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Time Without End: Exploring The Temporal Experience Of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 Through Walter Benjamin, Jo C. Law

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Beyond their beautifully crafted and mesmerising images revered by international audience and critics, the works of Hong Kong filmmaker, Wong Kar-wai, present melancholic tales of missed opportunities, repetition, regrets, lamentations, and mis-recognition. Time plays a central role in these works. At their hearts, Wong's films mourn for the loss of a potential humanity in a hyper-capitalist city - super-modernity that produces a disconnected space governed by a timeless time. In this paper, I present an analysis of Wong's films focusing on his 2005 work, 2046, through the prism of Walter Benjamin's philosophical writings. In particular, Benjamin's works on the Trauerspeils …