Not sure why, but while normally I feel at least a hint of nervousness or trepidation before watching/reading/listening to something that I've keenly anticipated, somehow it never even crossed my mind that 2046 might be anything less than wonderful; my expectations having (largely subliminally) reached such great heights, then, it's probably unsurprising that my immediate reaction after seeing it was a little muted (well, there's that, and then there's the internal reeling from the sheer, lush romanticism of the film - but more on that later). I suppose that I took for granted that it would be visually spectacular, and allusive and wistful and truthful and wise, and just all round beautiful - and so when all of this was indeed realised, it wasn't the revelation that it might otherwise have been.
With the passing of a bit more time, though, the particular joys of 2046 have begun to sink in. Foremost amongst those, of course, is the swooning romance of it all - the unwavering foregrounding of love and its endless ramifications and reverberations. Unlike many films which resonate with me because I see some part of myself in them, 2046 doesn't strike me as a fantasy (sci-fi elements notwithstanding); it feels like a dream, but like the sort of dream that someone could all too easily live.
Just as we have no access to the world except through our experience of it, so too with love; the thing with Wong Kar-Wai, I think, is that his representations of these experiencings - hyper-stylised, dreamily but sometimes painfully disconnected, and shot through with colour, suggestion and sadness - feel like pictures from my own mental landscapes (though I haven't quite expressed that as fully as I'd like), and perhaps especially in 2046. I don't really empathise with Tony Leung's character in this film, nor with any of the others - they're further along in their stories than I am in mine - but I can see a real continuity between them and myself, for I organise my own world similarly to them, and it makes me terribly wistful, as well as renewing the old question of what will eventually become of me...
