ASHES OF TIME

Last night i watched this work of art by Wong Kar Wai, and I was quite overwhelmed. Wong Kar has long been renowned as one of China's most prolific Cinematic exports, and this movie proves it.

The plot is not the most important thing here, nor is the action which to be honest left me feeling a little disoriented because of its jerkiness. The key to understanding and enjoying the movie is instead in the art of storytelling that Wong Kar Wai employs. Through a roughly one and a half hour duration some seemingly disconnected personalities are woven into an awesome climactic sequence.

Partly a study on the nature of human emotions, and partly an examination of personality types, the movie succeeds on both counts for me. The dialogues are neither too obtuse or esoteric, nor too one dimensional; which is the same for the characters themselves. I suspect that much of Chinese folklore and philosophy has been interwoven into the movie.

The cinematography is first rate. Certain scenes look like they would have been perfectly at home among one of Ansel Adam's best photographs; and coming from a Photography fanatic that's high praise. The beauty of the desert is not cosmeticized( this btw is not a real word!) but presented in all it's cruelty and quiet tenacity.

The characters are played excellently by some Hong Kong heavy weights. I think that Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung steal the movie through their stellar performances though. Tony Leung in particular occupying very little screen time proves that long does not necessarily mean better. Props to all the cast though!

I always desist from elaborating on the plot in my reviews because I feel that it is for the viewer to discover for themselves. What I can say without any prejudice is that Wong Kar wai deserves every accolade he gets. very few movies leave me feeling half satiated and craving. This was one of them.

There are some very strong, but covert, sexual allusions in the movie. See if you can spot them; perhaps that'll tell you how observant you are:-)

Watch it!

CASABLANCA AND OTHER CLASSICS

Just a few months ago I considered myself an avant garde connoisseur of movies. I liked to think that I distinguished myself through my taste in movies( read Kurosawa, Ray...etc) but my pretensions were quickly dissipated by a chance encounter with an entirely new genre of movies- the early classics.

What happened is this in a nutshell. A very bored chap, nothing to do but surf the internet, an idea strikes him, why not look for a list of some great movies, and Voila! what else but 'Casablanca' appears like the proverbial mother lode!

At first I was a little disinterested; I did not give enough credit to the movie making abilities of those old chaps. But I watched it anyway and boy! did I dig it! Those people knew how to entertain for sure, but what was more fascinating was the entire stylistic and thematic treatment of the movie.

The legendary Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman played the lead with a very convincing supporting role being eschewed by Paul Henreid. And how can one forget the delightful Tom Foolery of Dooley Wilson as Sam, the confidant and accomplice of the lead hero Rick. One gets the feeling that a lot of thinking went into the assemblage of the entire cast, and testifying to it's success is the incredible way in which everything comes together! At the end I was as equally enamored with the characters as with the plot and the era itself. I always hate to be the spoil sport so beyond this I'll not give anything away.

My encounter with the classics hardly stops there. I went on to watch classic westerns like 'The red river', 'High plains drifter' starring the inimitable and Macho Clint Eastwood, 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' and others. But the one I enjoyed the most definitely was 'High Noon' starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly: the mastery of the director Fred Zinnemann is something to be savored rather than described. I'll just second what one critic says about the movie- not a single frame is wasted!

After watching all these great movies I now realize that the movies are one field where people with pretensions of refinement and snootiness, like I was and still am but to a lesser degree, do not belong. They just cannot enjoy movies at all because they are constantly measuring one against the other. The truth is that it is an entire panaroma of sights, sounds and ideas that has to be viewed from different vantage points to be properly grasped. The primary intent of movies after all was, is, and will always be to entertain.