Ashes of Time

Master Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai directed this lyrical, dream-like martial arts epic. A famously troubled shoot, the film took two years and 40 million dollars to produce (a shocking sum for a national cinema populated with low-budget quickies) and features a virtual who's-who of the Hong ...more

Combining elements of Sergio Leone and Michelangelo Antonioni, Wong Kar-wai's masterful Ashes of Time is both a lively recasting of Chinese martial art conventions and a fascinating meditation on memory. Like Wong's Chungking Express, which he shot during Ashes's famously troubled production, this film concerns a handful of lonely, isolated souls who are so absorbed in their own melancholy world that they cannot connect with others. The Blind Swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) is crippled by ...more