Ashes of Time Redux (1994 / 2008)

Ashes of Time Redux (1994 / 2008) Chinese Title: 東邪西毒 Translation: Evil the East, Poison in the West

Starring: Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Kar-Fei, Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Jackie Cheung, Charlie Yeung, Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau

Director: Wong Kar-Wai

Action Director: Sammo Hung

Way back in the old days of Youtube, almost twenty years ago, people would upload Hong Kong movies to the platform in smaller-video increments of 10 minutes. It took a while for the videos to upload with the Internet capabilities of the day, so I often would open a bunch of windows for each part and let them load for an hour or so before sitting down to watch it. That is how I ended up watching Ashes of Time for the first time. I actually thought it was pretty good: not as boring as some reviews suggested (“Dragon Inn minus ‘good’, plus ‘suck’”), with just enough action to satisfy a fight junkie like myself.

A couple of years later, Wong Kar-Wai released his “Redux” cut, which ended up seeing release here in Brazil. I ended up buying a copy at some point, although it took me a few years to actually sit down and watch it—the problem with having money as an adult is that you have more to splurge on movies than you did as a kid, so it’s more probable that you’ll buy more than you have time to watch at a given time. I think I was just nervous about watching Ashes of Time Redux because of some reviews that suggested that the action quotient had been reduced to almost zero. That’s not really the case: the fighting montages that bookend the film are all but removed, but the fight scenes in the story proper itself are still there.

The movie was filmed in 1992 and took two years to edit, which was such an exhausting experience for director Wong Kar-Wai that he made guerilla-style arthouse Chungking Express as a way to unwind from that experience. Ashes of Time was not a huge box office success, although it was a critical darling: Christopher Doyle won awards at three different venues for Best Cinematography; Wong Kar-Wai was nominated for Best Director in Hong Kong and Taiwan (and won at the Hong Kong Critic’s Society Awards); William Chang won awards for both Art Direction and Costume Design; and even Sammo Hung was nominated for Best Action Choreography…to name a few. Director Wong also produced a parody of the source material, Eagle Shooting Heroes, during the editing process for this film. I haven’t seen the film yet, but apparently it features antagonist Ouyang Feng being defeated by a man in a rubber dinosaur costume at the end(!).

Ashes of Time is a prequel to Jin Yong’s Legend of the Condor Heroes, a super-important wuxia novel that has been adapted to film (like the Brave Archer series) and television numerous times over the decades. Set several decades before Jin Yong’s novel, the film tells the origin stories of some of the older kung fu masters in the book, most specifically the main antagonist, Ouyang Feng. Ouyang Feng here is played by Leslie Cheung, one of Wong Kar-Wai’s “muses”—he had been in Days of Being Wild and later in Happy Together. Ouyang Feng has recently left White Camel Mountain after the love of his life (Maggie Cheung, As Tears Go By; Days of Being Wild; and In the Mood for Love), has married his brother. He ends up in the desert in Western China and sets up a little post where he hires out swordsman for different jobs—usually hunting bandits. He is periodically visited by an old friend, Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung #2, i.e. Leung Kar-Fei, of New Dragon Inn and Bodyguards and Assassins). On one visit, Huang Yaoshi presents him with a wine said to cause a person to forget their past. Huang drinks it, but Ouyang Feng refuses to, presumably for fear of forgetting about his past love.

The narrative then goes into a sort of anthology format, telling the stories of three people who show up at Ouyang’s post. The first is a woman (or man?) named Murong Yang (Brigitte Lin, of Chungking Express) who wants to hire Ouyang’s services to kill Huang Yaoshi. Apparently, Huang had promised to marry Yang’s sister, Murong Yin (also Lin), but stood her up. Murong Yin then shows up and asks Ouyang to kill Yang instead. It soon becomes apparent that they are the same person. According to the Wikipedia entry on the film, Murong Yin and Murong Yang are basically a representation of the character Dugu Qiubai, who is a fabled “greatest swordsman” in the novels whose stances can defeat any possible style.

The second story involves a swordsman who is slowly going blind, played by Tony Leung #1 (i.e. Leung Chiu-Wai, who is Wong Kar-Wai’s other muse: Happy Together; Chungking Express; In the Mood for Love; 2046; and The Grandmaster). He wants to make enough money to be able pay for medicine that will enable him to see the “peach blossoms” in his hometown one last time before he goes completely blind. We later learn that “peach blossoms” is his wife’s name. She is played by Carina Lau (Days of Being Wild and 2046) and she has apparently been seduced by Huang Yaoshi, too.

The final story involves a young swordsman, Hong Qi (Jackie Cheung, of As Tears Go By and Days of Being Wild). He arrives at the place looking for work in order to boost his reputation in the Martial World. He takes on two jobs, including a request by a poor girl (Charlie Yeung, of Fallen Angels) to avenge her brother’s murder, in exchange for some eggs. Hong Qi is the character Hong Qigong in the novel, who is the Head of the Beggars Clan and Ouyang Feng’s mortal enemy.

It has been almost twenty years since I saw the original version of Ashes of Time, so although I remembered the general story and individual scenes and character interactions, I didn’t remember enough to make a full-blown comparison between the Redux cut and this one. Reviews say that the story is more cohesive the second time around, the editing flows better, and the score was completely rehauled from Frankie Chan’s synethesizer score to something more orchestrated, complete with music from Yo-Yo Ma (that post-Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon influence).

Fellow B-movie critic Scott Hamilton once made the joke that Wong Kar-Wai movies often feel like they could be the origin stories of a serial killer. In the case of Ashes of Time, that really is the case. Leslie Cheung’s Ouyang Feng is not evil here, but is definitely callous and hurting from his rejection by his (new) sister-in-law. By the end of the film, his unhealed emotional wounds have festered to the point that he is becoming toxic…quite literally: his character in the Condor Heroes novels is known as the Poison of the East.

Like most (all?) Wong Kar-Wai films starting with Days of Being Wild, there is a running theme of amnesia and forgetting the past. In this case, it is quite literal and comes in the form of a special wine that causes people to forget their past. The wine is given to Huang Yaoshi by Maggie Cheung’s character, who wants Ouyang Feng to forget about her and move on. Huang himself drinks it as a way of forgetting his own woes: he never found someone who truly loves him and was jealous of Maggie’s undying love for Ouyang (her rejection notwithstanding), of which his constant womanizing was an ill-chosen coping mechanism. The wine itself is hinted to be a temporary solution at best: those who drink do indeed forget, but are forever haunted by specters of the past that they simply cannot identify.

There is a lot in this film about love and how people do stupid things to those they love, only to regret it later. That is basically the entire story of Maggie Cheung’s infamous monologue at the end. We also see it to a lesser degree with the little-seen Peach Blossom character, who is introduced by an image of her “sensuously” sitting atop a horse, with her bare feet dangling in a way that would make Quentin Tarantino happy (note: it was Tarantino’s love for Chungking Express that helped Wong Kar-Wai become known in the West outside of HK cinephile circles).

The action sequences are few and far between, staged by Sammo Hung during his most difficult professional period. As filming took place in 1992, it would have been at the same time that Sammo had directed the wuxia fan favorite The Moon Warriors. Sammo later worked with Wong Kar-Wai on Eagle Shooting Heroes the following year. This is the film where Sammo really developed his art of blurry slow motion, which would later show up in films like Kung Fu Cult Master; Thunderbolt; and even Mr. Nice Guy. Wong Kar-Wai is not really an action director, so his goal was not to one-up any of the films that Yuen Woo-Ping or Ching Siu-Tung were making at the time. Thus, the short sword battles are more like Impressionistic displays of motion more than complex ballets of traditional Chinese fencing augmented with wires. For the film’s purpose, they do their job. But if you want Sammo doing wuxia, stick with Blade of Fury or Kung Fu Cult Master.

This is one of those movies that I think all Hong Kong cinema fans need to watch at one point, even if it ends up not being their cup of tea. It is well acted by a wonderful cast of Hong Kong legends. It looks great, especially in the Redux version. The direction and editing are very good. It’s just good filmmaking altogether, even if it is a bit slower than what mainstream audiences might be accustomed to.