Review of 2046, directed by Wong Kar-wai

I was writing about Gong Li in an article for MovieWeb, so when I was scrolling onto Mubi a couple days after submitting the article, I was pleased to find out they had a new section on Wong Kar-wai they had added recently. And right there was 2046, one of the movies I was writing about.

I had seen a lot of Wong Kar-wai’s movies from the nineties, but had never really bothered to delve deeper into his 2000s movies because I was convinced the magic happened mainly in the nineties. Granted, that’s a narrow minded way of thinking, but there was a period I considered myself a pseudo expert on WKW and his films from the nineties. + In the Mood for Love

So I pressed play on 2046 and sat down. In true WKW fashion this one isn’t told in a linear narrative, but I found this film to be a bit more difficult to follow compared to his other films.

There’s too many characters and while the science fiction element is cool, I found it to be a bit thrown in there compared to the rest. I’m already digging deeper into this review, so let’s just dive straight into it, shall we?

A continuation of two of Wong Kar-Wai’s previous films.

2046 is broken down into several different story arcs packaged into one movie, so if you’re not paying attention, you might lose the thread between them. We begin with Chow Mo-wan, the science fiction writer who was the star of In the Mood for Love. After being abroad in Singapore for a couple of years, he has returned to Hong Kong to look for his lost love from the previous film.

However, she’s also long gone by this point, and he ends up becoming haunted by the woman he left behind. So he becomes a ladies’ man. He brings all the girls back to his apartment to try and feel the sensations he once had with Su.

One of the girls is Lulu, who lives in room 2046. He keeps her room key after their time together by accident, and when he finds out 2046 is no longer available, he finds out Lulu was stabbed by a boyfriend in there. The room becomes renovated, and the landlord wants to know if Chow will take over the room next, but he declines. Thus the landlord’s daughter, Jing-wen, ends up moving in the room.

She’s dating a Japanese man at this point, but her father straight up hates him. When she crumbles under the pressure, she breaks up with the boyfriend and has a mental breakdown, which leads her to become institutionalized.

New tenants are needed, so Jing-wen’s little sister is the next one to come into the apartment. She attempts to try and get together with Chow, who’s off writing his little science fiction novels and stories, but he decides not to pursue her.

Chow’s having troubles of his own at this point, as money is becoming tight. He starts a science fiction series called 2046 which is about people trying to find that room, and all of this is a thinly veiled guise for all of the people he has met in his life.

We end up spending some time in the futuristic world of 2046 throughout the movie, as it’s embodied by the same people he writes about.

Another storyline is then introduced: Jing-wen, after some time, is released from the hospital. She moves back into the apartment and strikes up a friendship with Chow, helping him with his writing as he works on 2046.

Naturally, he falls in love with her and decides he is finally over Su, but it’s not meant to be—Jing-wen is in the same problem he was in with her ex. He ends up writing another story, but instead of it being about the people around him, it’s about himself.

Eventually Jing-wen becomes engaged and moves to Japan, leaving Chow by himself all over again. He decides he needs to get over Su and the past, and one day, when Bai calls him, she asks for advice about going to Singapore. She asks him about a specific incident when he was in Singapore, which is when he met the other woman named Su.

The Singaporean Su resolved to help him get the money to go back to Hong Kong, and when they spend more time together, he asks her to come with him home. They have a card game to decide the outcome, and Chow loses.

He has now realized by writing 2047 that he projected the first Su onto this Su, and if she had come back with him, he would’ve never been happy with who she was as a person.

He realizes on a later trip back that she is gone without a trace, and she might’ve returned to where she was from, or she may have passed away—she has disappeared like the original Su.

The dinner ends with Bai, which is the conclusion of the movie. Chow heads off in a taxi, and that’s that.

Overall Thoughts

This is such an interesting movie—while I find it complicated to untangle all of the threads, I presented it in chronological order to make sense of everything myself. If you’re not paying attention, you can find yourself lost and completely immersed in the world of the story, which is dangerous for those who need to know everything going on at a certain point.

But this is a classic Wong Kar-wai film regardless, and he has managed to create yet another masterpiece. I liked the rumination continuing from the previous films, although they are not required to understand the full extent of this movie.

All in all, it was worth it!

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