Wong Kar-Wai
2046

Backwards into memories, when secrets were whispers to trap with mud in a log. Backwards into the delicate past, pierced by the painful nails of a lost love. In 2046, a mysterious train runs, and it's said that those who go to 2046 seek desperately for memories. No one has ever returned, except one. For one who returns, thousands do not. Whispering a number, a year/place that holds a profound meaning of pain and joy for loves lived and lost. Meeting oneself in the same place and at the same spatial moment 100 or 1000 hours later, effortlessly trapped by the confusion of things that happened and then disappeared, in the anguished and distressing attempt to write one's life on paper, in the futuristic scenario of red/violet coloring of the most dreamlike noir. A solitary protagonist reminisces about the past, describing science fictional stories of passion between robots, where "a" female-robot is loved. She does not respond, feels nothing inside, she is hopelessly oppressed by her "blocking" body, almost inanimate, constantly forced to live in luminescent, reflective spaces, luminous clothes, architectures of extraordinary technology.

For the tormented protagonist (a bit too self-confident to be honest), the idea of writing about 2046 follows yet another confrontation with a woman, much deeper than him. Talking about 2046 is unraveling the diary of a life lived within a room, of a hypothetical place, of an indeterminate world. It is a shell in which all our deepest dreams and secrets are hidden, waiting to be rediscovered by our memory. This almost Proustian theme of searching for lost time and sensations is joined by the indecipherable female world so dear to the protagonist Chow Mo Wan. "Silent" love stories intertwine, lived on the edge of feelings oppressed by the inability to live them, overshadowed by the memory of other women, other places. Inevitable is the painful memory of the lost love with which Chow goes back in time, into the recesses of his mind, to erase, but at the same time bring back the moments spent with the enigmatic "Black Widow" Su Li Zhen.

In 2046 Kar Wai, setting aside the lyrical romanticism of the early productions, favoring the small details (true integral parts of the story), tells the fear of loving too much, combined with the fear of truly loving someone. The story with delicately modeled and romantic contours thus flows into a sci-fi environment that manages to trap within itself sensations and emotions that seemingly do not belong to it. It is precisely this place that projects us into the future, through images generated in the present, which bring back moments of the past. The man lives in this limbo that transcends the space/time categories, so if he wants to relive "himself," he is automatically forced to abandon himself to what has happened. And thus come the reminiscences of bodies that brushed against each other in fleeting moments, of silences and words lost in the air of an instant.

Wong Kar Wai's 2046 is a complex and intricate work that must be slowly unraveled like snow in the sun. The concatenation of events, the cyclicality, and the slowness of some sequences do not make it easy to assimilate, but the sensuality and sentimentalism with which the director transports us into this "other" world are an experience that must be fully lived, moment by moment.