Ashes of Time

[Li Kao]

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it here in Phoenix at all. Bummer as I've never seen a WKW movie on the silver screen. Though I didn't really expect this to make much of a ripple except with maybe die-hard Hong Kong movie buffs.

[GeneChing]

Every review seems to say that this is a big screen experience and it's impossible to find on the big screen. I saw Chungking Express on a big screen (well, not that big - it was a small Chinatown theater) but it didn't move me that much. In fact, I remember feeling it was a bit too frenetic.

Ashes of Time Redux (R) *** | Moody martial arts tale explores extreme sadness
BY RENE RODRIGUEZ
rrodriguez@MiamiHerald.com

You should know going in that you will not be able to digest the beautifully convoluted narrative of Ashes of Time Redux in one viewing, no matter how closely you're paying attention. Originally made in 1994 (the same year Wong Kar Wai made his U.S. breakthrough with Chungking Express), the film has been released in a number of alternate versions and cuts over the ensuing 14 years. This new edit is the director's definitive imagining of his martial arts fantasy, but that fact doesn't make this version any easier to follow.

No matter. Wong's films (Inthe Mood for Love, 2046) are rarely about plot and more often about mood and feeling and, mostly, melancholy. Ashes of Time Redux is set in ancient China and has sequences of sword-fighting, balletic action and equally balletic bloodletting. But action-hungry fans are bound to be baffled, if not outright irked, at Wong's refusal to deliver the kinetic thrills the genre is known for, opting instead to shoot much of the big setpieces (and there aren't that many) in impressionistic still frames, slow-motion and flash cuts.

In fact, Ashes of Time Redux, which centers on a hired assassin (Leslie Cheung) and the assortment of clients who come to see him, is a gorgeous, dreamy meditation on romantic longing and heartache. This digitally remastered and rescored edition (with music by Yo-Yo Ma) amps up cinematographer Christopher Doyle's color palette to surreal extremes, reportedly incorporates bits of previously unseen footage (Wong refuses to reveal just how many, if any, new scenes are present) and makes the various stories about broken and lonely hearts a tad more streamlined.

But the film's appeal remains. Ashes of Time Redux is primarily a sensory experience that deserves to be seen on as big a screen as possible. That's where its lovely, haunting images -- a sad-faced woman on a horse, the light reflected from a pool of water skittering across her face; the impossibly large shadows the bars of a bird cage cast across a room; a solitary figure traversing a nearly-pink desert under an impossibly blue sky -- coalesce into a reverie of the sort of sweet, delicious sadness only a broken heart can generate.

Cast: Leslie Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung.

Writer-director: Wong Kar Wai.

Producers: Wong Kar Wai, Jeffrey Lau, Jacky Pang Yee Wah.

A Sony Pictures Classics release. Running time: 93 minutes. In Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles. Violence, gore. In Miami-Dade: Regal South Beach; in Palm Beach: Shadowood.

[jethro]

Every review seems to say that this is a big screen experience and it's impossible to find on the big screen. I saw Chungking Express on a big screen (well, not that big - it was a small Chinatown theater) but it didn't move me that much. In fact, I remember feeling it was a bit too frenetic.

I saw it a long time ago, so I can't remember for sure ifI thought it was too frenetic, just boring. I swear thought I was the only one that didn't like that movie.

[doug maverick]

hey thats the old version this is the new version. its like watching the original blade runner and comparing it to the final cut. which was freaking amazing. when george lucas and speilberg touched up star wars and E.T. it was just stupid. but what ridley did with BR. with just really simple things made that movie a super masterpeice. i know he always wanted to do a sequal and i know the dvd sales for the final cut were through the roof really really big numbers so hopefully he gets a chance to.

[GeneChing]

Yea, I'm so bummed I missed this on the big screen. I'm just not going to be able to get up to S.F. for it. I'm not even sure it's still running up there even.

Ashes not that martial but definitely art
By LIZ BRAUN, SUN MEDIA
Last Updated: 31st October 2008, 3:20am

Ashes of Time Redux is a special film for Wong Kar Wai fans.

This is a revisiting of his rarely-seen 1994 movie Ashes of Time, which was known as the director's only martial-arts movie; Ashes of Time Redux was introduced here in September at the Toronto film festival.

The 'martial arts' tag confused viewers the first time around and will again, for while the film does indeed involve skilled swordsmen carving each other up in the desert, Ashes of Time Redux is a dream-like meditation about love, loss, memory and yearning. The cinematography is gobsmacking.

The story is based on Louis Cha's martial arts novel, The Eagle-Shooting Heroes and the storyteller is Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), a loner who lives in the desert nursing his broken heart. Seems the woman he loved (Maggie Cheung) married his brother, because Ouyang left her alone too long.

Every year, Ouyang is visited by Huang (Tony Leung Ka Fai), another swordsman and adventurer. Huang appears to be quite a ladies' man, but his annual visit proves to be in the name of true love.

The stories Ouyang tells involve a swordsman who is going blind (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a barefooted swordsman (Jacky Cheung) and his dedicated wife (Bai Li), a girl who can't afford vengeance (Charlie Young) and a murderous brother and sister team (Brigitte Lin in both roles) who seem to be two sides of the same form of suffering -- unrequited love.

"The root of man's problems is memory," says Ouyang at the beginning of the film, and when Huang visits, he brings a gift of magic wine that eradicates memory.

Regret over lost love seems to be the memory most worth losing.

Huang wanders off and encounters the blind swordsman; there are arresting flashbacks to the blind swordsman's wife, Peach Blossom (Carina Lau).

That skirt-chasing Huang later gets into trouble for jilting another woman, but as everything unfolds in an imaginary world with its own mysterious rules, it's almost impossible to keep track of the characters.

Wong Kar Wai has said that he wanted to show these martial-arts heroes at a time when they were still ordinary people and before their ascent to legendary status.

The cinematography says otherwise, with almost everyone bathed in an otherwordly golden light.

The light and colour throughout the film are often extraordinary, and a new soundtrack featuring Yo Yo Ma is generally mesmerizing.

And battle scenes are more like ballet, only with blood -- beautifully choreographed and somewhat dream-like in the way they unfold. There's a fair amount of dying in slo-mo. It's all lovely but confusing, not unlike love itself.

The passage of time is rarely pretty, however, and Ashes Of Time Redux is all about that.

This is a film for followers of Wong Kar Wai and for fans of nostalgia.

You know who you are.

[jethro]

hey thats the old version this is the new version. its like watching the original blade runner and comparing it to the final cut. which was freaking amazing. when george lucas and speilberg touched up star wars and E.T. it was just stupid. but what ridley did with BR. with just really simple things made that movie a super masterpeice. i know he always wanted to do a sequal and i know the dvd sales for the final cut were through the roof really really big numbers so hopefully he gets a chance to.

I don't know if you are responding to me with this, but you may have misunderstood my comment. I was commenting on what Gene said abotu Chungking Express. But I may have to check out the dc of Blade Runner. I remember that movie was just average, maybe a little bit above average, but I wil try and check out the dc.

[doug maverick]

I don't know if you are responding to me with this, but you may have misunderstood my comment. I was commenting on what Gene said abotu Chungking Express. But I may have to check out the dc of Blade Runner. I remember that movie was just average, maybe a little bit above average, but I wil try and check out the dc.

well its not a DC cut every cut of that movie was a DC. this is a Final Cut. and i agree first time i saw it i was like eh, and when i saw the final cut at the zeigfeild (world reknowned theater in new york) and then again on dvd, i was astounded.

[Li Kao]

Not my favorite WKW, but it still had some strong performances -- I really liked Faye Wong's character and I'll agree that the 1st 1/2 of the movie (with Brigette Lin's character) was *very* frenetic, although I think he just wanted to portray the hectic pace of Hong Kong streets at night as well as well as the whole assassin thing, so I thought it was sort of a way to affect the mood. Although I don't always like that kind of jerky camerawork -- like the fight scenes in the 1st couple of Bourne movies where you can't really tell what's going on.

Haven't seen the Blade Runner Final Cut, though that one is a classic -- I'll have to check it out.

[jethro]

hmmm, maybe I don't remember it being too frenetic because I'm just used to it after seeing so many HK movies. A lot of the Hk movies I like move at a very fast pace. So maybe that's why I liked the stuff with Brigitte Lin, but the stuff with Faye wong and Tony Leung I found BORING. But then again, that's not the type of movies I like to watch. HK action, wuxia, and comedies, mainly Stephen Chow is what I prefer.

[Zenshiite]

So it looks like I might be able to swing checking this out this weekend. It opened here in Portland OR today.

[GeneChing]

...I suppose I'll enjoy the DVD on my HD widescreen. Still, nothing like the big silver screen, but the run was so short, we'll have to make do.

Martial arts reverie a beauty
JOHN GRIFFIN, The Gazette
Published: Friday, November 07

Ashes of Time Redux

Rating 4

Starring: Leslie Cheung, Li Bai, Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau

Finally, there is some small justification for nailing a flat-screen television on the wall where a perfectly good painting should hang. It's called Ashes of Time Redux, it's a movie by Chinese auteur Wong Kar-Wai, and it's literally as pretty as many, many pictures.

It's in theatres now and should be seen in this format immediately. But it will also look fine playing on an endless loop over the mantelpiece when it eventually comes out on DVD.

Who knows? Watched often enough, it may even make sense. If you think you know Ashes from somewhere, you do. Redux (As in Apocalypse Now Redux) is a completely reworked version of the jinxed 1994 production that almost totalled the director's career, and forced him to make the happily uncomplicated Chungking Express while the whole mess was on hiatus.

Genius cinematographer Christopher Doyle's ravishing colour and visuals have been enhanced, the editing edited, the story - a cyclical meditation on memory, mortality and the folly of undue pride - partially decoded, and the score smartened up, with cello courtesy of the masterful Yo Yo Ma.

We are told that this is the version of his martial arts reverie Wong Kar-Wai wished for way back when. Believe it. The stripping away and/or addition of certain effects and trickery place this in the pantheon with his all-atmosphere classics like In the Mood for Love.

Ah, yes, the beauty. Ashes is set in a golden desert, broken by oasis splashes of green, skyscapes, distant mountains, and any number of the more handsome men and women on Earth. The late Leslie Cheung is a heartbroken, hardbitten former hitman who moved to the desert after the woman he loved rejected him for another man who happened to be his brother.

Solitary now, but for the parade of idiosyncratic swordsmen he hires for various and sundry contract jobs - revenge murders, protecting helpless villagers from marauding banditos astride gorgeous horseflesh - he has lots of time to think of paths not taken.

Thanks to a handy bottle of magic wine that wipes out memory, he also has time to forget. Into this metaphysical limbo swim visions of Li Bai, Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau, that's right, the loveliest women on the planet.

There is magnificent swordplay, though it comes late in the proceedings and is without the impossible acrobatics so beloved of mainstream martial arts epics. Instead, they and this visually dazzling film are full of the fast cuts, fractured, blurry light, elegant slow motion and repetitive images for which the director is internationally revered. See Ashes of Time Redux now, then see it again and again and again, at home, where that painting should be.

[Mr Punch]

The Roger Moore review says that the blind swordsman archetype is cribbed from Japanese popular MA (movie) tradition... is that true? There must have been notable Chinese versions of blind fighters before?

[GeneChing]

I confess, I don't quite *get* Wong Karwai. He's a filmmaker's filmmaker. If you're into film, you roll over and soil yourself over the amazing things he's doing with his cinematography. I can see where that's cool and all, but his works never quite come together for me. What makes Ashes even more complicated is that it's a prequel to a mammoth classic of wuxia literature, Jin Yong's Eagle Shooting Heroes, which of course, I haven't read. Don't get me wrong - this is a gorgeous film and it undeniably showcases the power of one of my favorite actresses, Maggie Cheung. Many of the shots are astoundingly creative. But it's slow, plodding and full of melancholy. That contributes to the overall mood, and in the end, delivers something, but it's not the wine of forgetfulness as promised.

If you're into art film and martial arts, it's a must see.

If you just want to see some ass kicking kung fu, skip this one.

I will say that this is a spin on the blind swordsman archetype (if you want to discuss Zatoichi, we do have a thread for it). It's not fair to say that this was cribbed from Zatoichi. In all of those blind warrior films, the hero is already blind. In Ashes, the hero is going blind. That's a completely different dynamic, more akin to Robert Vaughn's character in Magnificent Seven. It's not about having sightless superpowers. It's the opposite - grappling with the inevitable decay of the flesh. One is a comic book fantasy and the other is a very palpable reality.

[Zenshiite]

I think Redux is much better than the original cut. I actually got.

Also, fun fact, did you know that Kar Wai produced another movie simultaneously with Ashes of Time called 'Eagle Shooting Heroes' that was actually a comedic musical take on the story? With the same cast as Ashes, no less. http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Eagle_S...1656054453_0_0

[Shaolinlueb]

post must have got lost.

i own this movie. it kinda sucks from what i remember.