May 17, 2023·edited May 17, 2023Liked by radicaledward
Thank you for this very informative take. I actually had no idea that it was based on/served as a prequel to a novel!
'Ashes of Time' is a movie I first saw in film school on a not-so-great DVD copy.
To my regret, I fell asleep during the showing and woke up intermittently during it. I certainly remember a cool yet really weird action scene where a lone swordsman seemed to battle an army of enemies in artsy slow-motion. I appreciated the movie far more when I saw the Redux version on DVD a few years later, by which point my aesthetic taste was far more refined. (And if I'm correct, that action scene was actually cut from the new edition!)
I want to add a slight correction: Kar Wai didn't recut the movie solely because the original prints were not preserved. His interviews and statements indicate that he was interested in revisiting the film in part because there were extended distributor-created cuts out there that he did not approve and he didn't feel the film was finished or in a fixed form. So, he didn't set out initially to reconstruct the original theatrical cut, but rather to indeed create a new 'definitive' cut.
Thank you for this very informative take. I actually had no idea that it was based on/served as a prequel to a novel!
'Ashes of Time' is a movie I first saw in film school on a not-so-great DVD copy.
To my regret, I fell asleep during the showing and woke up intermittently during it. I certainly remember a cool yet really weird action scene where a lone swordsman seemed to battle an army of enemies in artsy slow-motion. I appreciated the movie far more when I saw the Redux version on DVD a few years later, by which point my aesthetic taste was far more refined. (And if I'm correct, that action scene was actually cut from the new edition!)
I want to add a slight correction: Kar Wai didn't recut the movie solely because the original prints were not preserved. His interviews and statements indicate that he was interested in revisiting the film in part because there were extended distributor-created cuts out there that he did not approve and he didn't feel the film was finished or in a fixed form. So, he didn't set out initially to reconstruct the original theatrical cut, but rather to indeed create a new 'definitive' cut.
See: his original statement in 2008 (https://emanuellevy.com/interviews/ashes-of-time-redux-wong-kar-wais-motives-for-restoration-3/) and an interview with CHUD.com (https://chud.com/16553/exclusive-interview-wong-kar-wai-ashes-of-time-redux/)
Ah, interesting!
Makes me wonder which version I saw all those years ago