Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Michelle Wang First of all, I would like to say that this movie is not easy to understand and it takes more than just one watch to get the idea of it. The director, Kar Wai Wong, is known as a very famous director with unique technique of shooting movies. It is always hard to understand his movie and he likes to use monologue as a special touch. I would like to review this movie from two perspectives: my understanding of the movie from the characters and the techniques the director used to achieve it. The story in the movie happened in a desert which represents city that has been devitalized by modern civilization. As a desert is lack of water, modern city is lack of spiritual pursuing. Every character in the movie is a representation of lack of spiritual aspiration. Modern civilization makes people pursue material possessions more than spiritual and makes people lack of communication and emotionally unstable and complicated. The movie has used a lot of monologue to express modernist's sadness and loss of the decline of classical-ism. Hong Qi's character in the movie is a represent of the peak of modern civilization. He is a simple and honest man that has to become an assassin to live; however, he still kept an honest heart to not kill for an egg (quote from the movie). Here the director is trying to say that even modern civilization is at a peak for modernists to chase, classical-ism is still fighting back. All characters in the movie represent a type of loneliness not because of being alone but emotionally shortage. Everyone is lost at some stage to the modern civilization. Take Mu Rongyan as an example, his/her loneliness drives him/her a split personality. She/he is too lost so that she/he becomes one another and started to talk to himself and becomes more alone. A lot of the monologues in the movie are from Ou Yangfeng's (Xi Du)'s view. His complicated love and hate for his brother and sister in law made him a perfect character on the contrary of classical-ism. Kar Wai Wong used Xi Du's character to represent modern civilization, a cold type full of hatred. The movie used a lot of cool tone to express the depression of classical-ism and the characters' loneliness. There are a lot of monologue used in the movie. We can hardly find any conversation between two characters. More than 100 minutes movie is too short to make an expression, so monologue becomes a good approach. This depression and loneliness we feel all the time from the movie by the monologues represent the complicated emotion of characters. Scenes and music used in the movie have perfectly expressed the loneliness and lose of modernists. Kar Wai Wong designed to shoot the movie from several different angels and edited carefully with music and scenes. Montage has been used very well in the movie. Ashes of time, differs from the traditional type of Kongfu movies. There are no really action scenes but a slow motion of a physical communication between the characters. Kar Wai Wong likes to use the scene of weather change of the desert and lights to be a contrary of modernist's lack of communication. It looks like that the movie shot 6 individual stories vertically; however, the 6 stories are all related. The characters of the stories are somehow overlapped. Even though people may have been hurt and live only in memory and feel vulnerable, it is not right to just escape because the alcohol that said to make people forget about everything is a symbol and it never really existed. Kar Wai Wong has created his own style and art of shooting movies. He is very sensitive about the age and place he lives. In the transition from classical-ism to modern civilization, he sensed this lost that people experience and the affects they get. He is from a unique era from a unique place, Hong Kong, a city that represents several types of cultures which has obviously advantages and disadvantages. The society get developed and lost at the same time. People are lost and lack of communication and unstable to survive. Kar Wai Wong has always been trying to express the loss of classical-ism in his movies. Kar Wai Wong shot a Kongfu movie that was not as a traditional one and tried to reflect the emotion world of modernists. He is very successful on achieving his goal on this particular movie.

Enchorde Recap: A lone swordsman, living in the desert and acting as an agent to other swordsmen, recollects how his life turned out to be as it is. It started with that the woman he loved chose to marry his brother instead, causing him to leave his home town. One of the swordsmen is Huang who is himself in the middle of a complicated love story, where a woman wants to have him killed for having ran away from a promise to marry her younger sister. But the sister wants to hire a swordsman to have Huang protected, and everything is put to an edge when the woman and her sister is really the same person.Comments: I've seen the Redux version released in 2008 of the original that was released in 1994. How the two versions differ I can't say, but the Redux is very heavily stylized in the way of Chinese Wuxia action. That is unfortunate as that style to me seems to have forgotten one of the most important elements of a successful and entertaining movie. A comprehensible story. But true to its style scenery and visual elements seem much more important and much more in focus of writer and director Kar Wai Wong. Therefore there are lots of colorful, very beautiful scenes, that are completely unrelated to the story.The editing and timeline of the story is also mishandled. Much is left out in the scenes, the time line is broken and rearranged in a confusing way. Very slow and calm scenes are suddenly relieved by surprisingly brutal and seemingly unmotivated fights, only to themselves being relieved by something else and unrelated. The result is a confusing and very uninteresting movie.Thanks to these brutal but very few fights, the movie is put into the action genre. The poster and photographs also imply this but could almost be regarded as false marketing. Only a few minutes out of the 90 could be considered as anything like action, the other couldn't be farther away from it. The movie in its entirety is very slow, dull and hence very boring. Not even the rare action filled scenes help since they are so disconnected from the rest of the movie.I might say that I'm not a fan of this Chinese style, since they often seem to be afflicted of these same problems, most importantly that the visual is more important than the story, but Ashes of Time Redux is perhaps the worst example I've seen.3/10

lastliberal Most viewers of this film will know the back story. Kar Wai Wong (2046) collected pieces of his 1994 film Ashes of Time and remastered them to make this film.The first thing you notice is the magnificent cast: Maggie Cheung (2046, Hero), Tony Leung Chiu Wai (Lust, Caution, Hero, Infernal Affairs III), and Tony Leung Ka Fai (Zhou Yu's Train). A hint of excellence to come.Christopher Doyle's cinematography is the next thing to capture your attention. While the area is in the midst of a drought and it is desert, it is painted in a way that draws you into the scene. It is simply a visually stunning film from the opening to the end.The swordplay was a dance of magic and added to the film, but was not the central focus. It was love, lust, betrayal, vengeance, pain and yearning that was displayed beautifully by the magnificent actors to a soft and stirring soundtrack.We want to remember; we want to forget. The seasons come and go as does our lives.

Maggie It is a must-see for Kar-wai Wong's fans. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed as you might have felt towards My Blueberry Nights, which is not bad but just missing something that makes the movie a bit shy of the director's usual style – the lingering melancholy and subtle poignancy. Surely it is not easy for non-Chinese viewers to be convinced by wuxia stories, which is usually quasi-historical and surrealistic. But, I hope westerners will not be deterred by the genre because what is more important is the characters' thoughts and feelings. Those in wuxia stories are just as real as any other dramas. There are seven characters and the relationships among them seem a bit complicated. Judging from the Chinese title of the movie, one can tell that the story between Ouyang Feng and Huang Yaoshi is the main plot and others are just the subplots. Huang Yaoshi is deeply in love with The Woman (Maggie Cheung), but she never loves him. Her love is Ouyang Feng who disappointed her however by allegedly taking her love for granted. So she married to his older brother. Ouyang Feng then moved to the desert and lived in solitude. To give himself an excuse for seeing The Woman, Huang Yaoshi befriended with Ouyang Feng and visited him every year. He collected stories about Ouyang Feng and reported back to The Woman. The interesting things are: how much did Ouyang Feng know about the friendship between Huang Yaoshi and The Woman? Could he guess the intention of the annual visit? Did he always know that the (so-called memory erasing) Magic Wine is from his sister-in-law when it was first brought to him by Huang Yaoshi? Did he refuse to try it simply because he does not believe in magic? Or, because he did not want to forget The Woman even she caused so much pain? He however drank it after finding out that The Woman had died. Does it mean that he was secretly hoping for a chance to see her again and so willing to bear the pain associated with his memory? Huang Yaoshi claimed himself to be the loser (in love) at the very beginning because he never got the love from The Woman and probably also because he did not even dare to express his love to her. He is a good seducer, but he could only acts as a gentleman confidant in front of The Woman. His bitterness is evidenced by his withdrawal to live as a hermit after her death. Ouyang Feng says Huang Yaoshi wanted to know how it feels when being loved and that is why he would make women like him. It is sad to Huang Yaoshi because he totally missed the point. He does not need to know how it feels when being liked. He just needs to know how it feels when being liked by a woman he cares. Maggie Cheung stole the show with her performance at the scene where she confessed that she lost to herself as well as Ouyang Feng in their relationship. For her, her love was not appreciated and the only way she could earn her pride back was to shun him altogether. No wonder she was drawn to Ouyang Feng because he is just egoistic as her. For him, he avoids rejection by rejecting others first. But, were they manipulating each other? No, they were just protecting themselves. Sadly they did not know that acting against their own true feelings was actually hurting themselves and each other. Again, no wonder only Ouyang Feng (not Huang Yaoshi) can see through the meaning of the Magic Wine – to know what you have forgot, you have to remember what to forget.The subplot of Murong Yan/Yin is really confusing. And, personally, I am hardly sympathized with her. As to the purpose of the subplot, towards the end, as Ouyang Feng said that it is not difficult to say "You are the one I love the most" – if you are not speaking for yourself. This remark foretells that he is incapable of expressing his love. The subplot also brings in the main plot when Ouyang Feng was imagining his sister-in-law was touching him. The bird cage is a funny prop in the movie. It seems to be suggesting that the characters are just like the birds – trapped.The Blind Swordsman is the most interesting figure outside the main plot. Like Ouyang Feng, he ran away from home after heartbreak. What is different is that his wife, Peach Blossom still loves him and waiting for him. But, he could not forgive her betrayal. He wants to kill Huang Yaoshi (whom his wife falls for) but failed. When the swordsman found Huang Yaoshi, he could not see due to night blindness. After that, he started to work for Ouyang Feng as a contract killer. (It is unclear whether he knew about the relationship between Ouyang Feng and Huang Yaoshi.) Apparently, he just took it as a job, but how much did he do it for money; how much was it of self-destruction and how much did he do it for helping The Girl revenge her brother? Hong Qi is the only character who is not troubled by women. The subplot about him is to show the unreachable ideal of Ouyang Feng, that is, to be true to oneself and do what the heart tells. It is Hong Qi's attitude to life in jianghu as well as to his woman. Desert is the best choice for the setting of the story. The harshness and scarcity of lives in desert parallel the emptiness of the characters' souls; the climatic extremity corresponds to the contradicted feelings harbored in each of their minds. Last but not least, the music is marvelous. It trembles your emotions. As to the cinematography, did Christopher Doyle ever disappoint you? Just fantastic as always!