Sunday, April 25, 2010

Burden of Remembering

Code 46 (2003) - Winterbottom
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In Code 46, people are divided by series of codes related to genetic modifying of the bodies. Traveling is highly restricted and regulated by health document called papalle, a highly prized item. William (Tim Robbins) a fraudulent papalle investigator with the help of empathy pills, flies to Shanghai to find a culprit in a slick papalle processing company. There he meets Maria (Samantha Morton), a worker and suspect in the fraud case. William instinctively knows she is guilty, but something in her draws him and they fall in love.

Code 46 is a rare film that succeeds in evoking the melancholia of remembering the past without much words. The mood Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, 9 Songs) creates with natural looking cinematography and music is just right reflecting the complicated globalized future world. The film is light and fluid. It floats above all the trappings of bad sci-fi. It also captures small very beautiful moments effortlessly- it's like looking at someone's intimate polaroid snapshots. And Morton is adorable. This is what Wong Kar-wai's overly stylized, voice-over driven, editing exercise, 2046, should've been. Code 46 achieves it in 90 minutes gracefully.