Ashes of Time

A broker living in the desert connects swordsmen with people who need them, for a fee. Everyone who arrives has someone they want to forget. The film takes the shape of a martial arts picture and hollows it out: the fights are blurred and brief, and the narrative is built entirely on remembering. The order of time is deliberately scrambled and the characters tell each other's stories. Wong Kar-wai directed, adapting Jin Yong's novel very loosely, with Christopher Doyle as cinematographer. Before watching: a version re-edited by the director appeared years later and the two differ markedly. The film is also deliberately hard to follow on a first viewing.