The Age of Commercialism

Let's be realistic.

A Masterpiece!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Up until this point I was a massive Wong Kar-Wai fan.My first exposure to WKW was Fallen Angels, which blew me away. Chungking Express is a bit disjointed but great at its best and very interesting at its worst. Happy Together was almost painful to watch at times, but it certainly left an impression. In the Mood for Love is one of my all time movies; hauntingly beautiful.So to say I was looking forward to 2046 would be an understatement. But somehow it leaves me cold. It has the beautiful cinematography that's the hallmark of a Wong / Doyle collaboration but it doesn't do anything with it. The plot, such as it is, is disjointed and goes nowhere.To be fair, this movie is more about the development of Chow mo-wan as a character rather then the events that form him and therein lie much of my complaint with the film. I just don't like the way he is developing.Perhaps I'm hampered by being too much of a fan of In the Mood for Love. I adore his (and Maggie Cheung's) character there and was happy to leave them in the state they were in at the end of that film. A sequel feels entirely unnecessary and especially a sequel that takes them to places I don't appreciate. Like seeing a sequel to E.T. where he returns to invade the earth and ravage the population. It somehow seems to cheapen the original experience. It's almost enough to make me wish I'd never watched this movie at all.But that would be going too far. Because despite its flaws, the movie isn't a total loss. There is beauty here as well, and interesting characters. The highlight for me would be the futuristic scenes, supposedly set on a train in the year 2046, where a man struggles with his feelings towards a machine. Now there's a Wong Kar-Wai film I'd like to see! 6 stars out of 10.

Despite the fact that it has been nominated for Palme d' Or in Cannes Film Festival and won six local awards in Hong Kong Film Awards this overrated movie (a drama/romance and sci-fi mixture) is aesthetically perfect but completely meaningless. Kar Wai Wong, best knows for "In the Mood for Love" made this experimental two-hour movie of an original 5-hour (or so) material (thank god he didn't use all of it). The title of the film refers to the last year before the 50-year period the Chinese Government promised to let Hong Kong remain as it is (Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997). Of course this has little or nothing to do with the film (whose general idea is people searching love and their identity in a futuristic Hong Kong) which is nonsensical, completely delusional and will have you wonder whether you accidentally smoked some giant pot. Nevertheless the cinematography of the futuristic Hong Kong is so artistic and beautiful that it's worth watching just (and only) for that.Grade: C-

A brilliant movie!If The Hours has 3 story lines at 3 different time lines intertwined, 2046 is a collection of bit of stories, real and imagined ones, at different time period. All of theme comes together as a philosophic story about love.The story followed Chow Mo-wan in In The Mood For Love after he left Hong Kong for Singapore. If In The Mood For Love was about a secret platonic love, 2046 paints a picture of sorrowful reminiscence. The majority of the movie was taken place in side the old small room, with studio light, yellow and black tin, giving the audience a feeling of suffocation and confine..Kar Wai Wong masterfully exploited metaphors and repeative details to portray the character. The story of Wang Jing Wen and her Japanese boyfriend is a reflection of the story of Chow Mo-wan and his lover Su Li-Zhen in In The Mood For Love. The last words of Chow to Black Spider – "The day you leave your past behind, go find me" – was he talking to her, or to himself? Could he ever escape his own past?The movie features wonderful monologues. It has a beauty of Chinese literature, little words, lots of meaning."All memories are traces of tears…"For more reviews, please visit: http://voicemotion.wordpress.com

Hong Kong director Kar-Wai Wong's recent film 2046 is actually a continuation of the story he began in his 2001 art-house hit In the Mood for Love. Well, sort of, because while In the Mood had a fairly straightforward narrative everything in this new film is open to interpretation. Asian superstar Tony Leung is back as Chow Mo Wan but this is not the gentlemanly journalist we met in the first film. This Chow spends his days writing pulpy erotic fiction and his nights gambling, drinking and womanizing. In a voice-over narration Chow tells us about a sci-fi story he is working on. It's about a young Japanese man (Takuya Kimura) riding a train through time to 2046 where he hopes to recapture his lost memories and achieve emotional closure. The movie toggles back and forth between the writer's real life in 1960s Hong Kong and the futuristic fictional world of his imagination. Gradually Chow realizes he is writing about himself. Like his affair with carnal next door neighbour Bai (Crouching Tiger/Flying Daggers martial arts babe Ziyi Zhang as you have never seen her before), his unspoken feelings for Jing Wen (Faye Wong), the landlord's lonely young daughter and his liaison with an inscrutable lady gambler dubbed the Black Spider (Li Gong). None of these relationships last. "Why can't it be like it was before?" asks a heartbroken Bai and those words stay with him as he walks away because the women he meets in real life will never be able to measure up to the idealized perfection of the lost love who lives on in his memory. And so, like the character in his story, Chow will keep on travelling towards a place that only exists in his mind. If this sounds confusing you're not alone. "Actually we don't have an idea of what the story is about," Leung tells a French TV interviewer in a DVD featurette. Wong's films are not noted for their crisp linear plotting. He is all about mood, atmosphere and emotion. The camera-work is almost voyeuristic, shooting through windows, peering through peepholes, catching reflections in a mirror. The pace is languid, almost dream-like, the music on the soundtrack suffused with a gorgeous melancholy. A bittersweet sense of regret lingers in the eyes of these characters, like smoke curling lazily from a cigarette, creating an aura of sensual intrigue. Call it romantic noir. Some reviewers has likened Wong to a modern day Asian equivalent of the late great Federico Fellini and if that sounds appealing this may be the flavor you have been missing.But be warned: like many foreign delicacies this film can be an acquired taste.