Though Wong Kar Wai is not a director for everyone, he is undeniably a great one. The auteur is known for such original and romantic films as Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, and his 2007 debut in English, My Blueberry Nights. Now, Wong has re-released a piece from 1994—now known as Ashes of Time Redux—that he directed, produced, and wrote. Featuring the best actors of Hong Kong cinema (Leslie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung) and solos by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, it is based on a celebrated martial arts novel, The Eagle Shooting Heroes, set in an imagined ancient China.
According to Wong Kar Wai, the novel is the “second best-seller in China, only after Chairman Mao’s book.” Rather than a straightforward adaptation, Wong chose to create his own story about the early lives of two main characters who appear only as old men in the novel: Dongxie (Lord of the East) and Xidu (Lord of the West). “I tried to depart a little from the traditional martial arts genre,” he said. “I wanted to see them as ordinary people—at the stage before they became heroes.”
However, Wong’s plans didn’t quite turn out as he wished. Having once called Ashes of Time his “most unfortunate child,” Wong now wishes to give his work new life. “I always regretted that the way we had to make Ashes of Time back then didn’t allow us to achieve the technical standards the film needed,” he wrote. The new version is enhanced in both sight and sound, and, significantly, is finally being theatrically released in more locations around the world, including the United States.
Drenched in color and shot in the deserts of Inner Mongolia, the film was made in typical Wong Kar Wai fashion—without a script—and it asks big questions through small themes, focusing especially on the relationships between men and women. In Wong’s movies (yes, even in martial arts ones), the plot is not the focus, and ambiguity replaces a concrete resolution. As Christopher Doyle (cinematographer and longtime collaborator with Wong) said at a New York press conference alongside Wong and Lin, “You find a film, you don’t make a film.”
Unfortunately, audiences have generally found Wong’s films difficult to understand. In this one in particular, characters appear and suddenly disappear, and both halves of a brother and sister duo are played by the same actress (Brigitte Lin as both Murong Yin and Murong Yang). Occasionally, the ambivalent sense of direction causes the movie to lag.
Nevertheless, Ashes of Time Redux is more than worthwhile, thanks to its multiple story lines featuring betrayal and lost love and its piercing insight into human nature. Brigitte Lin said, “I am very happy that I made the film before I retired.” So are the viewers.
