats directly behind mine. My boss and her daughter didn't seem to enjoy the movie much, but I was quite familiar with In the Mood for Love so I got a lot more out of this movie than them. After seeing it a second time, I got even more out of the movie and found it's as different from In the Mood for Love as that one is from Happy Together. Sure, the mood and cinematography might be more similar, but under all of that it's quite different. With superb cinematography and a lush musical score, this movie is quite an experience. When you take a mirror and throw it on the ground it breaks into a million pieces. If you've never seen the mirror before, it would be hard to put it back together. 2046 is like a mirror. It shows you the mind of a person trying to fix himself. At the very beginning of the movie, a robot talks to a hole in the wall. If you've seen In the Mood for Love, you know what that means. Its meaning is told twice in that movie, and a bunch of times in here. If you've got a secret, carve out a hole in a tree and whisper your thoughts into it. That way no one will ever know it. 2046 begins and ends with such a whole. Chan Mo-Wan (Leung) has a secret to tell. This is like Adaptation, only much deeper, much more obscure. The delineation between reality and fiction almost isn't there. Everything is connected somehow. What goes on in the beginning gets explained at the end, and events and the end give new meaning to things you see in the beginning. Whatever goes on in room 2046 doesn't really go on in room 2046. Anything that happens there is inside Mr. Leung's head. This isn't about reality, this is about memory and desire. The past is the past and regrets can hold you down. That black glove, like Mr. Leung says, means a mystery with no solution. Gong Li is Mr. Leung's past. It's something that you can know, your past is never completely revealed to you. Things happen and things change, but they seem to stay the same. Can things ever change? In the end, you can be happy, but it's very obtuse. The kind of happiness comes with closure. Other people be damned, as long as you fell closure, you can be confortable and communication between people can make that closure hard. People in the movie are often in single shots, when someone talks their mouths are covered, or other parts of their face obscured by other people or things. People can't see each other, hell, in this movie they literally don't speak the same language! Only when your past is sorted out can you really know what you want. These things aren't spoilers they're guides. The movie is quite vague but everything is in there for a reason like who's really the robot in this movie at the beginning? Wong Kar-Wai did it again, he constructed another great movie. The In the Mood for Love DVD shows you how he works. It shows you how flimsy he is he uses shorts stories (usually) for inspiration, has ideas, throws them away, starts over, uses images from his childhood, talks to the actors and in the end everything seems to fall into place. I find that a little hard to believe. This movie is so well constructed, and so well thought out he had to know what he was doing from the second he started. On the other hand, I read reports of this movie's (roughly) 4-year production that had me grow more curious by the month. Having Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi stand in Macau in the rain at night for 10 hours, for one shot that isn't even in the movie, having a US$700,000 hotel lobby set torn down and rebuilt because a reporter snuck in and took pictures. Having reshoots to no end after principal photography and even having reshoots after the movie's Cannes premiere. All of these things added to the movie's mystery and mystique. It was like a saga of its own. Those reports were already on top of the speculation of what '2046' really meant and why there were robot lovers in the movie.
Video
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, this isn't without it's flaws, but those flaws are really small. Mostly in the form of small specks and scratches. If you can get over those, the print is very clear and clean. Actually, without the specks, the print would be virtually perfect. The gorgeous cinematography sports some very strong red lights in various scenes and the transfer handles them perfectly. There's no bleeding at all and the contrast is stunning, even in those intense lights facial detail is recognizable. The rest of the palette is somewhat less warm than In the Mood for Love, but the transfer handles everything with ease. All the different hues are visible and the overall constrast is very nice. This is a much better picture than the GDFace DVD.
Audio
Quite frankly, a DTS track for this movie is about as useful as a music-only track is for Cast Away. This movis is all dialogue, and so dynamic range isn't as important as in other movies. That doesn't mean the sound is useless, we get both a Mandarin and Cantonese (tThe Cantonese track has many different languages and dialects included in it) Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Indeed, you have many small ambient sounds using up the soundspace. Whether it be rain or music or what-have-you, the sound is clear as a whistle. The sound comes in the front and all the dialogue is perfectly clear. You do get some bass during some musical interludes, but given the movie is pretty much all dialogue. Subtitles included are in English, Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional).
Extras
The DVD says it's a Limited Edition, but I don't really know why it's a limited edition other than maybe the second disk will be discontinued after the first pressing. Whatever the reason, the DVD is still Region 0 and it's still better than the GDFace DVD. Below is a breakdown of the extras per disc. DISC ONE Theatrical trailer, this is the same 2½-minute trailer that's on the second disk. It's the first one, not the second one. It's actually about 10 seconds shorter but I don't think anybody would notice (or care, for that matter). Databank, you've got the cast and crew listing, where the main cast and important crew are listed, and the synopsis, which is only not on the back of the DVD box because the back of the DVD box has no synopsis. DISC TWO Some extraordinarily nice people at Mei Ah decided to put in English subtitles for the extra features. Now, this may seem very nice but the making-of has 3 different languages in it, so they sort of had to put in Chinese subtitles. They must have figured adding English ones wouldn't be so much trouble. Whatever the reason, I thank them. Theatrical trailer, this is about 3 minutes and 14 seconds. There are subtitles here and, unlike some others I've seen, they're the same as the ones in the movie. This sets up the movie much better than the other trailer below, and is much better. Theatrical trailer 2, this trailer is rather misleading. It makes the movie look like a futuristic thriller. It's got scenes not in the movie. Strange the movie would be advertised in this way because many people will be disappointed. It's about 73 seconds long. Photo gallery, very nice photo gallery. It's got pictures of every cast member in various glamorous poses. Given the movie, that's not much of a difficult task. It's an animated gallery with a nice, haunting piece of score and it's around 2½ minutes long, with the pictures changing every second or two. Making-of featurette, this starts out like an EPK, but it gets much better. First of all, it runs longer at 35 minutes 42 seconds. Next, all the actors do talk about how good everybody is, but they also get into their characters. They talk about motivation and back-story and their relation with other characters. All the major actors talk as well as the director. You see plenty of behind-the-scenes footage, including things that aren't in the movie. It's along the same lines as the doc from the In the Mood for Love DVD, but not quite as good. It's still fascinating, as Mr. Wong talks about how he works again. Somehow, I believe the actors when they say they'll watch the movie like other audience member because they don't know what the movie will be like. I doubt even Wong Kar-Wai had an idea of what the movie would be like. Ziyi footage, this is only 3-minutes long and, like the title suggests is just Zhang Ziyi (Hero, House of the Flying Daggers) in behind-the-scenes footage. Theme music, this is basically a 7-minute music video. It has some bits of the movie edited to a piece of score. They're nice scenes and it's nice music. I can't really elaborate more because that's all it is. Lovers, this is only a minute long. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. It's part trailer, part music video. You can say it's a trailer but nothing else. I really hope that Maggie Cheung (The Heroic Trio, Clean) didn't spent much time shooting her scenes because she sure isn't in the movie much.
Overall
Mr. Wong's movies are either getting harder to understand or getting less meaningful. People who give bad reviews to this movie based on the plot being rather dull or unengaging sort of miss the point. Since perhaps the beginning of his career with Days of Being Wild and As Tears Go By, Wong Kar-Wai's movies have been more about symbolism than anything else. The plot is just a way of creating the message Mr. Wong wants. What Wong Kar-Wai creates is something else. Its characters being trapped in their own world, without any way to really express what they mean, they can't evolve. Their reflections always stay the same. Mr. Wong spent a long time making this and I wonder how many pieces of the mirror he was able to show us?
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