Review of 2046 (2004) by Alexism — 06 Oct 2015

2046 as much a celebration of film as it is of writing as a healing process: a man cannot face his own past, so he begins to write a novel about somebody else, and it is only through reading his own novel that he comes to understand his own emotions. I read 2046 as a story about a man with love-PTSD, who, only by writing about someone else, is able to deal with his own losses and his past. That’s why the film is so full of deflections: the second-hand nature of novel-writing, the thematic repetition of the number 2046 in hotel rooms and room keys and titles, the other Su Li-zhen, the escapist futuristic landscape of high-speed trains and robots. Chow is in psychological distress following the loss of his love(s), and his mind has developed all these mechanisms in order to cope.

2046 is such an intricate and emotional work. I personally liked it more than the slow-burning, sometimes tedious ITMFL. ITMFL was very much about the nuanced interactions between people in the real world: the quiet moments between the drama, the way two people handle the dissolution of trust in a marriage. I can totally understand why people feel it’s a more complete, more substantial work than is 2046. But 2046 is beautiful precisely because of its confusion and incompleteness. The process of dealing with loss is never linear and always confusing, emotionally fraught and full of low-key sucker punches, and all those words also describe the film perfectly.