It's Time for Ashes of Time again

Upon In the Mood for Love's release in the UK I was lucky enough to stand in freezing cold winter weather for six hours, after which I got a standby ticket to watch Wong Kar Wai and Maggie Cheung present the premiere of said movie for the first time in the UK followed by a candid Q&A session. After the film I asked Wong if he had ever thought of reediting any of his films, given the infamous editorial periods that accompany his productions and the - at the time - new market for DVD which took the obscure Laserdisc into the mass market. Scary to think that at the time DVD was a new technology with an uncertain future. He genuinely paused for a long time, and said that he'd thought about it. And the only film he'd perhaps - lots of vagueness here - return to was Ashes of Time. Something that embedded itself in my Hong Kong cinema fanboy mind for nearly a decade now. Well here is the trailer for the rerelease of a beautifully reprinted Ashes of Time. Whether or not you found it too obtuse for a wuxia, there was never a production before or since in the golden age of Hong Kong filmmaking. Not only do they not make them like this any more, I doubt they ever will, again.

As far as that evening long ago, I remember Wong explaining why he did certain confusing things to Cheung that made her feel her character was very elusive. Right there on stage in front of everyone he explained his methodology of purposely affecting this dislocation of identity. Cheung was exasperated, "Why didn't you tell me this while we were shooting." As if she really had never heard this before. Wong paused hiding behind his sunglasses and said quietly "because then you wouldn't have done it that way."



Read everything you'd ever want to know about the rerelease including impressions from Cannes here.