So, I’ve decided that blogging takes real commitment. Who has time for that?
It has been 2 weeks since I’ve been here, but I think the last film I saw, Wong Kar-wai’s “2046,” is the cause of my writer’s block. His earlier film, “In the Mood for Love,” is one of my all-time favorites and “2046,” coming as a kind of sequel to that, is as strangely beautiful as it is unsatisfying. Like Pedro Almodovar, Wong takes chances and he’s adored by critics for eschewing conventional narrative techniques (a beginning--a muddle--and an end) but that being said, one still has to sit through 129 minutes of images that, though beautiful, do not bear the weight of the film’s obsessive themes of personal loss and isolation.
Spanning three years in the mid 1960s, “2046” focuses on Chow, a roué and journalist whose real occupation (preoccupation?) is writing erotic fiction. Chow, with his slick backed hair and pencil-thin mustache, is played with reptilian precision by Tony Leung. One day, Chow meets an old flame that lives in the Oriental Hotel, in Room 2046. When Chow later returns to her hotel, he discovers that she has disappeared. He eventually moves into the adjacent room, 2047, where he meets the two women whose lives will intersect with his own. Ziyi Zhang is one of these women and her smoldering performance alone makes the film worthwhile-but it’s a slow go, even for a fan of Wong’s earlier films.
I’m sure I’m missing something (possibly everything), except the way Wong films his characters: gorgeously, like matinee idols from a time gone by. I’ll watch “2046” again (someday, on DVD) and I’ll see more and appreciate it more. But like the early stages of an acquired taste, I’m a long way from loving it.
