The story takes place in the desert, and the image of the desert represents the city. Modern civilization makes the city appear barren and lack of vitality. The story explores the mental distress of all kinds of people in the modern city and soothes the emotional scars of urbanites. Everyone in the film represents a different image.
Hong Qi - He comes from the countryside, he doesn't have the appearance of wearing shoes, "will not leave the camel alone", "do what he thinks is right", these show that he is a simple and straightforward person, representing the pure self. Hong Qi went to kill the swordsman in Taiwei's mansion for an egg. When Ouyang Feng asked why, he said, "My sword is not as fast as it used to be", "I found myself without myself with you." It's not worth killing for an egg, but "I feel good about it". Here Hong Qi and Ouyang Feng refer to traditional civilization and modern civilization respectively. One is simple and kind but on the verge of starvation, the other is cold and ruthless but a little rich. When Ouyang Feng persuaded him to be a killer, he said, "Think about it, but hurry up, because you will be hungry again soon." This is the material coercion of modern civilization on traditional civilization. Tradition affirms affection (Hong Qi's righteous actions), while modern times emphasize the pursuit of profit (Ouyang Feng will not kill for an egg). When Hong Qi found out that he did not have himself, it represented the castration of traditional civilization by modern civilization. And Hong Qi found out that he didn't have himself, so he killed for an egg, which represented the resistance of traditional civilization to modern civilization. But the end is a broken finger, which means that Hong Qi's victory is just a good wish, or Wang Kar Wai's main orientation. Wong Kar-wai uses this to guide our thinking about the real dilemma. Hong Qi asked what was on the other side of the mountain, and Ouyang Feng told him that it was another desert, but he "must go see it in person", and later he took his wife to explore the rivers and lakes, which represented his courage to open up and finally achieved dominance , which shows Wong Kar-wai's affirmation of him, as well as the affirmation of the image he represents. Jacky Cheung played this little character very well.
Murong Yan (Yan) - She is a combination of love and hate, she is infatuated with Dong Xie, but Dong Xie hurt her just because he "knows what it's like to be loved". For this reason, she loves and hates Dongxie, and at the same time it is difficult to let go of her infatuation with him. On the one hand, she wants to kill Dongxie's favorite woman, but she is unwilling to be not, so on the other hand, she believes that she is Dongxie's favorite woman. On the one hand, she wants to kill Dongxie, and on the other hand, she wants to kill herself to protect Dongxie. She begged Ouyang Feng (mistaken as Dong Xie) to lie to her, even if he was not short of her, and sneaked into Ouyang Feng's room to rub him as Dong Xie. When she was abandoned (Dongxie missed her appointment), she let out a raw, beastly, heart-piercing roar of pain. The background music at this time is the eerie and horrible Sanskrit, which means curse and hatred. It shows the pain between love and dislike of modern people. His dual gender identity means split personality, and it also means self-love (the elder brother wants to kill Dongxie for the younger sister) and self-hatred (the younger sister wants to kill the elder brother). coexist. In the end, she became famous by practicing swords against the shadow. This is actually a kind of self-pity in disguise, implying the sad ending that modern people can only fall in love with themselves. She was longing but alone. Brigitte Lin successfully made us feel the pain of love and hate.
Strange Woman - This strange woman played by Yang Cai Ni has been waiting in front of Ouyang Feng's inn to avenge her brother. She represents persistence. "Her obsession is a waste of time in the eyes of others, but it is very important to her." Xidu has always wanted her body, which means possession and assimilation. "You said you wouldn't sacrifice yourself for others, I see if you can do it this time." This once again reflects the dominance of the brutal and barbaric modern civilization. She continued to be stubborn, and finally waited until Hong Qi avenged her. This can be said to be Wong Kar-wai's affirmation of traditional morality.
Blind Warrior - Because his wife fell in love with his friend Dong Xie, he ran away from home in anger. In the end, I couldn't let go of my love and wanted to go back to see her. This character is more tragic. His wife fell in love with a friend, went blind at the age of 30, and finally died in battle. "I heard that if the knife is fast, the sound of blood flowing out is as pleasant as the wind, but I never thought that the first time I heard it, it was actually my own blood." Really poor. Before the battle he forced a kiss to the strange woman, in effect a final goodbye to his wife. "After I left, the woman's tears slowly dried on my face. I wonder if that woman will cry for me." Finally, he asked Ouyang Feng to tell Dongxie that his wife was waiting for him. You can't help but feel sorry for him! One side is love, the other side is friendship. It is difficult for him to untangle this knot, and he can't let go. In the end, he escapes emotional entanglement by dying in battle. Tony Leung's introverted character makes this character's tragic performance more in place.
Wife of a Blind Warrior - She fell in love with Dongxie and caused her husband to run away from home. When she learned of her husband's death, she burst into tears. She didn't get Dong Xie just to know "what it's like to be loved", and she also lost her husband. She is also emotionally wounded. There is a scene where she caresses a steed on horseback. Here the tall and majestic horse acts as a symbol of the opposite sex. Her caress to the horse is actually to comfort her long-awaited heart. As for who she is waiting for, I am afraid only Wong Kar-wai knows. Liu Jialin naturally waits in loneliness.
Dongxie——she has a secret love for Xidu's sister-in-law, she has never said it, and she goes to see Xidu in order to see her once a year. In order to know the taste of love, he hurt a lot of people, and he is also a hurt person, because it is a very painful thing to not be able to find the person he loves. "I lost from the beginning." He chose to forget about this kind of pain. "People say that a person has troubles because his memory is too good." Go to see the season of Sister-in-law of the West Drugs) to pay homage to your emotions. Liang Jiahui's undisguised performance still makes people feel the pain of this character.
Sister-in-law of Xidu - This is a lonely and desolate image, with red clothes, thick lips, and empty eyes, she looks cold and lonely and pitiful, full of resentment. Because she married Xi Du's brother on impulse, she stubbornly refused to run away with Xi Du. To this end, she has suffered a lot, because she loves Western poison deeply, and she sees love too beautifully and too seriously. "Some things are said for a lifetime." "I think that sentence is very important." This is a taboo for modern people. Finally, Xidu did not say anything. "Thinking about it now, it doesn't really matter whether you say it or not. Some things will change." It was too late when she regretted it. "When I looked in the mirror, I realized that I lost. The person I loved most in my best time was not around." After the candle was broken, it was the beginning of her emotional pain. Her love for Xidu made her lonely and haggard all her life. She inquired about the news of Xidu from Dongxie. On the one hand, she did not let Dongxie tell Xidu where she lived, and on the other hand, she hoped that Dongxie would say it. In front of love, this infatuated woman has another contradiction, because of her identity, she has no chance to love, and eventually died of illness. The scene where she stared at her son madly showed her loneliness wonderfully. "Watching him grow up day by day, I know that he will leave me one day." It shows her fear of loneliness, but she is lonely in the first place. She stared at her son's back in disbelief, which was actually a disguise of her love for Xidu. In the description of this child, "it is obvious that he wants but he doesn't say it. He will only want it if he has to get it in front of him", we know that this child has already represented Xidu here (xidu has no desire for love). And this son is likely to be Western poison. Zhang Manyu showed this cold, lonely and pitiful woman just right
"In fact, what I'm talking about here is his own business. Because he lost his father since he was a child and lived with his elder brother, he "knows how to protect himself since he was a child". This is an image that is extremely vulnerable in the emotional vortex. His signifier of modern civilization I won't say more about his identity. Because he has no confidence in love (because he was injured many times), he didn't say that to his sister-in-law. As a result, the sister-in-law married her brother in a fit of rage, causing the two of them to suffer for a lifetime. He also closed himself for this." To not be rejected. The best way is to reject others first. "Wearing is also a form of self-defense of feelings. Although he was born in a deserted desert, he is still in the dark." It was unforgettable in his heart, facing the back of a strange woman, he couldn't help but think of his sister-in-law. He regarded Murong Yan's stroking and stroking as his sister-in-law, and he kept dreaming of his sister-in-law in his dreams. Just like my sister-in-law, "the more I want to know if I have forgotten, the more clearly I will remember." This pain repeatedly tortured him, so he became indifferent and vicious. "Anyone can be vicious, as long as he tastes what jealousy is." He was jealous of his brother, and jealous of Hong Qi happily taking his wife to the arena. "I had this opportunity too. This jealousy turned into indifference and revenge against the world. Here is an image of the indifference of the urbanite, as if to provide a pattern for reading this indifference. He will not be offended for an egg. The swordsman in the Taiwei’s mansion wants to belittle the strange woman, because Hong Qi doesn’t listen to him, he won’t hire a doctor for him (here it represents his resentment for the orthodox value, because he did not get the true love affirmed by the orthodox value ). Behind the indifference is a heart that has been hurt and is afraid of being hurt again. In the urban society, he cannot believe in eternity (traditional morality). "Everyone has to go through such a stage. When they see a mountain, they want to know what is behind the mountain. I don't want to know anymore. "It can be seen that he has been disheartened. But at the same time he said, "Looking back, I found that this side would be better, but I can't look back. He also expressed his remorse for leaving the desert. Here, "I don't want to know what is on the other side of the mountain", which also means that he cherishes what he already has, but unfortunately there is no chance. When Hong Qi took his wife to the rivers and lakes, his values He began to shake, "I had such an opportunity once," and envied and affirmed at the same time. When his sister-in-law became ill, he decided that "when a person can no longer have it, the only thing he can do is to make himself not forget it." His values began to change. Until He picked up the eggs on the ground (a metaphor for Hong Qi and the unfamiliar woman), set fire to the inn, and returned to the White Camel Mountain. He achieved dominance. From escaping reality to facing reality, from birth to WTO entry, he showed a sense of return. It is also a hint of Wong Kar-wai. The unique decadent quality of Zhang Guorong is perfectly expressed here. Therefore, he has always played such decadent characters in Wang Jiawei's films.
Everyone's lines in this film are very classic and extremely sad, and they have exhausted the sentimental inner monologue of urbanites. Wong Kar-wai enumerated various ways of being injured in modern people, showing that modern people are extremely vulnerable to injury. After the arrival of modern civilization, people have become slaves of material things, their affections have been forgotten, their communication has been lost, their souls have fallen, and their feelings have become extremely uncertain and complicated. And after the eternal classical love was forgotten, many people were hurt, they were eager for emotion and afraid of being hurt. In the face of material things, the emotional foundation is unreliable, and finally there is a desert of emotions. This is also the spiritual desert of Hong Kong people.
This is not a simple martial arts movie. There are no ups and downs of contradictions and conflicts. The stories of several people are respectively narrated, forming a transposition film of the protagonist and supporting roles of Western Drugs, focusing on rendering a decadent and apocalyptic mood. The film incorporates stream-of-consciousness techniques, the most prominent being the scene where Murong Yan sneaks into Xidu's room and strokes him. Xi Du regards her as his sister-in-law, and she regards Xi Du as Dong Xie. This subconscious transposition perfectly expresses the loneliness and longing of the two.
In the film, the emperor's calendar is used repeatedly to explain matters, "the horse is moving, the fire is pressing the gold line, the west of Italy", "the room is empty, the north of Italy", "you should not count the number of seven, it is the end of life", "the tenth day of the first day, the beginning of autumn, Sunny, cool breeze, suitable to travel to visit friends, avoid launching new boats", "husband and wife work, the sun is very polar, marriage is real and unknown." Is it a fate to be so accurate?
The film uses more cool tones, with quaint blue and yellow as the keynote. Most of the clothing color is gray, which symbolizes the exhaustion of the soul, the weariness of the world, or the shackles of the spirit. Even the red on Murong Yan and his sister-in-law is the embodiment of coldness and loneliness.
The film uses the method of magnifying film particles to make the expanse of desert feel desolate, and the scene transitions use beautiful empty shots. Sometimes the reflections on the calm water surface are used to represent dead silence. When Murong Yan practiced his sword, the huge waves provoked were actually the externalization of anger, and then the slowly rippling water surface represented a state of tiredness. Using slow motion to shoot the scene of the blind warrior's final battle, it presents a kind of tragic and solemn. The desolate desert, dilapidated shops, and rough clothes, show decadence and desolation.
During the shooting of the fight, the shaking images, the constant rotation of the birdcage made the light and shadow on the faces of the characters change constantly, and the reverberation of the water surface, the light spots flickered on the face of the blind warrior's wife, and the distorted and deformed water surface appeared when the water surface was rippling. The sky has repeatedly expounded the philosophical propositions that the world cannot know. Even Xi Du directly said: "I just found out that I have been here for so long, but I haven't seen the sky clearly."
The use of montage in the film is very good. The passing, piercing the silent sky, represents the inner shock of Xidu. The blind warrior said "I don't know if any woman will cry for me", flashing back to the picture of his wife, indicating that he was saying goodbye to his wife. After his death, there was also a flying bird passing by, which gave the audience a shock, jumped to the picture of his wife, and said that the woman was frightened for him. The blind warrior finally spoke about the relationship between Dongxie and his wife, and flashed back that Dongxie was injured by Murong's sword because he missed an appointment, which is also the use of montage.
As the title says: There are clouds in the Buddhist scriptures, but the banners do not move, and the wind does not blow, it is the human heart that moves. But in the world, how can one's mind be like still water?
View more about Ashes of Time reviews
