kneiss1 I am a Wong Kar Wai fan for years, and it took me a long time to finally get my hands on this movie. It's a beautiful and poetical movie. Yet, I didn't like it as much as the other Wong Kar Wai movies I have seen. Actors and characters are amazing, so is also the atmosphere and music. (Even though the music was not perfectly fitting in a few scenes.) The music often uses cheap synthesizer keyboard sounds. I personally like it, I can imagine though, that others dislike it.The thing that put me off the most have been the cuts. So many cuts have been plain bad. I don't actually get how this can happen to such a great director. The action scenes sucked almost every time. Often there have been several cuts in one second. But even in non-action scenes, stuff sometimes was cut too suddenly, and one scene didn't seem to fit to the other.Another problem for me has been the story. To me it seemed, that Wong had great and amazing ideas. Ideas that could have made a perfect movie. But he couldn't pull it off completely. This movie is full of great approaches, but somehow lacks the final "cut". The characters motivations couldn't convince me, and I found the episodic stories not perfectly connected to each others. Usually Wongs movies impress and move me totally. This time I have been quite entertained, but rarely impressed and moved. Some other movies of his I'd rate with 10 points. This one is not able to go above the 8 point mark.

kalala My own memory is scattered in the ashes of time, and I really need to re-view the original to see if my memory holds, but here is my impression. I'd give the original a 10. This one rates an 8. The two together are probably a 12.I personally didn't like the amped up color. I gather that one of the things that happened when the filmmaker rediscovered a warehouse full of bootlegs was that there were some terrible copies that distorted the color, and he liked and played with that. This version also seemed more static than I remember--a lot of shots seem to have been done with still or very short segments of film. I have to see the original again to see if that's really the case, or if it is just my memory that there were more frames of action in the original. This often felt like it was cut from snippets. For example, the shifting sands under the title was a pair of superimposed images moving in different directions. Was that the case originally as well?I loved the original but also could never quite follow the plot. Redux slices and dices (or-rather-unslices) so that each story is parceled together and the blurring that is going on in the interactions on-screen (for example, the Yin/Yang sibs) does not spill over quite as much into the interaction between viewer and screen. Redux shakes out the story lines so you can parse them. I miss the mystification, and don't think it's a net gain. I also think something else may be going on here... If you remember the original (or have a copy to view), tell me what you think of this reading: The point of view of the story seems to have shifted from Huang Yaoshi to Ouyang Feng--although because of how the movie mixes action, memory and stories it is hard to tell. In the original, we followed the wandering Huang as his memory unspooled. Part of the difficulty for a viewer in understanding was the difficulty that his point of view had, because he was moving through a world of consequences without his memory to root understanding. The story flowed in pieces which might have been his splintered memories-ashes of time- or might have been others'. Things that he is told by unreliable narrators are accepted at face value until experience tells him otherwise. Events are repeated in variation as his understanding of them waxes and wanes.In this version, the narrator (Huang Yaoshi) is fixed and the world comes to him. Things enacted in the first movie (for example, the encounter between Huang and Murong) with all the attendant ambiguity of living sequence, are instead recounted, with the flattening filters of narrator and listener. Unlike Huang, Ouyang accepts nothing at face value. So each event is more clearly arranged in a narrative, but all the narratives are filtered in the same way by a mind that rejects nuances that it can't fit to its particular ego. It is only at the end that Ouyang gains an insight that he may have missed things as important as his life's love as a result of his fear and pride.The story consists of interlocking circles,organized around male-female pairs. Ouyang and his true love are separated because of mutual pride and unwillingness to be the first to declare love; Huang plays messenger between them, never telling the woman his own love for her. This story of two men and a woman is mirrored in a minor key in another triangle which engages Huang. In this one, passion was realized with unhappy consequences for all. Huang seduced his best friend's bride. At the time of the story, the blind husband encounters the memoryless Huang. Just as the moment to tell love had gone by for the lovers in the first triangle, the moment to enact revenge has slipped past the rivals. The subsidiary stories also have evenly balanced male and female parts. The balance of male and female is concentrated to a point in Murong, who manifests that experience as a spinning latticed cage, sexual identity as a trap. Hong Qi, the natural, is steadfastly pursued by his wife, who ignores his rejection and simply acts to do what she thinks is right. The girl who wants revenge for her brother mirrors Ouyang. Each believes they have only one thing to sell, and each expects to be able to withhold the self from the exchange. For each, it takes another person's wound to break the trance of transactions. Whatever is going on Wong Kar Wai and Christopher Doyle are gods.

Maggie It is a must-see for Kar-wai Wong's fans. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed as you might have felt towards My Blueberry Nights, which is not bad but just missing something that makes the movie a bit shy of the director's usual style – the lingering melancholy and subtle poignancy. Surely it is not easy for non-Chinese viewers to be convinced by wuxia stories, which is usually quasi-historical and surrealistic. But, I hope westerners will not be deterred by the genre because what is more important is the characters' thoughts and feelings. Those in wuxia stories are just as real as any other dramas. There are seven characters and the relationships among them seem a bit complicated. Judging from the Chinese title of the movie, one can tell that the story between Ouyang Feng and Huang Yaoshi is the main plot and others are just the subplots. Huang Yaoshi is deeply in love with The Woman (Maggie Cheung), but she never loves him. Her love is Ouyang Feng who disappointed her however by allegedly taking her love for granted. So she married to his older brother. Ouyang Feng then moved to the desert and lived in solitude. To give himself an excuse for seeing The Woman, Huang Yaoshi befriended with Ouyang Feng and visited him every year. He collected stories about Ouyang Feng and reported back to The Woman. The interesting things are: how much did Ouyang Feng know about the friendship between Huang Yaoshi and The Woman? Could he guess the intention of the annual visit? Did he always know that the (so-called memory erasing) Magic Wine is from his sister-in-law when it was first brought to him by Huang Yaoshi? Did he refuse to try it simply because he does not believe in magic? Or, because he did not want to forget The Woman even she caused so much pain? He however drank it after finding out that The Woman had died. Does it mean that he was secretly hoping for a chance to see her again and so willing to bear the pain associated with his memory? Huang Yaoshi claimed himself to be the loser (in love) at the very beginning because he never got the love from The Woman and probably also because he did not even dare to express his love to her. He is a good seducer, but he could only acts as a gentleman confidant in front of The Woman. His bitterness is evidenced by his withdrawal to live as a hermit after her death. Ouyang Feng says Huang Yaoshi wanted to know how it feels when being loved and that is why he would make women like him. It is sad to Huang Yaoshi because he totally missed the point. He does not need to know how it feels when being liked. He just needs to know how it feels when being liked by a woman he cares. Maggie Cheung stole the show with her performance at the scene where she confessed that she lost to herself as well as Ouyang Feng in their relationship. For her, her love was not appreciated and the only way she could earn her pride back was to shun him altogether. No wonder she was drawn to Ouyang Feng because he is just egoistic as her. For him, he avoids rejection by rejecting others first. But, were they manipulating each other? No, they were just protecting themselves. Sadly they did not know that acting against their own true feelings was actually hurting themselves and each other. Again, no wonder only Ouyang Feng (not Huang Yaoshi) can see through the meaning of the Magic Wine – to know what you have forgot, you have to remember what to forget.The subplot of Murong Yan/Yin is really confusing. And, personally, I am hardly sympathized with her. As to the purpose of the subplot, towards the end, as Ouyang Feng said that it is not difficult to say "You are the one I love the most" – if you are not speaking for yourself. This remark foretells that he is incapable of expressing his love. The subplot also brings in the main plot when Ouyang Feng was imagining his sister-in-law was touching him. The bird cage is a funny prop in the movie. It seems to be suggesting that the characters are just like the birds – trapped.The Blind Swordsman is the most interesting figure outside the main plot. Like Ouyang Feng, he ran away from home after heartbreak. What is different is that his wife, Peach Blossom still loves him and waiting for him. But, he could not forgive her betrayal. He wants to kill Huang Yaoshi (whom his wife falls for) but failed. When the swordsman found Huang Yaoshi, he could not see due to night blindness. After that, he started to work for Ouyang Feng as a contract killer. (It is unclear whether he knew about the relationship between Ouyang Feng and Huang Yaoshi.) Apparently, he just took it as a job, but how much did he do it for money; how much was it of self-destruction and how much did he do it for helping The Girl revenge her brother? Hong Qi is the only character who is not troubled by women. The subplot about him is to show the unreachable ideal of Ouyang Feng, that is, to be true to oneself and do what the heart tells. It is Hong Qi's attitude to life in jianghu as well as to his woman. Desert is the best choice for the setting of the story. The harshness and scarcity of lives in desert parallel the emptiness of the characters' souls; the climatic extremity corresponds to the contradicted feelings harbored in each of their minds. Last but not least, the music is marvelous. It trembles your emotions. As to the cinematography, did Christopher Doyle ever disappoint you? Just fantastic as always!

Chris Knipp This classic ultra-stylized and (in the words of the NYFF blurb) "insanely gorgeous" 1994 martial arts or 'wuxia' film based on the Louis Cha novel 'The Eagle-Shooting Horses' needs no introduction to film fans now, though before Tarantino's release of 'Chungking Exrpess' Americans had to go to Chinatown theaters or rent pirated videotapes to see it; I saw it in Chinatown in a double bill with 'As Tears Go By' (1988). A cinematic icon today, Wong Kar-wai didn't get international recognition till 1997 at Cannes (for 'Happy Together'), and the majority of US art-house viewers didn't notice him till 'In the Mood for Love' (2000). Now ironically since the huge blowout and exhaustion of Wong's epic '2046' (2004), a summing-up of his 60's nostalgia themes and characters, he seems to have reached a point of exhaustion, and his English-language romance 'Blueberry Nights' (2007) was a critical failure. Re-editing 'Ashes of Time' looks like another example of treading water, but it's still great to have it; many have still not seen it, and any films as visually magnificent as Wong's are best seen in theaters. It's also fortunate that all his films can be seen on decent DVD's now with readable subtitles for English speakers, instead of the weird earlier Hong Kong prints with flickering titles in Chinese and peculiar English that disappeared before you could read them. 'Ashes of Time Redux' has the best English subtitles yet both visually and linguistically.According to Wong, 'Ashes of Time' negatives weren't in very good shape, and a search of various versions led him to a huge warehouse somewhere near San Francisco's Chinatown that contained the entire history of Hong Kong movies. He and his team put together various versions, adding a bit to what we already know, digitally cleaning up the images and "enhancing" some of the color and doing things with the sound, adding a new score and "re-arrangement" by Wu Tong including cello solos by Yo Yo Ma.Experts will have to comb over all this to explain the differences. The cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who was present at the press screening of the film at the NYFF, doesn't like the enhancing of the color and neither do I. A lot of yellows and oranges are heightened, greenish-turquoise touches are set in, and many of the desert sand landscapes seem to have lost their surface detail. This seems unnecessary and even obtrusive, but it's not enough to spoil the experience. Other images simply look more pristine and clear. Wong wouldn't say what specific changes were made in the editing. He preferred to talk about how he adapted Louis Cha's novel and how this film relates to his oeuvre. Both for him and for Doyle it was an essential milestone. The cast features the late Leslie Cheung, both Tony Leungs (Chiu Wai and Ka Fai) and Jacky Cheung, and has Maggie Cheung as The Woman and martial arts film great Brigitte Lin as Murong Yin and Murong Yang, the sister and brother. Lin, now retired, was responsible for the revival of the genre and is central to this film, though Maggie Cheung is its diva, its dream lover.Cha's novel is a complicated 4-volume wuxia genre epic, very popular but little known or appreciated in the West. Wong studied it carefully (and made a parody of it called 'Eagle-Shooting Heroes') but then though he says this film unlike all his others had a fixed plan (and thus made for a story full of fatalism), he threw away the story and just took a couple of the main characters and made up another simpler story imagining what the characters' lives were like when they were young. A simpler story. Well. The story has always seemed completely incomprehensible to me but after re-watching 'Redux' it obviously is nonetheless a coherent narrative; it's just intricate and, above all, cyclical. It ends as it begins, with the narrator looking into the camera and repeating the opening lines.'Ashes of Time' was shot in the desert. Doyle had never done that. The film was long delayed and the shoot was difficult. Doyle knew nothing about martial arts or 'Jianghu,' the parallel universe of martial arts fiction. He was under extreme constraints, having very little artificial light. Nonetheless he produced some of the most beautiful sequences in modern film, because he's a great cinematographer, perhaps the greatest of recent decades, as Wong Kar-Wai is one of the defining contemporary cinematic geniuses.Wong is notable for his meditative and arresting voice-overs. Here is a sample: "People say that if a sword cuts fast enough, the blood spurting out will emit a sound like a sigh. Who would have guessed that the first time I heard that sound it would be my own blood?" "You gained an egg, but lost a finger. Was it worth it?" There are aphorisms or bits of advice: "Fooling a woman is never as easy as you think." The film is anchored and structured by the Chinese calendar: the Chinese almanac is divided into 24 solar terms and the narrative moves forward selectively through these terms, which contain weather descriptions (naturally) and advice as to what is propitious or unlucky and in what regions and directions. There is also a great deal about oblivion and forgetfulness (which are linked with wine, including a magic wine that eliminates memory). The desert and drinking are visual touchstones throughout as are pairs, opposites, and contrasts; and there is cross-dressing and perhaps bisexual love. The images are full of flickering light. The sword fights, which do not begin until more than half way into the film, are without the acrobatic feats actually performed or digitally faked as in current martial arts films, though they are elaborately staged by the action choreographer Sammo Hung. They are a symphony of fast cutting, closeups, blurs, and slow motion (which Wong intended particularly to express the fatigue of the Blind Swordsman in the film).