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| 2046 |
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List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $15.95
You Save: $14.00 (47%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $14.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 47 reviews)
Sales Rank: 3496
Category: DVD
Actors: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Faye Wong, Ziyi Zhang
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Studio: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Label: Sony Pictures
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: Cantonese Chinese (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 128 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 1404989439
UPC: 043396117303
EAN: 0043396117303
ASIN: B000BRBA8S
Release Date: December 26, 2005
Theatrical Release Date: November 30, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
In Wong Kar Wai's quasi-sequel to In the Mood for Love, 2046 is a hotel room, a futuristic story, and a state of mind. Tony Leung returns as Chow, but perhaps not the same Chow who appeared in the first film. Starting three years later in 1966, we see Chow on various Christmases as he lives, loves, and writes in a hotel and nearby restaurants. Although he is less sensitive and more of a ladies man now, Chow's love life always seems to exceed his grasp. Whether the character is the same (the director calls this an "echo" of the first movie) might be trivial. Hong Kong filmmaker Wai is such a visualist (Time magazine tabbed him as the "world's most romantic filmmaker"), the images wash over with swirling smoke, neon lights, and the faces of his outstanding cast, all lovingly photographed and smoothly scored. There's a lot more going on than the visuals, and Wai's fans will certainly find more and more details on repeated viewings. We travel into Chow's futuristic story, where the acquaintances become fictional characters traveling to a place where "everyone goes" to recapture lost memories. Often Chow talks about never seeing a lover ever again, but eventually bumps into her. The final result is a film some will cherish; others will long for the more traditional storyline of the first film. Wai certainly finds a new direction for actress Ziyi Zhang (House of Flying Daggers) as a prostitute who becomes one of Chow's many lovers. And Leung continues to be one of the world's great film actors, with a face and acting style the camera just loves. --Doug Thomas
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Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
 Mind trip & sensual candy! Intelligent metaphors & character analogies! Stunning, vibrant colors! June 22, 2006
I don't usually like romance films, but 2046 is brilliant!
A mind trip AND sensual candy!
If you have a short attention span, you will not appreciate this work of art. But if the first half draws you in, the second half will BLOW YOUR MIND!
Wong Kar Wai sets up analogies between the relationships of each character. By comparing characters in this way, we are given infinite perspectives on the characters and their emotions.
This is genius!
This is art!
Full of colorful symbolism!
 moody sequel to "In the Mood for Love" June 16, 2006
***1/2
The title of the film, "2046," refers both to a time in the future and to a hotel room in the past. Chow Mo Wan is a writer living in Hong Kong in the mid to late 1960's. The hotel room he rents is right next door to Room 2046, whose various residents, all beautiful but troubled women, he observes and interacts with and puts into his fiction, a sci-fi story entitled "2046," about a futuristic world in which people desperate for love and happiness journey to an unspecified place called 2046 where, we are told, love remains eternal and nothing ever changes. Chow's literary work also reflects much of what he himself feels about women, love and relationships. It's not always easy following the time shifts and parallel stories upon which this multi-level narrative is constructed, but "2046" is a mesmerizing film for anyone willing and open enough to give himself over to the experience.
At the start, the film feels episodic and disjointed, as writer/director Kar Wai Wong reveals in gradual stages the complex story he is telling. We can tell that this is a movie that will require our full and undivided attention if we hope to enter into the minds of the filmmakers and make any real sense at all out of it. But after some initial confusion, most of the early ambiguity begins to fade away as the major themes and characters come to the fore. Chow is a man who has clearly lost the love of his life and who has since been trying to come to terms with that fact in his later dealings with women. He has made a decision - whether conscious or unconscious we are never really sure - to keep women at arm's length, being willing to bed or help them but not allowing himself to enter into any permanent or meaningful relationships with them. Instead, he uses his writing to express those yearnings for true companionship that he cannot allow himself to act upon in real life.
Unlike many Chinese films, which enact their tales against expansive landscapes bathed in glorious sunlight and vibrant colors, "2046" is set in a claustrophobic world of dingy rooms and darkened hallways, with the camera almost never journeying outdoors or even pulling very far back from the actors in the frame. The effect of this is to plunge us fully into the world and minds of the characters, particularly that of Chow, whose thoughts and musings become the canvas on which the story is painted. Tony Leung Chiu Wai gives a subtle, masterful performance as do the various actresses who play the women in his life. It is his affair with Bai Ling, a beautiful prostitute who wants more out of their relationship than Chow is willing to give, that leaves the greatest mark on our heart.
There are times when the movie seems almost too fancy and showy for its own good, when the simplicity of the theme gets buried under the complexity and artifiness of the filmmaker's style. But this is, for the most part, a challenging and stimulating work that moves us even when we don't fully understand it.
Can androids ever really love? June 13, 2006
2046 is a marvellous about love and the feelings that remain even when love is gone. But within this we have the dealings of what 2046 which is a novel being written. While the focus is of love within that novel, we are set in this hyper-futuristic tale that characters travel to the future to regain lost memories.
It's a story that is fascinating both inside and outside of the novel that is being made. One that shows that people as a whole, don't like change. They have problems with moving on and perhaps in their hearts have always lost the ones they really loved. And as is the way with things, people try to get along with their lives whether they fully realize this or not. In a sense they want to go back to how things were before because they might want to recapture that spark the relationship once had or recapture the youth they once had as they feel themselves getting older and closer to their inevitable demise.
But before I make this sound like it's one of those depressing love stories to rival the likes of Verhoeven's adaptation of Jan Wolkers' Turkish Delight, I should tell them to relax, it's not like that at all. It has it's bittersweet melancholy but the tone is more wistful, than the overbearing suffocation of Turkish Delight. In locating it in Hong Kong of the 1960s, it shows that Hong Kong was still a thing of beauty and still ahead of it's time. In many respects, it's architecture is something some of the developed countries still aspire to and have been playing catch up ever since.
But it's the scenes of the future, or the future imagined for the novel that's been written which really captivates the eye. The colours, the textures make this film glorious viewing for the viewer. I can't even begin to describe, how intricate and how colourful it really looks.....I'd almost say it takes on a life of it's own. To call it spectacular is to do it an injustice - it's so much more than that!
All the actor's play their part extremely well in this gorgeous movie. Really, there can't be too much more said about such a beautiful movie. Watch and enjoy!
Passion & Depth June 11, 2006
Wong Kar-Wai's films center on human relationships, rather than the action films of many other Hong Kong directors. He won a Best Director award from Cannes for "Happy Together." "2046" is a good film to see some of China's most beautiful actresses. Gong Li plays the Black Spider and fills each screen moment with passion and depth. She played in "Zhou Yu's Train" and recently was the jealous geisha in "Memoirs of a Geisha." It will be interesting to see her in the American "Miami Vice" movie. Tony Leung's character Chow Mo Wan is apparently in love with her, but director Wong Kar-Wai spends a limited amount of screentime with the relationship. As Bai Ling, the prostitute who lives in room 2046, Zhang Ziyi who starred in "Memoirs of a Geisha" is one of cinema's most beautiful stars. Her performance here is stellar as she teases, taunts, and craves Leung. Faye Wong plays the hotel owner's daughter Wang Jingwen who pines for a Japanese lover that her father will not accept. She becomes writer Chow Mo Wan's right hand. The film splinters somewhat as the writer played by Leung constructs a story about a futuristic city where people go to find pleasure and from which they never return. Takuya Kimura plays the Japanese guy that tries to coax romance from android robots on the train to 2046. The cinematography in the film is exquisite, as each shot seems like the set up of a painting. The theme of the picture is open ended, being much more an exploration of modern relationships than the telling of a romantic story. Leung doesn't seem to ever find true love; and the fact that he's often not a very nice guy seems to predict the outcome. After watching the film, I felt more as if I had had a cinematic experience rather than I had watched a coherent story. Maybe life is like that sometimes. Enjoy!
It is a place where lost memories come back to haunt you... May 30, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Mr. Chow is a man lost adrift the memories of past relationships that had once held meaning for him, but are now long gone. He is a writer who had an affair with a woman in the hotel room number 2046 long ago and has never been able to let go. Some time later he arrives at the Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong and asks the owner to let him live in room 2046, but the owner will not allow him to until it is ready. In the meantime, he moves into room 2047 next door and begins writing an erotic science-fiction story called "2046," and in it he transposes characters from his real life into characters in his story. Soon Mr. Chow finds himself entangled in various affairs and emotions of love that ultimately fail because memories from the past have not released their hold on him.
The cinematography was stunningly gorgeous. The colors and the artistry of each shot blended together to paint a picture of the vivid pain and heartfelt love experienced by Mr. Chow as they spanned nearly a century into a sad and lonely future. Every moment lingers; every note of music resonantes with sorrow and profoundess as each woman drifts in an out of Chow's life like specters of long lost memories.
It was a gorgeous film, but those who have little patience will probably not be able to maintain interest in the slow, deliberate pace of the film.
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Copyright Runningonkarma.com 2006
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