東邪西毒 Ashes Of Time Redux 2008 동사서독 1994

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashes of Time is a 1994 Hong Kong film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, and loosely based on four characters from Louis Cha's wuxia novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes.

Wong completely eschews any plot adaptation from Cha's novel, using only the names to create his own vision of an arguably unrelated film. During the film's long-delayed production, Wong produced a parody of the same novel with the same cast titled The Eagle Shooting Heroes.

 

Although it received limited box office success, the parallels Ashes of Time draws between modern ideas of dystopia imposed on a wuxia film has led many critics to cite it as one of Wong Kar-wai's most underappreciated works.

In 2008, Wong re-edited and re-released the film under the title Ashes of Time Redux that, despite the digital restoration, presents a shorter cut. The redux version is at the moment the only good-quality edition available on the market (theaters and home video).

 

 

 

 

 

Plot

In this film, set in ancient times in China, Leslie Cheung plays an agent, Ouyang Feng, hiring famous bounty-hunters. His character is portrayed as a fallen swordsman driven by greed and heartless to both friend and foe. He was perpetually being spiteful of love as his own love history was not nearly so beautiful. His bounty-hunters came and went as was narrated by Ouyang Feng himself as based on the Tung Shu predictions.

 

In essence, he was a loner with little love, but the bounty hunters that worked for Ouyang Feng, like Blind Swordsman and another of his best fighters, Hong Qigong, discovered the intangible secret of true love while Ouyang retained his attitude towards his fighters and the precious lessons that they have taught. However, the thread that runs through the entire narrative has clearly the spirit of refusal in the sense that one should reject another before he gets to be rejected in the future. To illustrate, nearly every character in this story has resorted to being selfish and malignant in order to prevent being rejected by others, be it in love or in comradeship as their individual hardships have moulded their attitude turning them into heartless and cold individuals in order to survive in the uncompromising desert where the story is set.

 

It has many moral implications but is less evident since the main character is Ouyang himself and most of the narration would unquestionably be centred on him.

 

 

 

 

Cast

Leslie Cheung as Ouyang Feng

Brigitte Lin as daughter of Murong clan

Maggie Cheung as Ouyang Feng's sister-in-law

Jacky Cheung as Hong Qigong

Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Blind Swordsman

Tony Leung Ka-fai as Huang Yaoshi

Li Bai as Hong Qigong's wife

Carina Lau as Blind Swordsman's wife

Charlie Yeung as Girl with mule

 

 

 

Soundtrack

The music was composed by Frankie Chan and Roel A. García, and produced by Rock Records in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It was released in 1994.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashes of Time Soundtrack - Prelude - A Lonely Heart

 

 

 

 

 

 

Critical

When the film opened in Hong Kong it received mixed reviews. Critics found it so elliptical that it was almost impossible to make out any semblance of a plot, something very rare in a wuxia film.

 

In the New York Times, Lawrence Van Gelder also gave Ashes of Time a mixed review:

For those who seek metaphors, Ashes of Time... presents the eye as well as the illusions of vision. one character is nearly blind. Another, a swordsman, goes blind in the middle of a horrendous battle. Two characters, Yin and Yang—one presented as a man, the other as his sister—are identical. And there is a brief appearance by a legendary sword fighter who hones his skills against his own reflection.

 

For those who seek battle, Ashes of Time offers intermittent blurs of action, streaks of flying figures, flashing steel, and rare spatters and gouts of moist crimson, all washing across the screen like hurried brush paintings.

Like the attainment of wisdom, Ashes of Time requires a long journey through testing terrain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love Theme (cello solo by Yo-Yo Ma)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The film’s restored version has finally been shown for the first time at Cannes, and the reviews are in.

 

 

The Hollywood Reporter

The film is still a formal wonder, as it was 15 years ago, full of Wong’s signature step-printing technique, his off-kilter shooting angles and a flamboyant visual style that often produces something more like an abstract ｅxpressionist painting than a movie. But while it’s hard to be definitive about what’s different in the new version without comparing it shot by shot with the old, the music seems much more powerful and more fully keyed-in to the action, and the color is saturated and intensified to make the film even more stylized than it already was.

 

 

Boston.com

After Indy, I schlepped to “Ashes of Time Redux,” Wong Kar-wai’s remix (photo, above) of one of his earliest films and certainly his only martial arts movie. The original 1994 “Ashes,” which I haven’t seen (it’s available in a poorly done DVD version) apparently didn’t make much sense, and it certainly doesn’t now, but, lord, is it a vision to behold — a wu xia film turned into an abstract ｅxpressionist action painting. I believe the only redux-ing that has been done is a digital clean up, some trimming, and a new score with cello solos by Yo-yo Ma. In that case, what Wong and cinematographer Cristopher Doyle (who were present at the screening, along with the cast) created 14 years ago is either a masterpiece of in-camera wizardry or a triumph of lab work.

 

 

Variety, on the other hand, not so much. Apparently the reviewer never liked the original to begin with, so it was probably too much to ask him to like the redux:

New version of Wong’s genre-bender runs two minutes shorter than the Venice print and five minutes shorter than the Hong Kong version. (Latter was bookended by swordplay montages to increase the action quotient, as there’s relatively little fighting in the very philosophical, talky film.) But apart from a few dialogue excisions, added intertitles denoting various Chinese solar terms, and Taiwanese actress Brigitte Lin now speaking her own dialogue in Mandarin, it’s basically the same densely plotted movie that played Venice.

Movie is still an amazingly bold take on an established genre — as bold visually and structurally for its time as “Hero” (also lensed by Doyle) was to be eight years later. But it’s now a picture divored from its true cultural and temporal roots.

Variety’s review notwithstanding, it sounds like anyone who has appreciated the film back in the day will appreciate it even more now. Hopefully we’ll have a DVD that’s finally worth owning on top of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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. This film is one of the most celebrated examples of 1990s Hong Kong cinema: it won multiple awards in its native Hong Kong, along with a Golden Osella for Best Cinematography at the 1994 Venice Film Festival.

 

In the years following Ashes of Time's initial theatrical release, the original negatives were lost and multiple versions of the film began to crop up all across the globe. As a result, director Wong Kar-wai longed to compile these various versions into a restored, remastered, and definitive final cut. With Ashes of Time Redux, the director restructures the film according to seasons, effectively clarifying the central narratives, and digitally colorizes the film to render cinematographer Christopher Doyle's masterful imagery all the more lavish and intoxicatingly gorgeous. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashes_of_Time

http://www.answers.com/topic/ashes-of-time-redux

http://www.beyondhollywood.com/reviews-for-wong-kar-wais-ashes-of-time-redux/