Wong Kar Wai is more than one of the best filmmakers alive; he is one of the best directors of all time, and a new film from him should have us all in theaters. His new one, “2046,” is no slouch, a pessimistic rumination on alienation, on secrets that are kept, on memory’s grip.

It is not as gorgeously romantic as “Chungking Express,” as vast and impossible as “Ashes of Time,” or as perfectly conceived as “In the Mood for Love.” It is not one of Wong’s best movies; those three will remain on a pedestal above his other work, above almost anything else on film. But “2046″ is not too distant a neighbor, full of the old quick genius and melancholy, but with an eye and heart grown sinister.

Our story-as always, told as much visually as by its bare, poetic narration-is Chow Mo Wan’s (Tony Leung) struggle to escape his past, or to return to it, told through his encounters with a series of women (Carina Lau, Zhang Ziyi, Faye Wong, and Gong Li). Chow is a character from “In the Mood for Love,” but he’s not the same guy. He’s become a ladies’ man, a writer with a ready smile and a mind that has curled in on itself, with a few decaying memories at its center. He’s unsympathetic, actually, an ambiguous character; his capacity for introspection, his cagey intellect, his writer’s mind, and his essential humanity make for a creeping, eventually overwhelming sympathy on our part.

“2046″ was the number of Chow’s apartment in “In the Mood for Love,” and it has come to represent all his regret and his longing for that time and for Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung). (All the women Chow knows in “2046″ resemble her in some way.) He writes a sci-fi novel about people traveling to 2046, a place where lost memories reside forever. His concern is ultimately spelled out by Zhang, who has never been as fine an actress as she is in “2046″: “Why can’t it be like it was before?”

The film is put together subtly, by which I mean it’s devious and sneaky. It’s paced to deliver rapturous emotional punches, when a verbal insight joins suddenly with visual opulence and a musical theme to create a massive cinematic note. Wong emphasizes character before everything, using curtains and doors to block objects and people around his subject. He’ll black out half the screen to get a better vertical shot of Leung ascending an ancient staircase, a round orange light hanging above him like a minor sun.

Finally, for a film that suggests growth is impossible, “2046″ is a bit overgrown. There is a lot to balance, and middling bits are over-emphasized to draw our attention towards or away from the ones that matter.

But “2046″ is Wong’s elegy for his own films, and motifs from “Days of Being Wild” and “In the Mood for Love” are all over it. (It’s no coincidence that the trains of Chow’s future resemble great dark strips of moving film). Like Chow, he can’t re-write his life, or even trim it down to a more reasonable running time.

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