Wong Kar-wai's cinema of longing

This is a slightly reworked post from 2008. I like it because it includes two subjects I love: Wong Kar-wai and C.S. Lewis.

Three minutes into 2046—the 2004 film from Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai—the screen goes black and the words "all memories are traces of tears" appear. This will be the thread that runs through the film we're about to see. 2046 is a companion piece to Wong's masterpiece (I don't use that word lightly) from four years earlier—In the Mood for Love. He has been called—without hyperbole in my opinion—the world's most romantic filmmaker and lauded for the "visual splendour of his film aesthetic." And music, oh how he uses music! There are few films that made as big an impact on me as In the Mood for Love, which I first watched on the splendid Criterion DVD, and was my introduction to Wong's cinema of longing.

C.S. Lewis described his experience of being in a record shop and hearing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries for the first time as "like a thunderbolt" because it conjured up "the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing" he felt as a 14-year-old boy. The Germans (a more naturally romantic people) have a great word for this—sehnsucht—which means something like wishfulness or longing. German artists such as Goethe, Beethoven and Brahms richly mined the vein of sehnsucht in their books and music. Wong's films are shot through with this sense of longing—longing for lost loves, lost eras (especially the 1960's Hong Kong of Wong's childhood), lost years, and the music, fashion and art of the past.

Another major obsession is time. 2046 is separated by title cards which announce the day/month/year or sometimes simply "one hour later" or "1000 hours later". It takes the viewer effortlessly between present, past and future exploring how time works on our memories. Chungking Express (1994), another favorite of mine, features a protagonist whose girlfriend dumps him on April 1. He obssessively collects tins of pineapple with the expiration date May 1 (his birthday), reasoning that if they haven't gotten back together by May 1 then their love has expired. A pile of empty tins serve as visual metaphor for his frustration.


2046 was four years in the making, and in my opinion, is a penultimate film in which Wong synthesizes much of what came before. For instance, he brings back characters and musical cues from earlier films, and uses all of his formidable stylistic tools. In the Mood for Love has a fairly unified look and static style (very static to the irritation of some viewers), but in 2046 Wong alternates between the kinetic style of earlier films and the ravishing slowness of In the Mood, even throwing in a dash of future-noirish CGI. Think Blade Runner. It's worth noting too that Wong loves shooting at night, and with rain. But then, so have many of the best visual stylists.

I would have a hard time explaining to you what exactly happens in 2046 or its predecessor. Well I could, but it would sound absurdly prosaic. Asking the question "what's it about?" of these films reminds me of Steve Martin's line about music: "talking about music is like dancing about architecture." So true! One can't do justice to the works of a cinematic genius like WKW by explaining plot details. Snatches of music from a radio down the hall, a tear suspended in air, steam rising from a bowl of noodles, the sound of rain on a sidewalk, a passing glance or searching gaze—these are the more important details that go into creating something ineffable, intangible. An overwhelming sense of loss hangs over the proceedings, yet there are moments of uncontrolled hilarity. We're passing through a vale of tears, but laughter is a frequent and welcome companion.


Wong Kar-wai is in love with beauty, but I see hints in his films that perhaps beauty is his idol in a way that carries within itself the seeds of destruction. C.S. Lewis writes of beauty in the autobiographical Surprised by Joy:

The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

How sad to mistake the beauty for the thing really desired. Yet, beauty of the kind conjured up by Wong Kar-Wai seems (almost) enough.