'Ashes of Time': Talent to Burn

Martial-Arts Epic Still Has Slaying Power

Like an Akira Kurosawa film processed through a kaleidoscope, "Ashes of Time" (1994) was Wong Kar-wai's third film, by which time it was clear that he was going to pass off hallucinations as motion pictures. "Ashes" was the Hong Kong director's audacious attempt to re-imagine the martial-arts epic. It was a vehicle for the all-star team of '90s Asian art cinema -- Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Carina Lau and the two Tony Leungs (Ka Fai and Chiu Wai). "Ashes of Time Redux," more restoration than reinvention, is a second attempt to get it right, when no one thought he'd gotten it wrong.

According to the director, the film had been circulating in various versions and it had never had an official U.S. release anyway, hence the technological revamping, color saturation and reediting. He didn't need to explain; any excuse to watch this movie again is a good one.

While we are loath to admit it -- because it might scare customers away -- what makes Wong among the most exciting filmmakers of the last 15 years is his near-lack of interest in conventional narrative, his ability to create rather then re-create context, and his need to wallow in lush and lushly fractured visuals. Although set in a feudal China of wasteland and weaponry (it's all so sworded!), "Ashes of Time Redux" is adorned with emerald seas, mauve vegetation, mustard- and wine-flavored wardrobes and a palette otherwise out of '30s Hollywood (the tumescent purples and crimsons of "The Adventures of Robin Hood" came to mind, during at least one of Maggie Cheung's costume changes). The dialogue, via the subtitles at least, is purely modern, and even the four ancient elements of fire, water, earth and air percolate with a kinetic daring. Clouds reflected on a lake resemble an oil slick on a puddle; figures frozen against the horizon seem to be awaiting consumption by molten skies.

Although powered by sweeping adventure and picturesque landscape, the currency of "Ashes"' is really free enterprise and malleable business ethics. Having been abandoned for his brother by the woman he loved, Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung) operates in the desert as a kind of broker -- for contract killings. Tell me who you want dead, he tells customers, and I'll get a swordsman to do the job. One of these subcontractors is Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung Kai Fai), Ouyang's old friend, who brings him a wine that dissolves one's memory; Ouyang doesn't drink, but Huang does, and this leads to disaster when he meets up with a swordsman with a grudge (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), who also happens to be going blind (a nod to the Zaitoichi/blind-swordsman mythos). Meanwhile, here comes Murong Yang (Brigitte Lin, playing a man), who wants Huang dead for having jilted his sister.

The gender-bending gets a bit confusing, but no more so than in Shakespearean comedies. And though "Ashes" isn't a comedy, it's constantly winking. Lin also appears as Murong Yin (yes: yin and yang = brother and sister, it's all a bit high school), but the unbridled passion of the characters, as framed by Wong's longtime collaborator and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, is elevated, and besotted.

Divided into five chapters that correspond to the five seasons of the Chinese almanac, "Ashes" celebrates human beings as misguided missiles of love and devotion. A peasant girl (Charlie Yeung) arrives with a basket of eggs, and the wish to have the men slain who killed her brother. Ouyang won't help her, but the going-blind swordsman will -- in the film's most electrifying sequence, the near-sightless assassin goes up against a horde of bandits. It doesn't end well, but in the circular, seasonal sensibility of Wong's film, you never know whom you're going to see next, or when.

As the seasons change again, a derelict hit man named Hong Qi (Jacky Cheung) shows up looking for work, kills off the rest of the bandits for Ouyang and even avenges the peasant girl's brother; for his trouble, he gets an egg. But he's injured and sickened in the battle, and Ouyang, assuming a rather modern American attitude regarding employer-provided health care, does nothing. The peasant girl nurses him, then leaves, and then Hong Qi's pregnant wife shows up -- who knew? -- and together they ride off for adventure.

It is Ouyang's experience that provides the narrative purpose of "Ashes of Time" -- it is he who develops and changes and learns and regrets. There are, no doubt, more allusions to Chinese culture, symbolism, mythology and literature than we can even pretend to have fathomed while watching this deliriously beautiful movie. And with apologies to all the flat-screen salesmen and mail-order movie companies, it isn't a film to be seen anywhere but on the largest screen available.

Ashes of Time Redux (93 minutes, at Landmark's E Street and Shirlington theaters) is rated R for violence.