kluseba ''Ashes of Time'' is a unique art film which is loosely bound upon Jin Yong's wuxia novel ''The Legend of the Condor Heroes''. Despite two blurry action choreographies, this movie can't be considered as a martial arts movie at all. Due to its philosophical content, its numerous metaphors and examples of symbolism and its calm episodic script, this movie could best be categorized as an art-house drama. The movie is separated into five fragments according to the four seasons with the spring season representing both introduction and coda of this piece of art. The director doesn't offer any conclusion to its vague story and challenges the audience to make sense of this film on its own. The only guiding lines of the movie are the changes of season, the transformation of colourful landscapes and the topic of unrequited love and how to deal with this depressing fate. Each character has faced, currently faces or will face a desperate love relationship and everyone of them tries to find a different solution: one of them simply tries to forget the past, another one seeks refuge in isolation and another one wants to assassinate the one who causes all the emotional and mental suffering. In the end, none of the characters can find a satisfying answer on their quest for redemption. Despite the depressing tone, the beginning of the movie can be interpreted as the origin of a quest for redemption while the coda might be seen as an optimistic attempt at renaissance.This film can be interpreted in at least two ways. One possibility is that the main location in form of a bare cabin in the desert is a meeting point for solitary souls who feel outcast from society and who are absorbed by their mental problems. The main character listens to their different stories and often manages to find solutions for them but he is still unable to solve his own problems. Another possibility is that this movie is only about the main character and that the side characters only exist on his confused mind and represent different sides of his shattered soul looking for salvation.Despite its colourful journey, inspiring philosophical content and revolutionary visual component, this courageous piece of art is not appropriate for mainstream audiences and might even be hard to digest for passionate cineasts. The movie's pace is extremely slow and it contains several noticeable lengths towards the middle. While the few fight choreographies could have spiced things up a little bit, they happen to be rather redundant, slow and unspectacular.In the end, you should absolutely watch this if you have an open mind for philosophical art-house experiments that request your intellectual participation in the movie. You should avoid it if you are expecting a vivid wuxia movie or a tense martial arts film because your expectations won't be met and you will end up being disappointed.

etudiantemo I watched the Ashes of Time when I was in high school nearly a decade ago. At that time, director Wong Kar-Wei's In the Mood for Love, a film featuring 28 sets of cheong-sam, got wide recognition in mainland China and Wong Kar-Wei was deemed to be a stylish director with distinguished talent and personality, whose oeuvres became an absolute must to those who consider themselves a tasteful film-fan. To be honest, I did not find out anything substantial in the well-recognized In the Mood for Love though I like his earlier impressionable tragedy-Days of Being Wild, which was permeated by many Hong Kong-made elements from cinematographic point of view. As to the director's "blockbuster"-2046, I deem it as the best interpretation of exhaustion of genius and power. But when I heard that Ashes of Time was redone, I was still interested because it's Wong Kar-Wei's best oeuvre in my opinion. It seems that loneliness is the director's favorite theme, and the imaginative story of three characters – Dong Xie (odd man in east) Xi Du (vicious man in west) and Bei Gai (beggar leader in north) was fantastic. I watched the redone version in cinema, the visual effect is much better,also it looks like that I was taking a nostalgia lesson.

crossbow0106 I saw this at the New York Film Festival in which Bridgette Lin, who was in the first segment of the film, was there. She still looks beautiful. This film is not a remake, it is a redone version of the film, a 1992 drama set and shot in the Chinese desert in which Ouyang Feng (the late Leslie Cheung) plays a person for hire, mostly to kill others. Through the film, you see various people enter his life, and their stories are told in the passing of the seasons. This absolutely stellar casts includes Maggie Cheung, both Tony Leungs, Carina Lau and Jacky Cheung, along with Bridgette Lin and Leslie Cheung. The film chronicles tales of love, lust, betrayal, vengeance, pain and yearning admirably. There is also excellent swordplay in this film, but the real brilliance of this film is the cinematography by Christopher Doyle. The desert is punctuated with wind & sandstorms, and many images are purposely blurred. Really, if you are a film buff of any kind, this film is essential viewing for the cinematography alone. The film is more dramatic than violent and you are filled with a sense of foreboding throughout, wondering what will happen next. I never saw the film in its original incarnation, so I can't compare, but if you did see the film and liked it you have to see this. If you're a fan of director Wong Kar Wai, this is also essential viewing. Do yourself a favor and try to catch this film in a theater, where you can enjoy the overall majesty of it. Not a perfect ten only because at times it is a bit hard to follow, but stay with it and you'll be rewarded with a great cinematic experience.

guneo As a Chinese, I had chance to watch Kar Wai Wong's movies in my childhood. One of them is Dung che sai duk. But at that time, I couldn't even understand any of the actor's lines. Didn't understand why they people fight or cry. Then I fell asleep.But after many years, when I went to university, when the girl I deep in love with left me to another country. I saw DVD of this film again, alone. And this time I cannot help enjoying it. Every actor's line touched me very very much.What's behind the mountain? May be another mountain, and another. How wonderful it'd be to forget the past. Everyday would be a new beginning. Isn't that great? What's love? Maybe love is to leave the one you love, to win the one then finally find you have lost everything including yourself.Now I have my job and new life. Many things have been past for a long time. And this movie, I cannot remember some of the scenes. But sometimes I still recall lots of words they say. When I am alone, when I feel gloomy or a little bit sad, the words will come to my mind with beautiful music and the scene of huge desert.In this world, something's gonna change, something's not. If you cannot have someone, the only thing you can do is not to forget.I will never forget.