Ashes Of Time Review

Review and Analysis of Ashes Of Time

Ashes Of Time was the second Wong Kar Wai movie I saw (after Chungking Express), and all I knew about the movie beforehand was that it was a period martial arts movie which somehow disappointed many martial arts fans.

I think I can see why.

Definitely a ‘Wong Kar Wai film’ in terms of style and theme, the way that martial arts is involved is oblique compared to the usual action movie. Apparently, the source material is from Jing Yong’s classic wu xia story, The Eagle Shooting Heroes. I don’t know the story, but I think I can guess that the adaptation is elliptical at the very least.

What I can say though, is that in the right mood, with the right level of receptiveness this film soars. Perhaps some perfect conjunction between viewer perception and auteur vision is the key here: I have no idea, but the result was that this film became an unforgettable experience. And yet, one gets a sense of how this film really is on the edge: between alienating through its grand, for want of another word, pretentiousness, but also possessing a rare, near pure emotive quality which surpasses understanding of artifices, tropes and techniques to connect at a profoundly human level with epiphany-like clarity. Watching for the first time, I felt that there were so many ways I could be turned off, be disappointed and not connect with this film: it teased with clues so slowly, I often felt it was failing to communicate with the viewer, new concepts appeared to be toyed with without any concrete results, new avenues of narrative and characterisation appearing and disappearing without apparent point. Most of this is quite typical of Wong Kar Wai, but I felt irked then. Yet I couldn’t disengage myself from the film. There is no single moment of epiphany or realisation that transforms all the confused ends into a coherent whole, but as the end felt closer it became clearer that I was being made to understand the film and feel it grow in greatness.

Having said all the above, the film actually doesn’t require effort to watch. For all its quirks and conceits and stylisms, by moments of sublime brilliance (particularly technically), the film reaches out and is absorbed. Well before I knew what was going on, the very first scene had me in awe: the thump of the soundtrack, a change in tempo, the credits giving way to the two main characters, the rolling sea, a flash of swords (and an exploding mountain), the two characters again... does it really need a meaning when it has such feeling?

At its base, the film has Leslie Cheung’s character going through the motions which help show us who he is - and perhaps why he is so. Through his various interactions we see his cold cynicism and lack of feeling, his mercenary morality and cool outlook. Slowly, as we tease out a present narrative for those who come across him, we get glimpses of a past narrative which may just help us understand him. The various time plays make matters exceedingly hard for first time viewers (who may not realise that Brigitte Lin’s tale happens before the start of the story), but what can be said is that his history (his relationship with Maggie Cheung) is so very simple when stated that it is laughable. Yet Wong Kar Wai manages to build up concept over concept eventually dragging us into the feelings of his characters in a way one would never have felt possible. The concepts then grow to have a life of their own, so that the movie, aside from being about characters and their feelings, becomes a grand meditation on various themes: loss, regret, memory and choice being some of the clearest.

Tony Leung Kar Fei forms the ‘Evil East’ of the Chinese title (against Leslie Cheung’s ‘Malicious West’), and his character seems to flow into the spaces of the narratives which Leslie encounters, bringing his own spin to the movie’s themes. We see how he is connected to the Blind Swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and his wife (Carina Lau), how he affects Brigitte Lin’s character. Eventually we even see him as part of the connection between Leslie Cheung and Maggie Cheung. His character professes that his tragedy is that he wishes to know how it feels to be loved, yet he only seems to hurt people. We see him as part of a love triangle (including the Blind Swordsman and his wife), perhaps bizarrely even part of a triangle of hurt and rejection involving both ‘halves’ of Brigitte Lin. Finally we see him profess his love for Maggie Cheung, but refrain from acting choosing instead to envy Leslie Cheung’s place in her heart and admire her without reciprocation. This reflects the reference to envy at the start of the film - felt by both Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung Kar Fei, perhaps because of their own regret and loss. For Tony’s character, to forget is his solution. Perhaps more as a metaphorical statement of intent rather than actually being any magic potion, we see Tony with his amnesia wine (supposedly given by Maggie Cheung but associated, thematically throughout the film to Tony), which he consumes (professing to forget his past) whilst also proffering to others (to Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, signalling his wish for forgiveness after losing his friend).

In the end, we see that the attempts to forget can never be total. Leslie Cheung chooses to remember for all eternity (ironically, mirroring Takeshi Kaneshiro in Chungking Express), whereas Tony Leung Kar Fei says that he has forgotten much - except his attachment to peach blossoms (thematically connected to his ex-lovers), meaning he hasn’t forgotten at all. Instead, his facade of amnesia enables him to encounter Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Carina Lau early on in the film, at a point when the audience know nothing, and they all react to him with the full weight of their histories whilst he appears, like the audience, to be a bemused stranger meeting them for the first time. It is only later that we learn that he really does remember, that he specifically sought reconciliation with the Blind Swordsman, and we glimpse him chasing after a fleeting Brigitte Lin who ‘touched him in his dreams’. The concept of the fleeting dream perfectly captures the world of missed chances, memories and regretful losses which is at the heart of Ashes Of Time.

‘If you have to lose something, the best way to keep it... is to keep it in your memory’: Maggie’s screen-time barely adds up to ten minutes, half of the time spent on still-life close-ups of her face. Yet she is a poignant crux to the story in a way which is remarkable