I watched 2046 last Sunday, and many of my friends are interested in hearing how I feel about the movie, so I will post my comment here.

This is my first time to watch a Wong Ka Wai film, and I am quite impressed by his unique style. The visuals are beautiful and the soundtrack is sensational. Wong is able to make the film extremely artistic and elegant, while not being overly pretentious. However I gradually lost my excitement after 30 minutes into the film. The visuals look good but I got bored when almost every scene looks the same. Most of the scenes are taken indoor, with close-up head shots, and blurred backgrounds. There is too much consistency and too little variety in terms of cinemography.

The plot is simple but the progress is painfully slow. In order to make the movie easier to understand, Wong added narratives to some transitional parts of the movie. There are many dialogs, however the character development is subtle and slow. It has several love stories connected but it seems to lack a central focus. Tony Leung and Faye Wong have good performance, but I am really annoyed by Zhang Ziyi’s “cheap” character. I find it difficult to sympathize with her character, and her awkward acting doesn’t help either. Zhang’s role is too heavy and she’s got too much of the screen time. Faye’s character is much more lovable but her stories are too unrealistic. Gong Li’s character doesn’t get enough development, and there is no chemistry between Tony and Gong at all.

Overall 2046 is enjoyable if you don’t mind the slow pace and subtlety, it is quite a weird film if you want something fresh and different. If you have watched this film too, please leave a comment and tell me how you feel!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 12th, 2004 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.