2046 (2004)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Kar Wai Wong

Writer:

Kar Wai Wong (screenplay)

Release Date:

29 September 2004 (Hong Kong)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Romance | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Where everything ends... and begins (Spanish translation)

Plot:

He was a writer. He thought he wrote about the future but it really was the past. In his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while...

Plot Keywords:

Train | Writer | Playing Cards | Old Friend | Unrequited Love

Awards:

22 wins & 30 nominations

Cast

Tony Leung Chiu Wai	...	Chow Mo-wan (as Tony Leung)
Li Gong	...	Su Li-zhen
Faye Wong	...	Wang Jing-wen / Android
Takuya Kimura	...	Tak / Wang Jing-wen's Boyfriend
Ziyi Zhang	...	Bai Ling
Carina Lau	...	Lulu / Mimi / Android
Chen Chang	...	Mimi's Boyfriend
Jie Dong	...	Wang Jie-wen
Maggie Cheung	...	Su Li-zhen
Thongchai McIntyre	...	Bird (as Bird Thongchai McIntyre)
Wang Sum	...	Mr. Wang / Train Captain
Ping Lam Siu	...	Ah Ping
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Ting Yip Ng	...	(unconfirmed)

Directed by
Kar Wai Wong

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Kar Wai Wong		screenplay

Produced by
Wai-Chung Chan	....	line producer
Ye-cheng Chan	....	executive producer
Gilles Ciment	....	co-executive producer
Eric Heumann	....	co-producer
Stéphane Kooshmanian	....	associate producer
Amedeo Pagani	....	co-producer
Zhong-lun Ren	....	executive producer
Marc Sillam	....	co-producer
Kar Wai Wong	....	producer

Original Music by
Shigeru Umebayashi

Cinematography by
Christopher Doyle

Film Editing by
William Chang		(as William Chang Suk Ping)

Production Design by
William Chang		(as William Chang Suk Ping)

Art Direction by
Alfred Yau

Costume Design by
William Chang

Production Management
Olivier Chiavassa	....	production manager
Chiu Wah Lee	....	production manager
Helen Li	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Shin-shi Hui	....	second second assistant director
Ji-wei Kuan	....	first assistant director
Shao-hua Li	....	assistant director
Rosanna Ng	....	second assistant director

Art Department
Ping Lam Siu	....	property master

Sound Department
Michael Baird	....	sound designer
Yu Teng Hsu	....	boom operator
Claude Letessier	....	supervising sound designer
Du-Che Tu	....	sound designer (as Tu Duu Chih)

Visual Effects by
Johnny Alves	....	digital effects artist
Florent Andorra	....	digital artist
Jérôme Arthuis	....	processing: DuboiColor
François-Xavier Aubague	....	visual effects supervisor
Christophe Belena	....	coordinator scans/recording/color grading: Duboicolor
Nadir Benhassaine	....	visual effects coordinator: BUF Compagnie
Mélodie Boileau	....	visual effects coordinator
Nicolas Bonnell	....	visual effects producer: BUF
Coralie Boulay	....	visual effects editor
Florent Cadel	....	digital artist
Nicolas Daniel	....	video operator: Duboicolor
Sébastien Drouin	....	visual effects supervisor
Laurent Gillet	....	visual effects: Buf Compagnie
Rip Hampton O'Neil	....	technical director: Duboicolor (as Rip O'Neil)
Sonia Holst	....	visual effects coordinator: Buf Compagnie
Abdel Ali Kassou	....	processing: DuboiColor
Didier le Fouest	....	digital colorist (as Didier Le Fouest)
Damien Macé	....	compositor
Karine Marchandou	....	digital grading manager
Philippe Palmieri	....	digital artist
Xavier Perol	....	digital artist
Boris Plateau	....	digital compositor
Olivier Pron	....	concept artist
Olivier Pron	....	digital artist
Guillaume Raffi	....	visual effects coordinator: Buf Compagnie
Sebastien Rame	....	digital compositor
Eddy Richard	....	digital artist: BUF
Mathilde Tollec	....	digital artist
Daniel Trujillo	....	digital artist
Jean-Marc van Rijswick	....	digital artist: BUF
David Verbeke	....	visual effects supervisor
Dominique Vidal	....	visual effects: BUF
Sophie Gateau	....	digital artist (uncredited)

Stunts
Wei Tung	....	stunt coordinator

Camera and Electrical Department
Ian Freeman	....	grip
Pung-Leung Kwan	....	director of photography: second unit
Yiu-Fai Lai	....	director of photography: second unit
Chi Ming Wong	....	gaffer (as Wong Chi Ming)

Editorial Department
Serge Anthony	....	color timer (as Serge Antony)
Fabien Pascal	....	color timer
Laurent Pelé	....	assistant editor

Other crew
Stephanie Cheung	....	production secretary

Production Companies

• Arte
• Block 2 Pictures
• China Film Co-Production Corporation
• Classic
• Columbia Pictures Corporation
• Fortissimo Films
• France 3 Cinéma
• Jet Tone Films
• Jet Tone Production
• Orly Films
• Paradis Films
• Shanghai Film Studios
• Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF)
• arte France Cinéma

Distributors

• 1More Film (2005) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
• 20th Century Fox (2004) (Singapore) (theatrical)
• Alfa Films (2005) (Argentina) (theatrical)
• ArtCam (2005) (Czech Republic) (theatrical)
• Buena Vista International (2004) (Japan) (theatrical)
• Cinema Mondo (2004) (Finland) (theatrical)
• Filmcoopi Zürich (2004-2005) (Switzerland) (theatrical)
• Fox Korea (2004) (Korea) (theatrical)
• Istituto Luce (2004) (Italy) (theatrical)
• Mongrel Media (2005) (Canada) (theatrical)
• Océan Films (2004) (France) (theatrical)
• Prokino Filmverleih (2005) (Germany) (theatrical)
• Sony Pictures Classics (2005) (USA) (theatrical) (subtitled)
• Tartan Films (2005) (UK) (theatrical)
• 20th Century Fox (2004) (Hong Kong) (DVD)
• A-Film Home Entertainment (2004) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• Block 2 Pictures (2004) (non-USA)
• Madman Entertainment (2005) (Australia) (DVD)
• Madman Entertainment (2005) (New Zealand) (DVD)
• Palisades-Tartan Acquisitions (2008) (UK) (DVD)
• Paramount Home Entertainment (2005) (Germany) (DVD)
• Tartan Video (2005) (UK) (DVD)
• Transeuropa Video Entertainment (TVE) (2005) (Argentina) (DVD)
• Transeuropa Video Entertainment (TVE) (2005) (Argentina) (VHS)

Special Effects

• BUF (visual effects)

Other Companies

• Duboi  digital film scanning
• Duran Duboi  digital intermediate
• Kantana Animation Co. Ltd.  film processing
• Laboratoires Éclair  color timing
• Les Auditoriums de Joinville  sound re-recording
• London Symphony Orchestra, The (LSO)  orchestra: "Casta Diva"
• Ramindra Sound Recording Studios  sound recording studio
• Salon Films  camera and lighting equipment provided by
• Shanghai Film Technology Plant  film processing
• Shaw Brothers  prints: Hong Kong
• Tai Fung (Tsu's) Co. Ltd.  film supplied by (as FUJIFILM)

Also Known As:

2046 - Der ultimative Liebesfilm (Germany)

MPAA:

Rated R for sexual content.

Runtime:

129 min

Country:

China | France | Germany | Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese | Japanese | Mandarin

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Malaysia:18SX (uncut version) | Malaysia:U (cut version) | Hungary:16 | Canada:14A (Ontario) | Hong Kong:IIB | Brazil:16 | Portugal:M/12 | Finland:K-11 | France:U | Germany:12 | Ireland:12 (video rating) | Ireland:15A (original rating) | Italy:T | Netherlands:12 | Singapore:NC-16 | South Korea:18 | Spain:13 | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | UK:12A | USA:R | China:17

Filming Locations:

China

Company:

Arte

Trivia:

The camera points to the left side of Faye Wong's face when she cries. She has problems crying with her right eye, so Wong Kar-Wai shot her crying scenes on the left side of her face. However, there is one scene where the camera films the right side of her face purposely.

Quotes:

Chow Mo Wan: Take care. Maybe one day you'll escape your past. If you do, look for me.

Movie Connections:

References Tian xia wu shuang (2002)

Soundtrack:

Oh! s'io potessi dissipar le nubi... Col sorriso l'innocenza

Cumulative force of these moments cannot be described

I love story with impact, new ideas and rich characters. I love exploring the mechanics of the thing. There are few films like 2046 proposing radical new ways of vicariously experiencing time and place. Easily misunderstood or confusing, it can be. Understanding and completing the 'story' in these kinds of films doesn't occur in the films themselves. We complete them in the realm of reflection, experience, and assumptions made in how to reflect, collect, categorize, and morph them with our own life stories. Sometimes these films are just a call to empathize with the filmmaker.

Wong Kar Kai is a filmmaker who calls for a personal empathy. He works to capture all the unique dynamics of romance, and how they bend our sense of time and space.

He turns his camera every which angle to try and find new vocabulary for telling a story. Well, he doesn't tell stories, he asks whether stories are found in relationships. We get pieces of stories on top of hidden stories, our focus shifts from "story" to emergent feelings out of the glimpses.

This is sophisticated, and scary when unprepared for the exotic nature. We want the familiar, but are given delicately meandering puzzles, opaque hints at beginnings, middles, and endings. Just like we don't always know at what point our own stories are unfolding. But we know the emotional states as they are lived.

Since 2046 lacks many standard cadences, it is a struggle to follow the statement through the movements. These are not even vignettes, these are a seamless series of leaps that push and pull like the emotions of day to day life. They have an indecisive flux we hope is asymptotically reaching a conclusion, but they just keep coalescing and spilling over into the imagined future from where no one has yet returned. Once we think we have moved beyond the past do we then realize that we create an unknown future by attempting to reconstruct the past in the present.

And so the main character is a writer of 'fiction' (this very movie) who through the process of embedding real life circumstances into his science fiction he also tries to determine if there is a destination this is all heading. 2046 is a place you visit to relive unchanging memories so that you will never change. Alternately, 2046 is also a time existent only within a science fiction novel when people will access substitute lovers without the haunts of what broke them in the past. So they think.

He has already been damaged by the loss of an impossible standard that cannot be met by another (see In the Mood for Love first!). So in his novel, lovers become characters. Feelings become fictional ornamentations in the future. In the present, he cannot connect with the women who come and go. In the fiction, the lack of connection is simply a matter of technological limitations.

Think about what happens in the aftermath of a failed relationship or a missed opportunity. We may grieve, but also sometimes we obsessively construct a future fantasy based on what should have happened if things had gone right; if only some vital detail didn't change things how it did. We inhabit that imagined future and interact with our counterpart ghost, making plans and times and places accordingly. We might use this process as a shield and a warning. Or it sabotages, taking on a life of its own as a mental blueprint, directing the actual present and perceptions of new companions.

Lush, poetic cinematography fills each second of this film to great mood inducing effects. In 1960's Hong Kong, where the bulk of the events take place, the dynamics of romantic encounters hide in unassuming corners of that society, only brought to light by looking at the normal world in very abnormal ways. One almost gets the impression that set pieces and abstract designations were literally dreamed up. The camera often cramps our frame of vision. Various off-center closeups which in a sense shut out the outside world, but paradoxically bring it all in to bear. There are many places where the camera does not seem to have a good shot of a character or an event, we the viewers were just unlucky to miss the opportunity of getting the full revelation of something.

And it frustrates; we want to know everything but get very little by way of visual exposition. We are forced to work on the clues, the voice overs, the symmetrical accidents in different centuries and different countries. This is not analogous to idly putting together a complex puzzle set, this is reconstructing a mystery while at the same time being on the verge of shedding tears at the quiet understanding that it isn't a mystery, it's life with a character who mediates between reality and fantasy to deal with it all. I know the kinds of things this film is about, but I've never looked at them from this stance before. As is often the case, the artist (here the writer/filmmaker) is just the one who experiences what the rest of us experience and talks about its secrets rather than conceals them.

See this film if you want to know how it's possible to visually show the invisible, inner turbulence and romantic visions that tend to hide from the outside world. On the whole, 2046 weaves in the present a future fiction invaded by the past, bred by the throes of confronting the human faces of opportunities that appear, disappear, reappear and fade and collapse into each other.