Ashes of Time Redux

Genre: Action, Drama, Foreign

Runtime: 93 mins

Rated: R

Release Date: 2008

Countries: Hong Kong

Languages: Mandarin

DIRECTED BY:

Wong Kar Wai

WRITTEN BY:

Wong Kar Wai

CAST INCLUDES:

Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Leslie Cheung, Jacky Cheung

ANGELIKA’S NOTE

Master Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai directed this lyrical, dream-like martial arts epic. A famously troubled shoot, the film took two years and 40 million dollars to produce (a shocking sum for a national cinema populated with low-budget quickies) and features a virtual who's who of the Hong Kong film world. Conceived as a prequel to the popular martial arts novel The Eagle-Shooting Hero by Jin Yong, the movie is less a straightforward action thriller than a visually striking meditation on memory and love. It nominally centers on Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), who ekes out a lonely existence as an itinerant hired sword. Getting on in years and tormented by memories of a lost love, he also works an agent for other mercenary assassins from his remote desert abode. Ouyang's old friend and fellow swordsman, Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung Kar-Fai, who starred in the The Lover) drowns his lovelorn misery in a magical wine that makes him forget. Later, a mysterious young man named Murong Yang (Brigitte Lin) hires Ouyang to kill his sister's unfaithful suitor, Huang Yaoshi. The following day, that spurned sister, Murong Yin (Lin again), hires Ouyang to protect her dearly beloved. Meanwhile, Hong Qi (pop star Jacky Cheung) finds some redemption for a life of killing by accepting a poor girl's offer to avenge her brother's death -- a task that Ouyang brusquely shunned. In another subplot, a master swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) is slowly going blind. He agrees to defend a village from horse thieves so that he can afford to go home and see his wife before his eyesight fails completely.

SYNOPSIS

Ouyang Feng is a heartbroken and cynical man who spends his days in the desert, connecting expert swordsmen with those seeking revenge and willing to pay for it. Throughout five seasons in exile, Ouyang spins tales of his clients’ unrequited loves and unusual acts of bravery.

Ashes of Time Redux

Genre: Action, Drama, Foreign

Runtime: 93 mins

Rated: R

Release Date: 2008

Countries: Hong Kong

Languages: Mandarin

DIRECTED BY

Wong Kar Wai

WRITTEN BY

Wong Kar Wai

CAST INCLUDES

Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Leslie Cheung, Jacky Cheung

ANGELIKA’S NOTE
SYNOPSIS

"Wong's elliptical, enigmatic storytelling is lent a real lyricism by the stunning photography. It's visually rich, drawn in a colour palette that includes searing acid yellows and scorched ambers and reliant on reflected light and layered images."

Times (UK)

"In a move that would become his trademark, Wong rejects the happy ending for the almost ecstatically sad, making your heart soar even as he tells you, essentially, that it's impossible, all of it -- that it'll never work."

Village Voice

"One feels the passionate intensity of the filmmaker in every strand of his luminously intricate narrative."

Observer