Cinefantastique Online

I think I’m ready to throw in the towel on Wong Kar Wai. Granted, I haven’t seen a lot of his films, but each one I’ve sampled — the semi-noir CHUNGKING EXPRESS, the sorta-sf 2046, and now the quasi-fantasy ASHES OF TIME REDUX — always trips me up on the same element: a sort of emotional inertia that mires each character in place for the duration of the film.

Presented as a prequel to a classic, martial-arts novel, The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, and set in an ancient, desert void, the film centers on Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), a sort of agent for assassins, and the people who orbit around him, including the wandering adventurer Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung Ka Fai), brother and sister aristocrats Murong Yin and Murong Yang (both played by Brigitte Lin), a blind swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), and a young woman (Charlie Young) seeking to avenge her brother’s death. Battles are fought, villages are defended, lives are taken, yet the way these action sequences are mounted is telling: Wai processes each into stop-motion swatches of swirling color, pretty at first sight, but ultimately tedious in the way each conflict devolves into incomprehensibility.

The director’s intent is obvious: This isn’t supposed to be about action. But the drama — most of it centered on Yaoshi and the impact he’s had on each of the other characters — barely moves during the film’s ninety minutes. Characters stare off into the void and express their regrets, but exhibit little motivation to act on their feelings. Most frustrating is the sequence with those sibling aristos, who repeatedly appear individually before Feng to order up conflicting hit contracts, and who may be two people, or one person, or figments of Feng’s imagination, or something. Humor is implied in the ambiguity, but doesn’t really express itself as the sequence plays out.

Wai originally made this film in 1992, and has only now been able to edit it into the form he originally intended, hence the REDUX. One has to celebrate a filmmaker finally being able to fulfill his vision, and those people enamored of Wai will probably be in heaven at the result. For those of us who prefer that drama encompass a bit more of an emotional journey, this will seem a peculiarly static exercise in kinetics.

ASHES OF TIME REDUX (Sony Pictures Classics, 2008; 93 mins.) Directed by Wong Kar Wai. Cast: Leslie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Huang Yaoshi, Maggie Cheung, Jacky Cheung.