With Wong Kar-wai's masterful (if you stick to the Chinese cut) The Grandmaster out now, I was drawn to the parallels between this ostensible commercial Wong and the last time he dabbled in populist Chinese genre with Ashes of Time. Both films seem such major departures for their maker, but they reveal Wong's cinema of regret and longing through action tropes, in some ways distilling his work to its most ineffable essence. His violence is thrillingly mounted, but Wong's wuxia films devote most of their time to the corrupting effect of that violence, and both films hold the keys to his entire oeuvre.
Read my full thoughts at Film.com.
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