It’s obvious Chinese director Wong Kar Wai poured his heart and soul into Ashes of Time Redux, his latest film to be released in the US. It’s dazzling images and complex story are both unique and unforgettable. He takes viewers through a dreamlike journey of both brightness and subtly. What’s not obvious is the method behind the writer--director’s beautiful madness. To know a little about the director and his motives is to better appreciate the film.

Wong Kar Wei is one of China’s most respected filmmakers, both within and without his country. He was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong with his parents when he was five. He entered the film industry as a scriptwriter and began directing his own scripts in 1988. His debut feature As Tears Go By (1988) was invited to the Critics’ Week in the Cannes Film Festival. His second feature Days of Being Wild (1990) won five Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Director and Best Film.  Chunking Express became his first global success; he followed it with Fallen Angels. Shot mostly in Argentina, Happy Together premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Director prize. All of his subsequent features have premiered in Cannes: In the Mood for Love in 2000 (winning the Best Actor prize for Tony Leung Chiu Wai), 2046 in 2004 and his English-language debut My Blueberry Nights in 2007. He served as President of the Jury at Cannes in 2006.

His latest work, Ashes of Time Redux, is set in five parts, five seasons that are part of the Chinese almanac. The story takes place in the jianghu, the world of the martial arts. Ouyang Feng (Leslie  Cheung)  has lived in the western desert for some years. He left his home in White Camel  Mountain when the woman he loved chose to marry his elder brother rather than him.  Instead of seeking glory, he ends up as an agent. When people come to him with a wish  to eliminate someone who has wronged them, he puts them in touch with a swordsman  who can do the job.  The film is magical and dreamlike.

Wong Kar Wei talks about the film’s genesis and production: “In the winter of 1992, someone suggested that I make a film adaptation of Louis Cha’s famous martial-arts novel The Eagle-Shooting Heroes. I re-read all four volumes of it and finally decided not to do an adaptation but instead to develop a new story about the early years of two of its main characters, Dongxie (Lord of the East) and Xidu (Lord of the West). I chose these two because they have exactly opposite personalities; you could think of one as the antithesis of the other. “I tried to depart a little from the traditional martial-arts genre. Instead of treating these characters as heroes, I wanted to see them as ordinary people – at the stage before they  became heroes.

“I generally start with the beginning of a story or with certain characters, and then gradually  work out where the story is going and where it’s going to end as the shoot goes on. In this  case, though, I knew where these characters were going to end up and there was nothing I could do to change it. This imbued both me and the film with a sense of fatalism. Now that the film is finished and I try to reflect on the whole experience of making it, I find myself remembering some lines from the Buddhist canon and I’ve decided to use them to  preface the film: “The flag is still. The wind is calm. It’s the heart of man that is in turmoil!”

“Over the years, I’ve come to realize that there are several different versions of Ashes of Time in circulation, some approved by me, some not, as well as the fact that the film was never released in much of the world including the United States. To rectify this situation, we decided to revisit this project and to create the definitive version.

“As we launched into the work, we discovered that the original negatives and sound materials were in danger: the laboratory in Hong Kong where they were stored was suddenly shut down, without warning. We retrieved as much as we could, but the negatives were in pieces. As if we were searching for a long-lost family, we began looking for duplicate materials from various distributors and even the storage vaults of overseas Chinatown cinemas. As this went on, we came to realize that there are hundreds of prints locked up in Chinatown warehouses in those cities which used to show Hong Kong movies. Looking through all this material felt like uncovering the saga of the ups and downs of Hong Kong cinema in the last few decades. And this history, of course, included Ashes of Time.

“Around the time that I was looking to do a new soundtrack, I went to a concert in Hong  Kong by Silk Road, an ethnic musical group formed by Yo-Yo Ma and musicians from all around the world, most of them from China. And I thought, if I have to find new music for the film, this should be the sound. So I contacted Yo-Yo Ma and some of the Chinese musicians. 

“It was a lot of fun because it gave me a chance to sit down with Yo-Yo Ma and work with him during a recording session in Shanghai, a city we are both from. To my surprise, Yo-Yo Ma is not only a musician, he is also very visual. He is someone who likes the director to sit down with him and tell him what he wants.

“I told him,  'I can not speak to you in musical terms but this is what I can tell you: “The cello should feel like the hand of Leslie [Cheung]... You are just sneaking into a room and are trying to caress the hand of a woman”'... Yo-Yo Ma said to me 'You are very dark!' It was a very intense session...”

Wong Kar Wei says that when he made the original Ashes of Time, he always regretted that it wasn’t possible to achieve the technical standards he felt the project merited. “Now, 15 years later, I want to put this right” he concludes.