On the surface of things we are faced with a martial arts film, a typical HK wuxia piece. But knowing Wong Kar-Wai, did you really expect a regular martial arts movie? 'cos that's not what you'll get...

Best known for his "In the Mood for Love" and "2046", this stylish director has established his reputation among Asians and Westerners alike through his dreamy, poetic romances and metaphysical dramas. Here, in Ashes of Time, an earlier film remade, the director's teamwork with cinematographer Christopher Doyle is already in full bloom. The film offers the same colour palette and style that we find in their more recent collaborative works. This film is beautiful to look at, a mystery to behold and a genre-breaking ode to love and loss. Clearly, it looks and feels like a 21st century movie, but its origins go back some years.

Based on a film originally released back in 1994, Ashes of Time Redux is a retelling a story that most of us missed the first time around. The "redux" is more than a remastered version of the original. Apparently it features significant alterations to the basic structure of the narrative as well a new musical score. More than that, it stands as the definite version of the movie, a true director's cut. It's almost a kind of second birth, because finally the movie can become known for what it truly is. Even though I have not seen the original, I will take the director's word for it and trust his judgment.

And it is very easy to trust his judgment when the result is as strong as this relatively short (93 min) film. It feels like a labour of love. There must be heaps and heaps of discarded film on the editing floor, because it is clear that all the little details and cuts were hand-crafted to perfection. My main problem with the film is that it is unforgiving to its audiences, even "careless" about how they might feel about being bombarded with constant, overloaded verbiage. The result, full of symbolic links and razor-thin internal connections, may feel over-stylized and over-worked, but this kind of approach to film-making is admirable because it is so rare. Films that demand a lot also reward the viewer for paying attention. But don't get me wrong: this is not a puzzle or a mystery like some Lynch film; nor is it surrealistic dream logic like some Buñuel. No, it conveys a surprisingly simple poetic truth, encompassing love, manhood, relationships, struggle, perseverance, betrayal, fantasy, hate, jealousy, remembrance, forgetfulness, loss and loneliness. It is a movie about forgetting, and about the forgetting of having forgotten in the first place. It portrays characters as duplicates, mirages and psychic phantoms. Identities are mixed up. Friendships are won and lost, mainly lost. Love is first fleeting, then impossible and finally a memory.

Memory, and time, and the passing of time: these are the central themes of this tale divided up into (non-linear) seasons. Nature is cyclical, and so is human life and especially human memory, which is always obsessed about some recurring dream or fantasy. Memory is not a time-line of events but a force of inertia, a dead weight and a curse. Time is the archnemesis of happiness, and love is proved impossible by the accidents of nature. Love that once was is no more. Nor was there any love to get around to begin with, if memory serves me correctly. Have another sip of wine, it'll help you remember/forget...

The performances are through and through superb. Both the male characters and the elusive female characters are perfectly cast, and the fact that it's an all-star cast does not make it feel any less authentic. Especially female charms (and the ambivalent androgyny of one of them) are given such full force that we are left with a sea of emotions, an ocean of desire. The wailing soundtrack reaches melodramatic heights even when you expect nothing but calm and quiet; this signals that the characters are still haunted by their past. There IS no quietude, only the passing of time and the lingering-on of memory.

The sword-fights are stylish (thanks to Sammo) but peripheral. Action is more often than not a piercing flash of violence that only deepens the emotional wounds carried in the hearts of the protagonists. The physical dagger in the heart of man is nothing compared to the deep soul wound inflicted in love. In death, some lucky ones lose their anxiety, while others lose nothing but their chance for redemption. Still others are driven to death by precisely this impossibility of redeeming themselves. Living and death become equally mortifying.

These themes, such as the passion of unrequited love, and the wounding of lonely hearts, will be familiar from films like Mood and 2046. In fact, the director is as obsessed about these themes as are the characters in his movies. The setting does not matter: human heart is always the same - desiring, hurt and lonely. But it is not pure darkness that we encounter, there are also a few authentic flashes of pure passion and empathy (although less in Ashes than in many of his other films). To call Wong Kar-Wai a pessimist is to call outer space cold: it is rather to miss the point, to understate the case. He is not a pessimist but an explorer of love's tragic journey in life, from conception to annihilation. He takes us, as it were, beyond the here into the yonder, and gives us intimations of love's afterlife.

The film is not perfect. It is oftentimes too self-absorbed. The audience will be split. I know I was. I didn't especially enjoy the movie-going experience, but I learnt a lot from it, and remembered something I thought I had forgotten... In this honest and heart-wrenching mood piece, love's memory, on the big screen, is burnt into ashes of time.

Without a doubt, Ashes of Time is a beautiful, deeply felt movie. The acting and cinematography are outstanding. The color and camera angles are poetic. But the DVD quality is barely acceptable and the plot, what there is of it, is very confusing. The movie is less a journey from point A to point B than it is a dream-like dance around a central theme: regret for the way we treat those we love.

For those who would watch the movie for the martial arts-- the main characters are mostly swordsmen and martial artists-- the movie is less than satisfying. The fight scenes are highly stylized, employing fast cuts, blurs of motion, and disorienting lighting and camera angles. The fight scenes are more about camera technique than martial arts technique.

Ashes of Time is not a movie that can be absorbed in one viewing. For many viewers, though, it will be worth a second or even third.

"Ashes of Time Redux" is Wong Kar Wai's venture into the martial arts genre. However, energetic action and narrative clarity take a backseat to the visual poetry that contemplates wounded hearts, loneliness and the memories of lost love that cut deeper than any sword. Best appreciated as a sensory experience, "Ashes of Time Redux" unfolds as a series of beautiful yet melancholic images like the soft brush strokes of a Chinese landscape painting. Even the sword fights are shot as swirling, hallucinatory dreamscapes. The haunting desert landscape gorgeously captured in saturated colors by cinematographer Christopher Doyle, a brooding cello score by Yo-Yo Ma and the beauty of the actors (an all-star Hong Kong cast) contribute to a movie experience that both pleases the senses and engages the heart.