2046 (2004)

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 | 1960s | Hong Kong | Singapore

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
Johnnie Kong	....	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

• Block 2 Pictures (2004) (non-USA) (theatrical)
• 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)
• Madman Entertainment (2005) (Australia) (DVD)
• Madman Entertainment (2005) (New Zealand) (DVD)
• Nederlandse Programma Stichting (NPS) (2007) (Netherlands) (TV) (first national airing)
• Palisades Tartan (2009) (UK) (all media)
• 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
• 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)
2046 (Mexico) (festival title) (Spain) [es]
2046 (Finland) [fi]
2046 (Russia) [ru]
2046 (Poland) [pl]
2046 (Greece) [el]
2046 - Los secretos del amor (Argentina) [es]
2046 - Os Segredos do Amor (Brazil) [pt]

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:

Each character speaks their own languages. Mr. Chow speaks Cantonese, Bai Ling speaks Mandarin, and Tak speaks Japanese even when talking to each other. Even so, they seem to understand each other perfectly.

Quotes:

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

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Afstiros katallilo (2008)

Soundtrack:

2046 Main Theme

Mesmerizing

Review: 2046 (2004) By Ken Lee

Several years in the making and highly anticipated, _2046_ (2004) should pacify director Wong Kar Wai's fans, at least, for its end-of-an-era feel and look. At its core, this is a decidedly (or deceptively) simple movie, in spite of its fractured and non-linear narrative. It tells the tale of an emotionally wrecked man, Chow Mo Wan (played by Tony Leung), a reprised character from Wong's critically acclaimed earlier oeuver, _In the Mood for Love (2000)_, and the many beautiful women he keeps and fails to keep, in a time-space continuance that is laden with sepia-tinted memories: a monologue, if you will, of Chow's torrid love affairs, love spats, and the ensuing heartbreaks resulting, no doubt, from the pangs of a failed liaison Chow is trying to escape. It'd appear that the failed relation with Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) in _In the Mood for Love_, who has a "special appearance" in this film, has changed Chow irrevocably, which is key to understanding Chow's troubled soul.

But it is not a sequel necessarily, per se, to _In the Mood for Love_. This film can still be watched on its own, though it'd certainly help if you could link moments in _2046_ to the director's earlier works, for it's laden with jumbled continuity (take the character of Lulu, for example, first seen in _Days of Being Wild (1991)_), hidden meanings (read: Neo-Godardian) and other fun stuff, sorta an insider's joke, if you dig such esoteric things. But I digress. And it's been said that this is a culmination of all the previous filmic experience of director Wong (bordering on narcissism); hence its "end-of-an-era" feel and look is duly appreciated and a point well taken.

In _2046_, Chow's isn't an easily likable character owing to the frailty and the vagaries of his own personal emotions and peccadilloes, but that makes him only human and real, and his character, believable. Take the following exchange:

Su Lizhen (Gong Li) to Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung): Do you know my past?

Professional gambler Su (she who is of the same name as that of Maggie's character in _In the Mood for Love_) asked Chow, dissonantly, questioning the latter essentially whether there is a future for the both of them, if he cannot forget his past. And it's for the same reason, or so we're led to believe, that Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) is left devastated, as Chow cannot treat her any differently from the scores of other women he's seeing; hence eliciting the following memorable line from Bai which I'm sure speaks to most of us one way or another:

Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) to Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung): You may not like me. But I'll like you all the same.

What fools we are made by love. :)

Contrasting Chow as a man who dwells in the past and in need of closure to move on, Tak (Kimura Takuya) isn't ambiguous when it comes to matters of the heart.

Tak (Kimura Takuya) to Wang Jingwen (Faye Wong): I do not know what your answer may be. (I dread to know.) But I need to know.

Here is a man who is not afraid to love and says his love. And he needs to know if his love is unrequited. And in seeking happiness, the message seems to be that there is no other way. Now why does this remind me of all the sorry tales with which we are all-too-familiar with men-who-cannot-commit-or-decide? :) And so the film is thusly replete with impressions of repeated variations of the same theme: the pointlessness of returning to the past. Which is why we have the following line:

Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) to Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung): Why can't it be like before? (The same reason why nobody returns on the 2046 train, in Chow's sci-fi novel of the same name. Seen in this light, it is also a double-entendre for director Wong: Why can't this film be like the one before in the form of _In the Mood for Love_? Where does he go from here?)

Those familiar with Wong's earlier works will notice his signatures throughout: quick cutting, slow motion, fast motion, freeze frames, black and white, tilt shots, color filters, neon-sign lighting, aided ably by three able cinematographers. Production value of _2046_ is expectedly top-notch. Music by Shigeru Umebayashi is haunting and sets the right mood. Zhang Suping (William Chang Suk Ping) does a wonderful job in creating an enrapturing atmosphere set in the late '60s.

How great it is, in an otherwise desolate world of unease, vulnerability, hopelessness, and pathos, we have directors such as Wong to feast our senses. Highly recommended.