I have been waiting to this for ages, especially because the last Hong Kong DVD release of this film is bad to say the least (and I don’t even count the American release that cropped off the subtitles and bottom of the Hong Kong disc, then put on new subs and released it), and was more than delighted to be able to finally see this film in the theater. Even more so since this film is tied with Days of Being Wild for my all time favorite film. Wong Kar Wai has masterfully constructed this tale of lost love set as a sort of prequel to novels THE LEGEND OF CONDOR HEROES by Louis Cha, but while it does have martial arts in action in it (with choreography by Sammo Hung Kam Bo), it is not at all the focus, and more a backdrop for these tales of loss. I love that fact that the way the stories are intertwined, that while you can tell what is going on from minute to minute, you really don’t know how it all fits together until the last 10 minutes, when the film just all falls together. The REDUX features a new shorter cut (I can’t remember all the changes, though I do seem to recall some shots of Leslie Cheung battling with Jackie Cheung at the end), which seems to make the film a bit easier to follow, a cleaned up print that has been heavily color corrected and over-saturated (sometimes a bit too much for my taste) and a new score featuring Yo Yo Ma, but which keeps the same musical themes (thankfully) but now fully orchestrated instead of synthesized like the original. This is a must see film, especially this cleaned up version, and I can’t wait to get it on DVD (I would do Blue Ray if I had a player). This is not a straight forward film, though the overall story is pretty simple, but the way it is told, and the emotions portrayed bring this film to a whole other level, which is why Wong Kar Wai is my my favorite director of all time. And after the recent stumble with My Blueberry Nights, it is so great to go back and revisit some of the films that really cemented his lead into my head.

In Ancient China the swordsman Ouyang Feng (the late Leslie Cheung Kowk Wing) lives in a desert and works as an agent, procuring swordsmen to work for pay. He is a cold and bitter man, only out to make money, and not to help others at all. Every year, his close friend Huang Yoashi (Tony Leung Ka Fai) comes to visit him, and this year he arrives with a gift from a friend, which is a wine purported to be magic, that will remove a person’s memories, and make their life easier. Ouyang Feng doesn’t believe in it, so he doesn’t have it, but Huang Yoashi does, and drinks some, and starts to forget, before wandering off in the morning. Ouyang’s next visitor is the swordsman Mu Rong Yang (Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia) who wants Ouyang to kill Huang Yoashi, who has hurt his sister Mu Rong Yin (also Brigitte Lin), because he promised to marry Yang’s sister is he had one, but never showed up. Yin then shows up wanting to pay more to hire Ouyang Feng to have her brother killed, because she loves Huang Yoashi, and doesn’t want to be apart from him. Of course it turns out that Yin and Yang are in fact one person, driven mad by her love for Huang Yoashi, who must have been able to tell that it was a woman he was talking to, and make a drunken declaration he never meant to honor, because his heart already belonged to another.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Next to arrive at Ouyang Feng’s is a swordsman who is losing his eyesight (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) who longs to return to his hometown and see the Peach Blossoms before he dies, but who left because his wife fell in love with his best friend. He comes by and drinks with Ouyang, while awaiting for a bunch of bandits to arrive at the town, but the blind swordsman just hopes they arrive in bright daylight so he can still see. Of course they don’t, and it is cloudy, so while the blind swordsman does manage to kill many of the bandits, one is able to get through and kill him.

A girl arrives to try and get Ouyang to avenge the death of her family, but all she has for payments are eggs. Ouyang refuses her, and tells her she could sell herself, as she is worth more than eggs.

Next arrives a barefooted swordsman named Hong Qi (Jackie Cheung Hok Yau). Ouyang puts him in shoes and sells him to the local village to take out he bandits, and shows him other swordsmen that were killed by the one good fighter they have. Hong Qi begins to change and become more like Ouyang, wanting money, instead of doing good deeds for good. Eventually his wife (Li Bai) shows up, wanting to go with her husband, but he tries to get her to leave but she won’t.

Eventually Hong Qi feels bad for what he has become, and takes the eggs for payment, and goes to avenge her family, though he is wounded and loses a finger in the fight. Ouyang won’t help him as he did not take his advice, and Hong Qi must struggle to recover, but he does, and he ends up leaving to be a good swordsman, though he ends up taking his wife with him.

Ouyang then learns that a year ago in his home town, the wife (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) of his brother died, in fact just before Huang Yoashi arrived, who turns out to have been his brother. We see that Ouyang and the woman were lovers, but he always left her to go on his adventures, so to spite him, she married his brother, but realized she had made a terrible mistake, and was never happy, and that is why she sent the wine, to make Ouyang be happy and forget her.

Ouyang leaves his desert, and on the way goes to visit the hometown of the beggar, where he finds no Peach Blossoms, but instead a woman named Peach Blossom (Carina Lau Ka Ling) who was his wife, and also the lover of Huang Yoashi, who had met her on his trips from his wife to visit his brother Ouyang Feng each year.

At the end we learn that Huang Yoashi became a hermit, having lost his memory, only remembering he loved Peach Blossoms, so he retired in a peach grove. And that Ouyang Feng and Hong Qi eventually battled and killed each other in an epic fight.

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Wow, such an amazing movie. I love this film, even using a quote as one of my e-mail signatures.

“Because I know you’d NEVER, NEVER risk your life for the price of an egg. That’s the difference between us!”

-Hong Qi (Jackie Cheung)

-Ashes of Time a film by Wong Kar Wai

Really a powerful and moving film about what happens to people when they lose the ones they love, and how leaving them can destroy them, or at least make them a hollow shell of what they were. Really a magical film, and Christopher Doyle’s cinematography has never been better.

And this is cool, this is the US Press Kit for the film, which gives some cool info about it!

Ashes of Time Press Kit PDF