Ashes of Time

Hong Kong   w/d  Wong Kar-Wei

Heavily stylized, incoherent story about a contract killer who retreats to the desert for some reason and organizes killing using wandering samurai-types. Plot summary came from IMDB, not watching. When I watched it I had no idea what was going on.

The visuals here were spectacular and clearly dominated the mind of the director. A pull-out-all-stops treatment using in-camera and post production tricks made for a fantasmagoria of swirling colors, blades, characters, etc. Very self-indulgent...but quite impressive. Worked as a demo reel better than as a film.

5