2046

[kotte]

2046 flopped?

In Hong Kong, according to Doyle.

[modage]

its funny/strange that the director or DP cannot judge the work on its own merits, but can only see whether its worthwhile or not based on its box office?   if that is true, its kind of sad.

[w/o horse]

Five years is quite a chunk of a lifetime.

[killafilm]

He has also shot quite a bit since 2000.  Maybe the whole experience of actaully filmming wore on their relationship.

I guess M. Night for WKW is a fair trade???

[pete]

I don't think it's just bad box office performance, I don't think 2046 was well-received anywhere.  I mean, people liked it, but the responses have been politely lukewarm.
doyle on the other hand, have just blossomed.  Hero and Last Life in the Universe really pushed him into international stardom.  I mean that guy is like a one-man film crew now.

[MacGuffin]

FEATURE - In the Mood for Leung
After six movies together, Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung still feels like he doesn't really know director Wong Kar-wai. And that's partly because they rarely talk on set. By Pam Grady, FilmStew.com

Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung is trying to describe the particular alchemy that develops when he works with the great Wong Kar-wai. The two have collaborated on six films over more than a dozen years, beginning with 1991's Days of Being Wild and culminating most recently with the highly lauded 2046, Wong's loose follow-up to 2000's In the Mood for Love.

It has been a fruitful collaboration. Of Leung's seven Hong Kong Film Awards (out of 10 nominations), four are for Wong's films, including the latest for 2046. But it has also been a sometimes-difficult partnership, as Leung admits during a recent interview with FilmStew in San Francisco. "You can't work with other directors the way you work with Kar-wai," he insists. "It would kill you. You would die."

In person, Leung has none of the airs of one of the world's true international stars. He has no entourage and is dressed simply in a striped cotton shirt and jeans. Shy and soft-spoken, he worries a hole in his knee with his finger, a way perhaps to deflect attention from the handsome face that is so familiar not just from his work with Wong, but also for films, such as Hero, John Woo's Hard-Boiled and Bullet in the Head, Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs and Infernal Affairs 3.

2046 took a circuitous route to the screen. Leung remembers they began shooting in Bangkok while in the midst of making In the Mood for Love. Leung had to step away from both projects to fulfill commitments in Tokyo and while he was away, Wong continued to work on the new film, shooting portions of it that didn't require Leung's participation. When his star returned to the In the Mood for Love set, Wong continued to work on both projects.

Then, two years went by. In the interim, In the Mood for Love erupted on the world stage to tremendous acclaim, winning awards and nominations around the globe. Leung took home the acting prize at Cannes and the movie garnered 12 nominations at the 2001 Hong Kong Film Awards, winning five, including another Best Actor award for Leung. So with anticipation heightened for the new production, 2046 started up again in 2002.

It was a stop-and-start affair. Since none of the actors seriously considered that the shoot would go for years, all of them had committed themselves to other projects. Leung himself made three more films during the life of the 2046 shoot, including Infernal Affairs, which earned him yet another Hong Kong film prize. So scheduling became a headache for Wong, as did juggling multiple locations across Asia. If that were not enough, the SARS epidemic brought the film to a temporary halt.

But the delays were not as frustrating for the 43-year-old actor as working with his trying auteur can sometimes be. With other directors, Leung enjoys a spirit of collaboration. He is used to a lot of preparation, to hanging out with his director in advance of the shoot to work out the script and nail down his character. That is not something that happens with Wong, who notoriously eschews working with a finished screenplay.

The two men have worked together on and off for about 15 years now, but Leung says he still doesn't know Wong very well. "For me, he's still a very mysterious guy. We seldom talk, even on the set. I don't know how we work out, but we seldom talk and we keep a distance, even on this last film. I don't know why. Maybe he wants to keep us fresh for each other every time we work together, but that's how we work," Leung explains.

Complicating 2046 for Leung is that he both is and is not playing the same character, Mr. Chow, that he played in In the Mood for Love. Both Mr. Chows live in Hong Kong (and have spent time living in other countries), both are writers (but while the first Mr. Chow was a journalist who took up writing kung-fu serials, the second spends his days working on sci-fi pulp), 2046's Mr. Chow lives in the building where his predecessor conducted his affair of the mind (if not the body) with his wife's lover's wife. Both live in an impossibly stylish and glamorous rendering of the 1960s. But where the original Mr. Chow was a subdued romantic, hurt by his spouse's betrayal, the new model is a dandyish sleaze and ladies' man.

"The first day, Kar-wai told me he wanted me to play the same character as In the Mood for Love, but he wants to play him like a new character, to play him very differently, a cynical playboy," recalls Leung. "It was difficult, because I was used to the original Mr. Chow with everything the same. I thought it wouldn't be easy for me to do."

Leung is an actor who likes to work from the outside in, fixing the character in his mind by fixing his appearance. The way he saw it, the easiest way to begin to differentiate one Mr. Chow from the other was to adopt a mustache for the rakish new model. But when he approached Wong with the idea, that set off an argument that Leung remembers vividly.

"I asked him, 'Can I have a mustache?' He said, 'No!' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Because it will be more powerful if everything remains the same but you act differently. Same face. Everything.' I said, 'I know. I know, but I cannot. I can't.'"

That was a fight the actor eventually won and to that first attempt at a new characterization, he experimented with a new walk, different body language, and even altered his voice. It was still difficult in the beginning. "When you act, you're not conscious of how you move and how you gesture and [I would] jump back to the original Mr. Chow very unconsciously."

"We have the same names, the same surroundings, so I would jump back and Kar-wai used to remind me, 'No, no, no, Tony, it's the same voice again. That's the old Mr. Chow.'"

Working with Wong can be an adventure. The actors know it is useless to have any preconceived notions about their characters or the story, because Wong has new ideas every day. The director's exacting nature can be frustrating for the performers, as when he will shoot scenes over and over again, not because there is anything wrong with the acting, but because he will decide that the costumes aren't right.

Leung recollects his exasperation with Wong as they would watch the dailies together. "He would say he wanted the same exact performance again and how can you do exactly the same thing? Sometimes I don't quite remember that I've done this scene before; sometimes I will have done it half a year ago. So sometimes it could be really painful and he puts pressure on you to do it exactly the same way. Sometimes maybe after you did it, he'll come up with another idea. 'We should do it on the street and not in the restaurant any more.' 'Again?'"

He watched as his parade of beautiful co-stars, Zhang Ziyi, Faye Wong, Gong Li, and Karina Lau arrived and left, as their parts were finished, while Leung remained attached to the project. "It was sad for me to see people come in and out and saying, 'Congratulations! You're finished.'"

Wong's methods serve to keep his actors off balance. Leung was not even sure exactly what 2046 was until he finally saw the finished film. "It's very insecure and frustrating during shooting and you don't even know after the last day's shooting, you have no idea of what the story is about. There are too many possibilities. They are too many endings. He can do a cut for five different movies," Leung marvels.

Certainly, 2046 astonished the actor. He thought he was simply making a movie about a man and his life. He has since revised his opinion. "After I saw the movie, I thought it was a lot more complicated. It's a story about promise. It's a story about lost memories, fantasies and realities, and about love," he enthuses. "I see all those layers and when I was shooting I didn't have any idea of that. He's the kind of director who never reveals - even if he has a story in mind - he never reveals it to his actors."

The director and star are already talking about a seventh collaboration in which Leung would play Bruce Lee's master. But if working with Wong Kar-wai is so difficult, why does Leung continue to do it? "The reason why I work with Kar-wai is that he makes me look different from other directors. He has a very different perspective on me. I don't know how, but he can just make the best out of me. He can explore some qualities that sometimes I'm not even aware of," Leung suggests.

The soft-spoken actor chuckles as he continues, "The process is not always enjoyable. It's painful, but the results are always a surprise."

[Ghostboy]

doyle on the other hand, have just blossomed.  Hero and Last Life in the Universe really pushed him into international stardom.  I mean that guy is like a one-man film crew now.

I read somewhere that in many cases of foreign financing, having his name attached to a project will get more money than any actors.'

Can you imagine him working with M. Night, though? Night doesn't seem to have a sense of humor whatsoever - it must be an interesting working contrast. I'm sure the movie will look great.

Anyway, that's another thread. I can't wait to see 2046 on the big screen next week. I, for one, loved it.

[mutinyco]

Yeah...Production aside, I thought the film said everything it had to say in the first half. The rest seemed like Wong was sucking his own dick, so to speak -- saying the same things over and over in as many abstracted, esoteric ways he could conceive of. And seeing this within a day or so of Broken Flowers last month canceled them both out. One had too much thought put into it, the other not enough. Figure out which is which...

[pete]

haha you wanted character arcs.

[mutinyco]

No, I wanted films that worked. Films that contained things that surprised and impressed me. The first half of 2046 was interesting. The rest was caught in a loop. Broken Flowers all around was obvious and not well thought through.

[Pubrick]

Figure out which is which...

i'll get right on it!

[mutinyco]

You do that P. You do that.

[SHAFTR]

well, yet another Wong Kar-Wai film that I loved.  His pacing always seems to lull me a little, but by the time it is over, I just keep thinking about what I saw.  It is at this point that his films go from very good > great > incredible in my mind.

[bonanzataz]

HOLY FUCKING HELL!!!

[SoNowThen]

I must have posted on this a while back, about being underwhelmed by 2046... I was so dead wrong (for the first time ever, crazy).

It's a beautiful terrible wonderful masterful piece of cinema. WKW is the man. All the way home...