ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses why androids shed tears in Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 (2004), and points out that the “affective aura,” constituted through the embodiment of sentiments, is a new narrative language created in Wong Kar-wai’s Mood Trilogy: The Days of Being Wild (1990), In the Mood for Love (2000), and 2046. The affective aura is fermented with gazes, gestures, bodily performance, visuality, materiality, and music. This new narrative language, emphasizing the personal signature of the auteur, tends to downplay rationalism and the role of storytelling. The trilogy engages in the dialectic of future and past: the truth of life is that it repeats itself; life in the long run is endless repetitions after all. While all the characters seem to be moving towards the future, they are in fact moving towards the past. The shocking implication is that all of us, like the androids in 2046, are automatons driven by the affective aura towards a future filled with memories, only to be relived. The concept of life being endless repetitions is reflected through the intricate game of role-playing. In the meantime Wong Kar-wai intends to engage in the age-old dialectic between body and mind, silence and language.
