2046

Many Facades of Love

In school, we were given multiple choices in exams. In life, when it comes to love, can we have multiple choices as well? Loving more than one person at the same time? Is love a test in life? Watching a Wong Kar Wai film is a feast to the eyes and mind. It is great stimulation and pleasure.

2046 is an eclectic approach to his other films and it goes for his perception towards love, I guess. Or at least, for his protagonist, played by Tony Leung. I think the only true love of his entire life is the character played by Maggie Cheung in In The Mood For Love. Someone whom you would fall in love with only once in your entire lifetime and is destined to NOT be with each other for the rest of your life.

His fling with Zhang ZiYi can only be purely physical attraction, no more, no less. It is that sort of love that Zhang will be scarred for the rest of her life. A love which falls on deaf ears. Very torturing indeed.

His affection for Gong Li's character seems very real, but only lasted in moments. This sort of love is so real yet surreal. I personally think that Gong Li steals the show here, even though she only appears very briefly in the film. Her intensity in her emotional delivery is tremendously flawless and close to perfection. Tony's admiration for Faye Wong's character is like a love that almost could have been, but timing and circumstances get in the way. Love can never bloom when it is not meant to be, yet. To me, this love is quite pure and naive.

Just love the art direction and most of all, love the utmost intensity of the film, in terms of how love is being interpreted and portrayed. The emotional weight and the accurate illustration of acute pain and anguish one feels when one is in love is almost unbelievable. It reminds me so much of the feeling I felt when I read Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being years ago. Except that Milan has a sense of humour to his version of love between two opposite sexes.

A film worth spending time watching. It makes me wonder, how strange love can be. Now, could you love more than a person at one time, more than once in your lifetime?