Ashes of Time Redux (2008)

Ashes of Time is a highly stylized Wuxia Western featuring an all star cast. The themes of love, loss, memory, regret, and redemption are played out in a tiny run-down inn/tavern in the middle of the desert run by Ouyang Feng. Swordsmen and swordswomen and the people who love and left them deal with their feelings, losses and the band of bandits that seem to go on forever.

There are times this film tries too hard to be "artistic" and other times it succeeds. The fight scenes are blurry using a slide-show technique I wasn't overly fond of because it was nearly impossible to tell what was going on. Other times the grainy colorization worked and was beautiful.

Most of the characters are dealing with the consequences of the bad choices they've made or the problems created by inaction. Only one character seems to overcome this dilemma by making choices that guide him away from being simply a cold-blooded killer and able to love as well.

Yo Yo Ma does a great job of re-imagining Frankie Chan's original score from the 1994 movie. The music enhanced the scenes and the emotions being played out.

This film can be confusing as the characters' faces are often half-hidden and the story doesn't always play out in chronological order, making heavy use of flashbacks. I honestly need to watch it again to make better sense of the story.

Ashes of Time is often thrown into the love it or revile it category because of it's different artistic take on the classic wuxia tales. If you enjoy wuxias it's worth a try, you might be pleasantly surprised.

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I saw the original version back in the ’90s while following Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s filmography and it was my first encounter with Wong Kar-wai. I didn’t know who he was at the time nor the fact that this was an insane cast, and although I forgot much of the movie, the lingering feeling it left me with after it ended has stayed with me to this day.

This past month I’ve had the opportunity to revisit WKW’s work, and I came across this 2008 Redux version (edited to correct year), in which the director rearranged certain elements. While watching it, I realized that all the scenes had remained fresh in some dark chamber of my mind, because as they appeared on screen, the memories came flooding back — yet I still couldn’t predict the following scenes. Quite an experience!

Now, with more knowledge of Chinese and Eastern culture in general, I realize this is WKW’s version of how Eastern Heretic, Western Venom, and Northern Beggar came to be, and I have even less doubt than before that Xu Bing is a great admirer of Wong Kar-wai. Having seen the trailer for his upcoming Remnants of Gold, I can clearly see the homage to Ashes of Time.

Another director who, I can tell, has liked Wong Kar-Wai filmography is Yu Xiaochen, the director of Back to the Origin, who must also admire Christopher Doyle’s cinematography, as he worked as a cinematographer himself before making his directorial debut.

And it also turned out that I did know Jacky Cheung from his glorious days — I just didn’t realize it lol.

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