There was a beautiful girl who I once was in a relationship with (although this girl is now a woman living somewhere, she exists in my memory as a girl). The only chance we had to meet was when our relationship had a slim chance of working out. I was pushing to be with her. She pushed me away. We got together anyway. We always had the same fight. Was I going to ruin her life? Keep her from her ambitions? She never pictured herself with a guy like me. Then, one day, she did. She wanted to marry me. But by that point, the argument we had over and over again had left me wanting to leave. I couldn't shake it. I was through. Every few months for years afterward she would call me and ask the same question, "Why didn't we work out?"
Every time she called I tried to give her an answer that both of us knew was weak at best. The truth was I didn't know. I still don't. By the time she was ready to start a serious relationship I was finished. Bad timing.
2046 is Wong Kar Wai's latest film. It's the continuation of a story that started with In the Mood for Love. It also makes reference to his earlier film, Days of Being Wild. It's the mid 1960's, a little while after In the Mood for Love leaves off. Chow Mo Wan has not gotten over Su Li Zhen, the woman who would not give up her husband, life and reputation to be with Chow. He refers to his life in In the Mood for Love as his "previous life." Chow is now a playboy. A poor playboy who throws various birthday parties for himself to make money. He's writing a story about a place in the future called 2046. In the future a giant train system spans the globe. Everybody wants to go to 2046, it's the place to recapture lost memories. Only one man has ever wanted to leave 2046 and he is on a train with no apparent destination.
As the next two hours unfold, Chow teases love with other women and let's them go. He's in a constant state of search. Love, he says, is not about who you find as much as when you find them. It's all about timing. People pass in and out of each other's lives, and if you love somebody who is at the point to receive it, then love can grow. But you may meet the perfect person at the wrong time and lose it altogether.
The whole timing thing is not a romantic idea. Although we live in a time where the idea of finding a soulmate is weighted heavily by the idea of finding a best friend, there is still, I think, that hope which believes there is one person out there who perfectly fits me. Wong Kar Wai's presentation of love is less of a search for the one straight path and more like wondering through a forest. It's more about chance than destiny. More about timing than romance.
I noticed that having a baby is kind of like this notion of love. A husband and wife could make love thousands of times throughout their marriage. However, a handful of times they'll make love and a baby will start to grow. It grows within the woman and then comes out. At that point, the parents discover a different kind of love for this baby. A love they never knew about and the baby keeps growing. It grows in the shadow of love from its parents. Then it finally grows into an adult who falls in love, makes love, and, someday, the cycle starts over.
And it all starts in some unforeseeable way. A one time thing out of a hundred times that two people may make love. It's chance.
It seems to me falling in love is much like that. We may connect with different people at different times throughout our lives. We meet each other in different places in our lives. A married woman meets a college boy, a busy man meets a woman in another country, an career minded girl meets a love struck boy; in every instance it may have been great in a different time and a different place. But then there is the chance encounter with somebody who is ready to receive you and who you are ready to receive, and it works out beautifully. Despite the percentages. It seems like destiny because the chances you two defied were so slim. It happens. Just not in a Wong Kar Wai film.
