There is a need in
all of us to have a place to hide or store certain memories, thoughts,
impulses, hopes and dreams. These are
part of our lives that we can’t resolve or best not act upon but at the same
time we are afraid to jettison them. For some, this is a physical place; for
others, it is a mental space, and for a few it is neither.
2046 is a project that began some time ago. The journey to complete the film has been
eventful. It
has taken a long time to get there. Like
the memory we treasure, it is difficult to leave behind.
Musical excerpts appear
in cycles, as in remembering and forgetting. Fragments can recur from one film
to another, but like trains gliding on tracks, every new journey follows the
same path. Sets of track marks are
imposed upon one another; new impressions are built upon one another.
SHIGERU UMEBAYASHI
Umebayashi’s career as a
professional musician began when he led the “new wave” rock band EX to stardom
in Japan in the early 1980s. When the group broke up in 1985, he began writing
film scores. His music has been heard on the soundtracks of such films as
Morita Yoshimitsu’s And Then…, Sai Yoichi’s All Under the Moon, Tony Au’s The Christ of
Nanjing, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood
for Love and Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers.
Peer Raben met and began
working with the legendary German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder
in a theatre group in the 1960s, and went on to contribute scores to almost all
of Fassbinder’s films. His music and arrangements
have been heard in such films as Love
is Colder than Death, Beware of a Holy Whore, Marriage of Maria Braun
and Veronika Voss. In 2003, the Berlin Film
Festival honoured him with the Berlinale Kamera for his outstanding contributions to German cinema;
he composed the fanfare used to introduce festival screenings for more than 30
years.
While its main theme
and variations are created anew by Shigeru Umebayashi,
after In the Mood for Love, 2046 is distinguished by multiple sources
and cross references. Recurring motives (bel canto opera,
latin dances from 20th-century nightclubs,
stark instrumental solos) characterize not only persons in the story, but a
sense of loss in the many strands of worlds nocturnal from Hong Kong to
Singapore, and of lovers’ promises and betrayals. They further amplify a vast
emptiness – the vanishing aura of pre-1949 Shanghai. And “time” is marked by Christmases, in the
whirls of Nat King Cole’s reassuringly mellow voice.
While Tony Leung
(Chow Mo-Wan) appears as a writer living from hand to mouth producing blue
novellas (no longer In the Mood for Love’s aspiring writer and almost faithful
husband), the three women of 2046
belong to his narrative past, present, and future. Gong Li, the mysterious gambler who only
gives her name at their parting, is clearly the most complex, and with her
appearances are such atmospheric, remorseful segments from Umebayashi’s
Polonaise to Peer Raben’s newly composed music based
on an earlier theme used in The Third Generation (1979). Carina Lau, the one
who inspired the title 2046
(Leung took her room number as a sign for his novella at the beginning of the
film), reintroduced another soulful theme from Raben’s
music to Querelle (1982), which then accompanied
other sad farewells of Leung’s subsequent women. These remixes are departures:
they mark the beginnings and endings of musical and emotional journeys.
Clearly, Wong Kar Wai is tipping his cap to
Europe’s cinematic giants. He met Raben in 2000, when
In the Mood for Love opened in Germany, and had asked the master for music. The
adaptations are at once tributes, but they also pose challenges to composer and
filmmaker alike. When pre-existing materials appear in new contexts, levels of
meaning multiply exponentially. Also, as remixes are enhanced (some by
metaphoric soundscapes of trains and crowds), they
themselves are symbols of how technology has enabled new creations in our age.
In this film, Wong
also uses Julien et Barbara by Georges Delerue (from François Truffaut’s
Vivement Dimanche!) and Decision by Zbigniew
Preisner (from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film
about Killing), but both are borrowed intact.
Zhang Ziyi plays the most “present” of all of Chow’s women in 2046 (Bai
Ling). Moving in as Leung’s neighbour, that proximity also brings with it the
greatest urge and desperation, of fleeting enjoyment and sudden outbursts of
anger and bitterness. Zhang symbolizes that decadent yet vibrant thirst for
life. Melodic strands of Dean Martin, Connie Francis, rumba and cha-cha rhythms
become synonymous with her instant sexuality that first attracted Chow.
Shooting usually in
silence, Wong Kar Wai made
an exception in playing Secret Garden’s Adagio while filming the intimate
embraces between Faye Wong (playing an android) and Takuya Kimura (the
traveller). These two actors respond to the music intuitively – in that future
when everyone is trapped in a train compartment, recurring musical sequences
only help soothe the pain as time stands still (or moves in circles). Adagio
defines an imperfect love that has so many constraints and remains yet so
intoxicating.
Faye Wong is also
represented by bel canto’s most beloved aria,
Bellini’s Casta Diva. A timeless masterpiece that is
at the eye of the storm, this coloratura soprano piece de resistance has
captivated countless hearts for almost two centuries from operatic stage to MP3
player. While recording technology of past decades captured Maria Callas at the
height of her powers (in the 1950s), Wong chooses a new diva, Angela Gheorghiu, and her 2000 rendition. Recording technology has
captured time for all of us, and has also frozen in time those beautiful voices
in their prime.
There is an
additional level of intertextual reference in 2046. A cinematic culmination gathering
isolated filigrees from Days of Being Wild (1990) and In the Mood for Love
(2000), when a song crosses borders between films it also brings an additional
“narrative.” It can foretell future, rekindle memories, or appear
subconsciously but sneaking up on us. Siboney first
appeared as instrumental music in Days of Being Wild. Its recurrence in those 2046 trysts are amplified by Connie
Francis’s voice. Likewise, Perfidia was so wedded to
those scenes of Days of Being Wild that when Carina Lau is personified by the
Xavier Cugat arrangement again in 2046, we thought we had defied time,
progress and process.
The musical sources
of 2046 are varied, but they
form a canvas with infinite shades and limitless stretch. Whether it is a mood
or an action, sound and image meld into a picture that is sensuous. They also
trigger our memories, including those that were once forgotten.
Joanna C. Lee