2046

ONE MORE FINAL: I need you. (let’s try again) tender hands begging for release encased in black gloves. tears in the rain. glances characterized by their inability to reconcile with the past. indistinct chatter and moaning heard through thin walls. ashes and dust buzz across each room. a shambolic state. on the nature of artifice; why we create stories to tell for years and years while destroying a little bit of ourselves in the process. fiction as a means to process the scrambled fuzziness of all the experiences that led us here, the present Lived-In moment. fiction as a means to allow ourselves a more acute understanding of the people and memories that so haunt us every second. fiction as a means to remix the times we fucked up into a cliché happy ending; but even then your head gets in the way of imagining anything blissful. the artistic process rendered as the lonely, self-critical ramblings of our profoundly rooted desire. love as a chimeric, uncontrollable mess that everyone wants a piece of despite the loss that is inextricable from it’s essence. we all spend so much time trying to convince ourselves that with the right amount of time and company, our sorrows will disintegrate into the airflow; but deep down we know that’s not the case. we carry along a little bit of everyone we’ve connected with, no matter how much we try to distract ourselves. we trap ourselves in the chambers of self destruction and unfiltered longing for so much time that all the echoes of our speeches come back in odd, frequently foreign reverberations. all solutions lead to love; but how could that be when it ends up in so much hurt? i spend my days distracting myself from the unbearable nights, because that’s where you come and visit the most. i enter within the words i transcribe onto these crumbled up pages and stay there until dawn whispers it’s arrival. all of our moments together are condensed into tiny letters and paragraphs that don’t come close to containing the emotions endured, but i still feel your shape. i still feel your warmth. i still can sense your aroma hanging off the clothes in my closet. my tears are cut with the same cloudy cloth of your love. we could’ve been something more; maybe somewhere out there we were. maybe we’re taller in another dimension. here on this fast-moving train of fallen angels, days seem like they merge as one and people are made out to look like blurs as they progress onwards with whatever it is they’re dealing with. here, we’re all risking our lives for a chance of connection; no matter how absurd or intense the journey will be to get there. on the road to 2046; the year of dreams and a place to recapture lost memories. now we disembark. oh lord, send us transmissions, and help us cope. — what is it that made you come here? ALL MEMORIES ARE TRACES  OF TEARS Wong’s magnum opus (yes, better than Mood for Love); everything he’s been working towards and exploring thrown into a sprawling, passionate, authentic odyssey of melancholy. a film bursting at the seams with emotion and loss. reflections on previous films translated through neon colors, cigarettes, and science fiction to distract from reality. WKW’s filmmaking here is unmatched compared to his other films; the editing, score, cinematography, etc is all phenomenal. while i do still prefer Chungking Express and Fallen Angels on a pure personal level, i find it hard not to view this as WKW’s masterpiece. a complete deconstruction of everything that came before; which surprisingly never falls into overly self indulgent or obnoxious writing. everything is treated with an eloquent & romantic touch. i feel this is the film of his i can latch onto the most; which probably reveals something about my character. there’s something so inexplicably appealing about this film that soars above his others, and i think it’s because it’s him at his most honest. you can feel an aching pensiveness etched into just about every scene and performance. you can see his naked heart laid out for us all to see. i find films that tackle the aspects of artifice in a medium to be (ironically) the most human and sincere. honestly, i’m not even really sure how to process this whole thing on an emotional level just cause there’s so much to feel and observe; but all i know is it’s undeniably perfect. will come back to this many more times in the future, like with Wong’s other films; but will probably never have enough words to express just how much his films mean to me “Why can’t it be like it was before?”