Ash Is Purest White

Jia Zhangke telling the last twenty years of China through one relationship. It begins in 2001. Qiao is the partner of a gang leader in Datong. During a street attack she fires a pistol into the air to protect him, and although the gun is not hers she takes the blame; she serves five years. When she comes out the country has changed. He did not wait, the neighbourhood has been demolished, and a new economy has replaced the old order. The second part follows her to the Three Gorges region to find him; the towns about to be drowned by the dam and the people being relocated are not background but part of the story. In the third part they meet again, and by then the balance of power has inverted. Zhao Tao plays Qiao and the film rests entirely on her; she is Jia Zhangke's wife and the lead in nearly all of his films. Three periods are shot on three different cameras and formats, so the texture of the image changes along with time. An important work for anyone interested in contemporary Chinese cinema and stories told across long stretches of time. For a viewer wanting incident, it starts like a gangster film and goes somewhere else entirely.