2046, Time, Rain, and the Fifth Sign of Decay of Celestial Beings

Rain, smoke, the refraction of light; fractured views, sightlines broken by half open doors, delicately curved iron or wood; shots of eyes looking through things, hands touching or trying to touch or trying not to be touched; sounds of rain, of music, of trains; time standing still, slowing, moving as if holding the moment for as long as possible.

This is what I write down, jotted notes, as I watch 2046 by Wong Kar Wei. There are directors of movies and directors of film. The former are the cut and die press operator, producing a product for consumption; the latter still believe in the power of cinema as an art form and try and produce something that pushes the viewer into another place, perhaps meditative, perhaps pensive, certainly introspective. Wong Kar Wei is a maker of films.

2046 is, like so many of his films, about relationships. Oh, I know, he is a "Romantic" director. How demeaning, how condescending. Look at any one of his films and you find the dynamic for at least one relationship you know of - whether father/daughter, husband/wife, brother/sister, friends, lovers or working colleagues. You recognize them, you have felt like them, you have loved and suffered as they have, betrayed and been betrayed in the same way and prayed and cried just as desperately as any character in any one of his films.

In Wong Kar Wei's world rain is like a curtain, something to be surrounded by, something to be drenched in, covered, as if to acknowledge the persistence of the world outside your life - whether you are indifferent to it or not. How often in his films do characters stand in a downpour or seek shelter from a downpour or make love with the rain pattering against the shuttered windows. The rain comes down and two, would-be lovers, betrayed by each of their spouses, find themselves caught in the entrance of a take-out restaurant. Staring at one another, making small talk, showing eyes of longing desire, of hurt and pain.

Rain is also there as a reminder of time, for time is a central motif in all his films. Rain suspends time. We wait for rain to end, wait for rain to begin, and look out the window as it comes down sometimes marveling in the pattern of drops. Time. Numbers. Clocks. The sound of ticking. The movement slowed down by a trick of the camera making Tony Leung suddenly slow in his walk, making Maggie Cheung seem suspended in the middle of a turn to the camera where her eyes will seem forever sadly looking.

The use of music adds to this sense of suspended time. Slow, sensuous sounds, whether the achingly painful aria Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma, Siboney by Ernesto Lecuona or The Christmas Song by Nat King Cole, are used to great effect, sliding with the suddenly slow-moving scene, as if it were the music itself slowing the motion down and not some trick of editing.

In Buddhism the Fifth Sign of Degradation or Decay of Celestial Beings states that "they do not feel happy, wherever they may be." This could very well be the them to almost every film Wong Kar Wei creates. The missed opportunities of happiness, the inability to find the one person who has slipped from your life, bad timing in love. The characters travel to other countries, the Philippines in Days of Being Wild, Singapore in In the Mood for Love, Argentina in Happy Together, in 2046 to another time, and yet, no matter where they go they do not feel happy. They suffer. They sometimes seek release. They rarely find solace. "Turns out that all lonely people are the same," says Tony Leung's Lai Yiu-Fai in Happy Together, a film that is all about the fifth sign of decay.

The persistent images: The bird that never lands; the secret spoken into a hole and covered in mud; the lighthouse at the end of the world where one can whisper one's sorrows and find release; doors opening, doors closing, slowly; phones ringing unanswered; eyes; the pain of unrequited love, rejected love, betrayed love; the fear of love and fearlessness in love. The difficulty of love for some in this world.

I haven't given a description of 2046. I can't. It is something to experience. Wong Kar Wei is a director you experience, like life.

The above still is from In the Mood for Love