Excellent adaptation.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

ASHES OF TIME REDUX is one of those films that I just don't see eye to eye with. I'm no fan of arty farty, insubstantial, abstract movies full of posturing, hidden layers and complex character machinations, and this is one of those films. It's supposed to be an ultra-stylish martial arts historical film, but I just found it an ultra bore.We're saddled with Leslie Cheung's boring philosophiser for much of the running time, while more interesting characters – like Tony Leung's myopic swordsman – come and go in the blink of an eye. Although billed as an action film, there are only around two fight sequences in this one, each filmed in a wooshy-wooshy fluid slow-motion style so that it's difficult to see what's going on. You get the idea that the director looks down on 'action' films and is going out to his way to make an obtuse, audience-unfriendly motion picture. It's an art film where I just don't see the art; as a result, I found this a worthless waste of time.

I had the same issues with Wang Kar Wai's other movie "2046". Whats this all about? Mortality, love, existence. It's somehow about all of this. In other movies these themes are dealt with in the background of a plausible or implausible story. Here they are dealt with head-on, in what feels like a long hypnotic "dream poem" that is more symbol than story. There is the deep Camus-like narrator voice in the background saying stuff like "She waited frozen under deep unrelenting waves and the smell of eucalyptus" (not a line from the movie, but it could be). Maybe there is a lot that isn't easily translated. So it's confusing both intentionally and unintentionally. At the same time there is some kind of majestic beauty to it. It is mostly quiet and moody but erupts occasionally with little bouts of violence. To be honest I hardly understood any of this movie (full credit to whoever wrote the IMDb synopsis) but I was left with an impression - a feeling, a mood, an emotional state - which may have been the whole point.

My own memory is scattered in the ashes of time, and I really need to re-view the original to see if my memory holds, but here is my impression. I'd give the original a 10. This one rates an 8. The two together are probably a 12.I personally didn't like the amped up color. I gather that one of the things that happened when the filmmaker rediscovered a warehouse full of bootlegs was that there were some terrible copies that distorted the color, and he liked and played with that. This version also seemed more static than I remember--a lot of shots seem to have been done with still or very short segments of film. I have to see the original again to see if that's really the case, or if it is just my memory that there were more frames of action in the original. This often felt like it was cut from snippets. For example, the shifting sands under the title was a pair of superimposed images moving in different directions. Was that the case originally as well?I loved the original but also could never quite follow the plot. Redux slices and dices (or-rather-unslices) so that each story is parceled together and the blurring that is going on in the interactions on-screen (for example, the Yin/Yang sibs) does not spill over quite as much into the interaction between viewer and screen. Redux shakes out the story lines so you can parse them. I miss the mystification, and don't think it's a net gain. I also think something else may be going on here... If you remember the original (or have a copy to view), tell me what you think of this reading: The point of view of the story seems to have shifted from Huang Yaoshi to Ouyang Feng--although because of how the movie mixes action, memory and stories it is hard to tell. In the original, we followed the wandering Huang as his memory unspooled. Part of the difficulty for a viewer in understanding was the difficulty that his point of view had, because he was moving through a world of consequences without his memory to root understanding. The story flowed in pieces which might have been his splintered memories-ashes of time- or might have been others'. Things that he is told by unreliable narrators are accepted at face value until experience tells him otherwise. Events are repeated in variation as his understanding of them waxes and wanes.In this version, the narrator (Huang Yaoshi) is fixed and the world comes to him. Things enacted in the first movie (for example, the encounter between Huang and Murong) with all the attendant ambiguity of living sequence, are instead recounted, with the flattening filters of narrator and listener. Unlike Huang, Ouyang accepts nothing at face value. So each event is more clearly arranged in a narrative, but all the narratives are filtered in the same way by a mind that rejects nuances that it can't fit to its particular ego. It is only at the end that Ouyang gains an insight that he may have missed things as important as his life's love as a result of his fear and pride.The story consists of interlocking circles,organized around male-female pairs. Ouyang and his true love are separated because of mutual pride and unwillingness to be the first to declare love; Huang plays messenger between them, never telling the woman his own love for her. This story of two men and a woman is mirrored in a minor key in another triangle which engages Huang. In this one, passion was realized with unhappy consequences for all. Huang seduced his best friend's bride. At the time of the story, the blind husband encounters the memoryless Huang. Just as the moment to tell love had gone by for the lovers in the first triangle, the moment to enact revenge has slipped past the rivals. The subsidiary stories also have evenly balanced male and female parts. The balance of male and female is concentrated to a point in Murong, who manifests that experience as a spinning latticed cage, sexual identity as a trap. Hong Qi, the natural, is steadfastly pursued by his wife, who ignores his rejection and simply acts to do what she thinks is right. The girl who wants revenge for her brother mirrors Ouyang. Each believes they have only one thing to sell, and each expects to be able to withhold the self from the exchange. For each, it takes another person's wound to break the trance of transactions. Whatever is going on Wong Kar Wai and Christopher Doyle are gods.

This review is of the original cutMartial Arts film as spaghetti western.Wong Kar-Wai makes a martial arts film that is a visual wonder-though its mostly close ups-and a bit hard to decipher because the story is told in what could be generously said to be a fragmented style (and has a great number of close ups). Its has something to do with two friends who meet every year to drink, wine that makes you forget your past, revenge, another swordsman and some other things that I didn't quite pick up. I'm not sure what to make of the film. The dialog is really great, but at the same time walks that knowing sort of edge that makes me wonder what Kar-Wai was up to. Apparently breaking down since in the middle of making this he wandered off to clear his head by making Chungking Express. I liked it as pieces because I can get my hands around the pieces but as a whole I'm not to sure of the plot-if its good-if it means anything.Kar-Wai has cut the film once more which from reports seems to be close to the original cuts with a few changed shots, some image manipulation and a slight alteration in music. I have no idea if this will improve or detract from the film which some people see as a a masterpiece. Some things I've read have tried to put the film into a context based upon Wong Kar-Wai's other films, implying that if you've seen other films by the same director this film will be easier to digest. Maybe, but I'm not too sure since it plays differently than any of his other films (and I've seen most of them).I don't know. I'm going to have to ponder this.