Whether it is faithful to the original work and striving for the original adaptation of classic masterpieces, such as "Gone with the Wind" (1939), or a re-creation that subverts the original form, such as the popular "destroyed childhood" style adaptation of famous stories in recent years, "Evil in the East" Poison appears to be unclassifiable, like an anomaly. Behind this is Wong Kar-wai, who never plays cards rationally.
The film is adapted from Jin Yong's martial arts novel "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", but only a handful of original materials have been extracted.
The story begins with the distress of this Jianghu person, his name is Ouyang Feng. Ouyang Feng married his elder brother because of the man he liked, and left his hometown. He exiled himself in the desert, and made a living by taking lives for others. He had planned to avoid the world and forget his hatred, but he met one person after another here. To gradually be touched...
The film does not focus on narration, but focuses on "narrative". While ignoring the original, it also empties all the elements on which the narrative relies - time and space, characters, events, breaking its shape, and conveying its spirit. There is detached Zen.
Time and space:
The scene is always switched in a vast Gobi desert and a simple house, completely separated from the mundane, seems to be placed in an illusory space, and the people and things in the space form an atmosphere where the virtual and the real intersect. The film has a vague timeline, only a little hint of subtitles, such as "Shocking Insect" and "Summer Solstice", the plot is actually driven by Ouyang Feng's narration. For example, in the appearance of Hong Qigong, there is no connection between the past and the future. The screen cuts in and the narration starts, and the story moves forward. There is no continuity of time, and there is no concept of length. They are all moving forward, thinking about the past at any time due to emotional touch, and the picture immediately enters the light and shadow of memory. For example, Taohua and Ouyang Feng's sister-in-law all appear in this way, forming a staggered time. However, the time in the memory is still chaotic and fuzzy. In the illusory space, time seems to evaporate.
figure:
Compared with Ouyang Feng, the people who entered the illusory space spoke less time, and relative to the time they spoke, they remained silent for longer, and the characters expressed much more emotions than specific events. Sometimes the picture even freezes directly on the expression of the characters without words for a long time to capture their emotions, such as the drunk Huang Yaoshi, or the peach blossom. The whole film only said two or three sentences, and she was on the back of a horse. The tangled shots took nearly a minute. The asymmetrical time ratio forms a strange rhythm, making the characters empty, while the past and future of the characters are all outlined by the narrator, and the blurring and jumping of the narration in time leads to the story of the characters. Torn to shreds, the characters are more like symbols in the illusory space.
Event:
In the illusory space where the plot of the original work has been thrown away, there are not too many "Jianghu affairs". Such as Huang Yaoshi, brought a jar of wine called Zuishengmengde, got drunk, lost his memory, and left. And for these few "Jianghu affairs", they also tried to simplify them with Ouyang Feng's narration. The symbolic characters play a mirror role in the film, so that Ouyang Feng, the protagonist who is on the sidelines most of the time, gets a touch from each symbolic story, that is, "enlightenment", which is the main event of the film. For example, looking at Murong Yan, who is crazy about love, Ouyang Feng said lightly: "Some people only find out that the person who has left is their favorite after they leave." Obviously, he was thinking about his relationship with the person he loved, but the film does not Instead of making further language expressions, this thought is left as an overtone for the audience to chew, and the processing method is concise and clever.
The events in the film are ethereal, like a mirage in the desert. Although they come from real images, they cannot be touched.
Thinking of Jianghu:
From space to time, from characters to plot, if you can save it, you can save it. It is almost abstract, like a person's wandering thoughts. Only Ouyang Feng's narration is continuous. This is "Shuwu", It is the god that is passed on after the film breaks its shape.
What if the narration was omitted? The sunset warrior died in the desert, Hong Qigong cut one finger to survive, and Murong Yan, who was mad because of his inability to love... Scenes and scenes are either life or death, love or hate, although I don't know the reason, but the rivers and lakes are probably just like this. He came to the hometown of the Sunset Samurai and found that the peach blossom in the Samurai's mouth was his wife, and his wife fell in love with his best friend Huang Yaoshi. Only then did he realize that the Samurai still died on a love letter in the end. Even more unexpectedly, it was discovered that Huang Yaoshi was secretly in love with his crush. Just like his cowardice, Huang Yaoshi never dared to confess. Only then did he understand that the real reason Huang Yaoshi came to visit him every year was for a love letter. And for so many years, although his crush has married someone else, he still asks about his current situation from Huang Yaoshi every year, but it is still a love word... The woman he wants to forget has never been forgotten, and the past he wants to cut has never been cut off. , The rivers and lakes who want to escape have never escaped, because the place where there are people is the rivers and lakes, and the rivers and lakes are nothing but love and hate, and they are not the same. This is Ouyang Feng's realization.
Time theme:
If the film stops here, then Wong Kar Wai is not Wong Kar Wai.
From spring to winter, Huang Yaoshi, who comes to visit regularly every year, did not appear again. Soon, Ouyang Feng received a letter from his hometown that his lover had passed away for two years... It has been two years! Only then did he realize the passage of time, and he indulged in the worries of the past for too long, and everything changed. The woman I missed, Xiang Xiaoyu, died, and as Hong Qigong once said, he lost himself in the killer's business. Yesterday's sunset warrior became a talking corpse today, and the yellow sand covered it. Everything disappeared, and the desert was still the same desert. Only then did Ouyang Feng realize that he had never seen this desert clearly, just as he had never noticed that time engulfed human affairs. Ashes, and Jianghu is still that Jianghu. This is Wong Kar-wai's realization.
In the process of "reciting enlightenment", the time that is evaporated will eventually turn against the guest, and when people indulge in their own emotions and cannot extricate themselves, they often ignore the passage of time, and until they realize it, the sails will be exhausted. So far, the understanding of rivers and lakes has formed a subtle connection with the philosophy of life, and the theme of the film has been sublimated. I have to admire the openness of his thinking and the richness of associations. This is Wong Kar-wai.
The interlacing of characters in the film and the broken plot are common in Wong Kar-wai's other films, such as "Chongqing Forest", "Fallen Angels" and "The True Story of Ah Fei", and they all show a strong atmosphere of decadence, because of his thoughts on life , always can't get around the erasure of time, and finally have to face a nothingness and have the emotion of escaping. It can be seen that Wong Kar-wai is good at narrating enlightenment and dislikes narration. This is more clearly expressed in "The True Story of Ah Fei", "I heard people say that there is a kind of bird in this world that has no feet, it can only fly all the time, and sleep in the wind when it is tired. A bird can only go to the ground once in a lifetime, and that time is when it dies." This is a typical escape thinking, but who can escape the arbitration of time? So this classic line also has a classic docking, "I used to think that there is a bird that can fly from the beginning to the day it dies before landing, but in fact he has never been anywhere, this bird has been a bird from the very beginning. He 's already dead."
Ouyang Feng fled into the desert, but what needs to be escaped must be unforgettable, just like the jar of wine, it's just a joke, even if he was drunk and dreamed of death, how could he lose his memory? Drunken life and dreaming of death is to escape reality, not forgetting, how can a person escape his memory? .
Ouyang Feng once told Murong Yan that the most painful way to die alone is to kill his favorite person first. When Ouyang Feng's lover dies, then Ouyang Feng is dead and killed by time. The footless bird can only go down to the ground once in its lifetime, and that time is when it dies. The dead Ouyang Feng no longer needs to escape, so he burned his residence and left the desert, will he still suffer? No, because everything in the world will become the ashes of time sooner or later, and this insight is enough to shape the spirit of contempt for all things.
In addition to Ouyang Feng, all the knights who can leave the desert alive have also become god-level figures in the arena, such as "Dugu Qiuwei" Murong Yan, "North Beggar" Hong Qigong, "Dongxie" Huang Yaoshi. In Jin Yong's book, all senior gods, in addition to superb martial arts, must also have an extraordinary aura. This desert is like a vortex of thoughts twisted by time and space, forging a unique spiritual temperament of people.
Picture:
The picture of the film is very delicate, especially the final version after restoration, the color is beautiful to the extreme, it is breathtaking.
The pictures are too beautiful to give people an unreal feeling, like an illusion, while the shots in the room are mostly dim, and are often blocked by light and shadow, making the images of the characters shadowy. These all set off the ethereal space-time atmosphere of the theme.
Music:
The music has a high coverage rate in the film, the production is excellent, and it is my favorite set of movie soundtracks. For example, the prelude "Heaven and Earth Lonely Shadow", the first half is majestic and high-pitched, such as the free and easy knight walking in the rivers and lakes, and the second half is affectionate, such as the tenderness in the heart of the knight released between heaven and earth, emotional ups and downs, as symbolic characters Supplemented with full of emotions, the viewer instantly entered the situation of the film. If you like TVB's martial arts dramas, you should hear some of the melodies that are familiar, will you be influenced by some hidden martial arts feelings in your heart?
Conclusion:
How much connection does this adaptation have with the original? As Wong Kar-wai said: I don't create, I'm more about subverting. What he subverts is the structure and expression of martial arts stories, but he does not create a new martial arts theme, especially in Jin Yong's martial arts world, where love and hate and chivalry go hand in hand. It is the lingering love story between Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu in "The Condor Heroes". Yang Guo, who cannot be hurt by swords or poisoned by poison, can jump off a cliff for love. The love between the two makes everything in the rivers and lakes seem like clouds. I think this is why Jin Yong's martial arts novels also have a large number of female fans.
Wong Kar-wai's adaptation is a beautiful martial arts essay. As for the time to think about it, it just branded the film as Wong Kar-wai. Wong Kar-wai also described "Evil in the West" as Jin Yong + Eileen Chang. I am also a fan of Zhang. I think "Evil in the West" is similar to Eileen Chang in appearance, but not in spirit. Zhang's books always have a depressing atmosphere. When was there a free and easy way of embracing nothingness and transcending love between Chinese and Western poisons in "Evil in the East and Poison in the West"? She has been a love animal all her life. This is probably the difference between men's and women's interpretation of love, and women are naturally prone to fall into the fantasy of love.
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