A poster features Leslie Cheung. [Photo: sohu.com]
Fifteen years ago, when as his career was just starting to take off, Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai made a martial arts movie, his only one so far. An adaptation of Louis Cha's famous martial arts novel The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, Ashes of Time it was, as his films would later be, a vague and strikingly beautiful piece of work. With the original negatives lost and multiple versions now floating around the world, Wong had long wanted to return to Ashes of Time for a restored, remastered and definitive cut. The result is Ashes of Time Redux.
Set in ancient China, Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung) is a fallen swordsman driven by greed toward both friend and foe. He is a perpetual loner and afraid of love after having his heart broken but the bounty hunters who work for him, like "Blind Swordsman" (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Hung Chi (Jacky Cheung), discover the intangible secret of true love and teach him precious lessons.
Wong's film had stunning photography, from a palette that included searing acid yellows and scorched ambers and reliant on reflected light and layered images.
Shot in China's remote Gobi Desert, it featured possibly the most impressive cast ever assembled in Hong Kong cinema. Even the production crew, which includes action choreographer Sammo Hung, production designer William Chang Suk-ping and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, are now all legends in their own fields.
The film is no traditional Wu Xia movie, though - it remains the most abstract of Wong's works and a poetic dream on unreturned love and memory.
The film is set in five parts, representing four seasons in the Chinese almanac, Lichun, Jingzhe Xiazhi and Bailu. Wong clarifies the central narrative while intensifying the film's most inspiring moments, including a vital scene in which Maggie Cheung delivers her sorrowful soliloquy. The biggest change is the soundtrack: gone are the synthesizer tracks, replaced by lush orchestral movements with cello by Yo-Yo Ma.
In Ashes of Time Redux, Wong has streamlined the narrative without losing the essence of the original work. It is an aural and visual feast that will doubtless prove as timeless as its star, the late Leslie Cheung.
The long-anticipated movie opens this weekend.
