Follows the life of a heartbroken middleman for hit-men, Ou-yang, through his now and memories of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring (and is probably the movie to inspire Kim Ki-Duk's "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … Spring") … Also touches on the life of Huang Yaoshi , whom is the center of many love interests during the year's drought------ WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS ------Spring: Huang pays a visit to Ou-yang every Spring every year. This time he comes with a gift, a magical wine with the ability to make the drinker forget his memories. Huang travels around the desert to share his wine, and stops by his childhood friend's house to share the gift with him too. His friend turns it down and vows to kill Huang if they were to ever meet again , but the friend will fall to the curse of blindness soon afterwards ..Ou-yang receives a job from a mysterious person named Murong Yang - to kill Huang Yaoshi for seducing then abandoning his sister. At the same time he's contacted by the little sister to kill her brother Yang, fore he won't allow her to be with Huang. The little sister goes into hiding after she receives a death note from Murong Yin, whom claims she is the real lover of Huang's. After a confrontation with Murong Yang he learns the brother is both Yang and Yin - a severe case of multiple personality disorder ….Summer: Ou-yang is visited by a poor woman who wants to avenge her brother who is slain by a group of bandits. At the same time he is visited by a blind swordsman (Huang childhood friend) who's in need for some extra cash. Ou-yang hires him on the job to fight the bandits .. and as the two await the fated day they reminisce over their love life, their lost loves of the past . Ou-yang lost his love to his brother because he couldn't confess his feelings towards her, the blind swordsman lost his wife to Huang ….Fall: Ou-yang stumbles across a skilled but poor swordsman by the name of Hong Qi. He was warned by a fortuneteller a man named Qi will come into his life and shake up his foundation, so Ou-yang is cautious from the beginning. He gets his new recruit some shoes and they go off to gather requests from the local townspeople. Hong Qi takes the poor woman up on her offer to finish off the last of the bandits, and the job costs him his finger. With new money in his pocket but a lost in skill in swordplay , he decides to depart and travel the mountainside with his wife . Ou-yang becomes envious as they depart, fore he once was in the same position with the woman he loved ….Winter: Ou-yang travels to the homeland of the slain blind swordsman to deliver his dying message to his wife. As he leaves the mountain he reflects on the meaning of "peach blossoms" both the Blind Swordsman and Huang keep speaking off. He suddenly has a realization on why Huang comes to visit him every Spring ..Huang secretly loves Ou-yang brothers wife, and he knows she secretly still loves Ou-yang. Huang visits Ou-yang as an excuse so he can visit Ms. Blossoms, because she wants updates on how he's living. When she passes away she gives Huang a magic vase of wine to give to Ou-yang, with the power to rid of his memory of her …Spring: As Ou-yang waits for Huang yearly visit, he learns of his lovers passing. He understands Huang only excuse for visiting was to go see Miss Blossoms, therefore he'll probably never return again. Ou- yang , overcome with thirst one night, decides to drink the entire vase of magic wine his love left for him. Instead of eliminating his memories, it makes him remember more and more ; in the end he makes the bold decision to turn a new leaf and start his life all over again9/10

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.

I watched the Ashes of Time when I was in high school nearly a decade ago. At that time, director Wong Kar-Wei's In the Mood for Love, a film featuring 28 sets of cheong-sam, got wide recognition in mainland China and Wong Kar-Wei was deemed to be a stylish director with distinguished talent and personality, whose oeuvres became an absolute must to those who consider themselves a tasteful film-fan. To be honest, I did not find out anything substantial in the well-recognized In the Mood for Love though I like his earlier impressionable tragedy-Days of Being Wild, which was permeated by many Hong Kong-made elements from cinematographic point of view. As to the director's "blockbuster"-2046, I deem it as the best interpretation of exhaustion of genius and power. But when I heard that Ashes of Time was redone, I was still interested because it's Wong Kar-Wei's best oeuvre in my opinion. It seems that loneliness is the director's favorite theme, and the imaginative story of three characters – Dong Xie (odd man in east) Xi Du (vicious man in west) and Bei Gai (beggar leader in north) was fantastic. I watched the redone version in cinema, the visual effect is much better,also it looks like that I was taking a nostalgia lesson.

Your ability to enjoy The Ashes of Time may depend on our expectations before stepping into the theater. Even its most strident supporters seem to agree that audiences can be split right up the middle in their appreciation of this unique film.Unlike most HK actioners, the battle scenes are curiously kept at a distance. When they do happen, they're rendered in a jerky style in which it's difficult to make out exactly what's occurring on screen. The dramatic scenes can be extravagantly beautiful, with the of Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, and a roll-call of HK's top acting talent chewing up the scenery. As with some of Wong Kar-wai's early work, the dialog could be more precise. In short, The Ashes of Time requires a forgiving attitude. Released around the same time as Wong Kar-wai's spectacularly successful Chungking Express, it's clear that the director isn't as confident working with the elements of the martial arts film. Anyone looking for tense action is likely to be disappointed. But those intrigued by the director's aesthetic will likely find this a unique experience at the very least.