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| | Salesrank: 178868
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| Our Price: $31.99 |
| Used Price: $31.98 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: Spanish ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), English ( Subtitles ), Spanish ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (2.35:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s), Featurette, Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Music Video, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: 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. Everyone who went there had the same intention.....to recapture their lost memories. It was said that in 2046, nothing ever changed. Nobody knew for sure if it was true, because nobody who went there had ever come back- except for one. He was there. He chose to leave. He wanted to change. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Cannes Film Festival, Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain, David Donatello Awards, European Film Awards,
Description of 2046:
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
2046 Reviews:
Political message 
2009-08-28 - "In the mood for love" is marked by uncertainty,characteristic of pre-turnover political climate in Hong Kong.On the other hand,2046,the date until which Hong Kong's way of life is supposed to remain unchanged, has a somewhat subtle moral that everything,including love, cannot be delved in the past and we should move on and not lose sight of the present. Colonial past is past. The future is what people make of it is another level of the meaning of this movie.
T S Eliot said one returns to his/her starting point with greater understanding.In this movie,one goes to 2046 to regain lost memories and,in my opinion, a better understanding of oneself.
Some of it works, some of it doesn't..... 
2009-05-28 - This film had such high hopes when I first bought it, and while I do like it, it can be a very confusing film. It starts with a man (the main character and author of the book he entitles "2046") trying to get a beautiful woman (Gong Li) to come away with him if he wins at a card game. She ends up winning, and the game then comes to the present. The movie spends a good deal of it's time going between reality and the fictional world he's created, while dropping hints about the woman from the beginning until at the end and after a relationship with a prostitute (Ziyi Zang) we find out that the woman from the beginning is the only woman he'll ever want, and that's why he chose to write "2046". It could have been so much better but it has a tendency to drag and often switch without any good transition between past, present and the story. I often found myself confused when there were moments in which Japanese is spoken instead of Chinese. The acting isn't really the problem, it's how the story strives so hard to be deep and artsy at the same time and fails to achieve the right balance. I would definitely say check it out, but be warned, if you even blink you might miss a detail and be left behind.
2046: Visuals Over Plot 
2009-05-25 - For the typical American audience, 2046 can be a puzzle. Americans tend to like their movies the way they like their novels, with a straight line progression of plot. For those who can allow themselves the luxury of going with the flow, 2046 is a stunning achievement. What this film does is to present more of a mood, spliced with wispy tendrils of thought that ebb and flow in both temporal directions. Tony Leung is Chow, a Chinese author who writes what he considers second rate soft core porn. He dreams of a mysterious land called 2046, which, in this film, is the room which, because of tragic memories, resonates with equally tragic yet frequently impish overtones. His stories are full of tormented souls, much presumably like himself, who need to escape the unhappiness of the past by seeking in the present a key to the future. He peoples his characters as passengers on a train, some of whom have sex with automatons who resemble previous lovers. Part of the joy of 2046 lies in the audience's task of distinguishing life on the train from life in Chow's daily existence. Chow is a drinker, a gambler, and an inveterate womanizer, who nonetheless possesses a spark of decency that forbids him from taking sexual advantage of teenage girls who throw themselves at him. His life is a montage of regrets, beginning with a prostitute who may or may not be the same girl from his past. He courts her but sets some basic rules: their relationship will be platonic until she wills otherwise, and if and when she wishes sex, then their relation can be neither serious nor permanent. She agrees, but when she falls in love with him, he stuns her by adhering to their original agreement. In strolls another girl (Maggie Cheung); this one is the daughter of his landlord. She loves a Japanese but her father hates all Japanese and forbids her to see him. Chow falls in love with her but refuses to even try to get physical. Chow even helps her to marry her Japanese boyfriend. Enter the third female (Gong Li), known as the Spider Woman, who helps him to regain losses suffered in a casino. Throughout these temporally floating affairs, Chow keeps himself aloof from a too deep attachment. He may fall in love with one or more women, but he refuses himself the luxury of becoming overly emotionally dependent on any. The filming style does not ever sink into a raw herky-jerky morass of illogic. By the time Chow goes through his last woman, he teaches himself the valuable lesson that regardless of how much one woman may have meant to him either in his murky realm of 2046 or in his even murkier real life, he can never go home again. All that he and presumably the ones reading his cheap stories or watching this masterpiece can do would be to press on and face the next challenge, which in his case is to chain smoke as he awaits a woman who reminds him of yet an earlier version of herself.
interesting and intriguing
2008-12-28 - This sequel to 'In the mood for love' showcases brilliant acting and cinematography. The depth of the storyline and characters is incredible, you won't be able to remove your eyes from the screen. This is one of those movies that you have to watch a couple of times to really understand.
One of my favorites.... ever.
2008-08-31 - Subtitles. Might keep people away. But it shouldn't phase you a bit. This is a truly excellent movie. A well crafted adult movie, that reveals so much on how love is affected by time.
