Once More Into The Breech

Jacky Cheung in The Ashes of Time Redux

Even the most ardent American fans of Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood For Love, 2046, My Blueberry Nights) are unlikely to have seen his 1994 epic Ashes of Time. It was made at the height of the glory days of Hong Kong cinema, and took two years to film at an astronomical budget. If you’ve heard of it at all, you probably know it for the story of how Wong, frustrated at the difficulties of editing this movie, decided to take a break from it to clear his mind. He made a film on the sly, shooting at night without permits on the streets of Hong Kong with a script that he made up in the daylight hours. That film was the delightful Chungking Express, which went on to become an international hit. The completed Ashes, while a hit with Hong Kong critics, was a commercial failure that was never released outside of Asia.

Over the years Ashes was re-cut for different markets, usually without Wong’s approval, and the original negatives were lost. (The Chinese DVD release, which up until now was the only one available, was an atrocity.) Last year he decided to restore the film in order to provide a legitimate version of it, as well as to tighten the editing. The result is Ashes of Time Redux, which, unlike Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux, is shorter than its original release.

You might expect it to be the opposite of Chungking Express, the film that was made in opposition to it, and in some respects it is. Inspired by a popular historical novel, it takes place in the western desert of medieval China and is populated by swordsmen and people seeking revenge. But despite the setting it has much in common with Wong’s other films, haunted by themes of love, regret, memory, and identity.

And despite its large budget it is an intimate film, with only a half dozen major characters. It is breathtakingly beautiful, both to look at (the cinematography is by Christopher Doyle) and to listen to (Yo Yo Ma contributes to the new score, which is largely an orchestral version of the original electronic score).

Sitting in a theater where it is playing was, for me, such a rapturous experience that I regretted the time I spent trying to follow the plot, which is next to impossible to do. There may only be a half dozen characters, but one of them is a woman pretending to be a man (Brigitte Lin, of course, who specialized in gender-bending roles), two are sisters played by the same actress (Maggie Cheung), two are them are played by the two Tony Leungs (Leung Chiu Wai and Leung Ka Fai), several of them have names that are meant to mirror each other, and so on. Nor does it help the confusion that actors in medieval robes and long wigs tend to lose their identities in their costumes. My advice to you is to read a plot synopsis before you see this, just so you can get that hurdle out of the way. But by all means go to see this gorgeously dream-like film on the big screen while you can.