Alicia I love this movie so much

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Yashua Kimbrough (jimniexperience) Follows the life of a heartbroken middleman for hit-men, Ou-yang, through his now and memories of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring (and is probably the movie to inspire Kim Ki-Duk's "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … Spring") … Also touches on the life of Huang Yaoshi , whom is the center of many love interests during the year's drought------ WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS ------Spring: Huang pays a visit to Ou-yang every Spring every year. This time he comes with a gift, a magical wine with the ability to make the drinker forget his memories. Huang travels around the desert to share his wine, and stops by his childhood friend's house to share the gift with him too. His friend turns it down and vows to kill Huang if they were to ever meet again , but the friend will fall to the curse of blindness soon afterwards ..Ou-yang receives a job from a mysterious person named Murong Yang - to kill Huang Yaoshi for seducing then abandoning his sister. At the same time he's contacted by the little sister to kill her brother Yang, fore he won't allow her to be with Huang. The little sister goes into hiding after she receives a death note from Murong Yin, whom claims she is the real lover of Huang's. After a confrontation with Murong Yang he learns the brother is both Yang and Yin - a severe case of multiple personality disorder ….Summer: Ou-yang is visited by a poor woman who wants to avenge her brother who is slain by a group of bandits. At the same time he is visited by a blind swordsman (Huang childhood friend) who's in need for some extra cash. Ou-yang hires him on the job to fight the bandits .. and as the two await the fated day they reminisce over their love life, their lost loves of the past . Ou-yang lost his love to his brother because he couldn't confess his feelings towards her, the blind swordsman lost his wife to Huang ….Fall: Ou-yang stumbles across a skilled but poor swordsman by the name of Hong Qi. He was warned by a fortuneteller a man named Qi will come into his life and shake up his foundation, so Ou-yang is cautious from the beginning. He gets his new recruit some shoes and they go off to gather requests from the local townspeople. Hong Qi takes the poor woman up on her offer to finish off the last of the bandits, and the job costs him his finger. With new money in his pocket but a lost in skill in swordplay , he decides to depart and travel the mountainside with his wife . Ou-yang becomes envious as they depart, fore he once was in the same position with the woman he loved ….Winter: Ou-yang travels to the homeland of the slain blind swordsman to deliver his dying message to his wife. As he leaves the mountain he reflects on the meaning of "peach blossoms" both the Blind Swordsman and Huang keep speaking off. He suddenly has a realization on why Huang comes to visit him every Spring ..Huang secretly loves Ou-yang brothers wife, and he knows she secretly still loves Ou-yang. Huang visits Ou-yang as an excuse so he can visit Ms. Blossoms, because she wants updates on how he's living. When she passes away she gives Huang a magic vase of wine to give to Ou-yang, with the power to rid of his memory of her …Spring: As Ou-yang waits for Huang yearly visit, he learns of his lovers passing. He understands Huang only excuse for visiting was to go see Miss Blossoms, therefore he'll probably never return again. Ou- yang , overcome with thirst one night, decides to drink the entire vase of magic wine his love left for him. Instead of eliminating his memories, it makes him remember more and more ; in the end he makes the bold decision to turn a new leaf and start his life all over again9/10

kalala My own memory is scattered in the ashes of time, and I really need to re-view the original to see if my memory holds, but here is my impression. I'd give the original a 10. This one rates an 8. The two together are probably a 12.I personally didn't like the amped up color. I gather that one of the things that happened when the filmmaker rediscovered a warehouse full of bootlegs was that there were some terrible copies that distorted the color, and he liked and played with that. This version also seemed more static than I remember--a lot of shots seem to have been done with still or very short segments of film. I have to see the original again to see if that's really the case, or if it is just my memory that there were more frames of action in the original. This often felt like it was cut from snippets. For example, the shifting sands under the title was a pair of superimposed images moving in different directions. Was that the case originally as well?I loved the original but also could never quite follow the plot. Redux slices and dices (or-rather-unslices) so that each story is parceled together and the blurring that is going on in the interactions on-screen (for example, the Yin/Yang sibs) does not spill over quite as much into the interaction between viewer and screen. Redux shakes out the story lines so you can parse them. I miss the mystification, and don't think it's a net gain. I also think something else may be going on here... If you remember the original (or have a copy to view), tell me what you think of this reading: The point of view of the story seems to have shifted from Huang Yaoshi to Ouyang Feng--although because of how the movie mixes action, memory and stories it is hard to tell. In the original, we followed the wandering Huang as his memory unspooled. Part of the difficulty for a viewer in understanding was the difficulty that his point of view had, because he was moving through a world of consequences without his memory to root understanding. The story flowed in pieces which might have been his splintered memories-ashes of time- or might have been others'. Things that he is told by unreliable narrators are accepted at face value until experience tells him otherwise. Events are repeated in variation as his understanding of them waxes and wanes.In this version, the narrator (Huang Yaoshi) is fixed and the world comes to him. Things enacted in the first movie (for example, the encounter between Huang and Murong) with all the attendant ambiguity of living sequence, are instead recounted, with the flattening filters of narrator and listener. Unlike Huang, Ouyang accepts nothing at face value. So each event is more clearly arranged in a narrative, but all the narratives are filtered in the same way by a mind that rejects nuances that it can't fit to its particular ego. It is only at the end that Ouyang gains an insight that he may have missed things as important as his life's love as a result of his fear and pride.The story consists of interlocking circles,organized around male-female pairs. Ouyang and his true love are separated because of mutual pride and unwillingness to be the first to declare love; Huang plays messenger between them, never telling the woman his own love for her. This story of two men and a woman is mirrored in a minor key in another triangle which engages Huang. In this one, passion was realized with unhappy consequences for all. Huang seduced his best friend's bride. At the time of the story, the blind husband encounters the memoryless Huang. Just as the moment to tell love had gone by for the lovers in the first triangle, the moment to enact revenge has slipped past the rivals. The subsidiary stories also have evenly balanced male and female parts. The balance of male and female is concentrated to a point in Murong, who manifests that experience as a spinning latticed cage, sexual identity as a trap. Hong Qi, the natural, is steadfastly pursued by his wife, who ignores his rejection and simply acts to do what she thinks is right. The girl who wants revenge for her brother mirrors Ouyang. Each believes they have only one thing to sell, and each expects to be able to withhold the self from the exchange. For each, it takes another person's wound to break the trance of transactions. Whatever is going on Wong Kar Wai and Christopher Doyle are gods.

dbborroughs This review is of the original cutMartial Arts film as spaghetti western.Wong Kar-Wai makes a martial arts film that is a visual wonder-though its mostly close ups-and a bit hard to decipher because the story is told in what could be generously said to be a fragmented style (and has a great number of close ups). Its has something to do with two friends who meet every year to drink, wine that makes you forget your past, revenge, another swordsman and some other things that I didn't quite pick up. I'm not sure what to make of the film. The dialog is really great, but at the same time walks that knowing sort of edge that makes me wonder what Kar-Wai was up to. Apparently breaking down since in the middle of making this he wandered off to clear his head by making Chungking Express. I liked it as pieces because I can get my hands around the pieces but as a whole I'm not to sure of the plot-if its good-if it means anything.Kar-Wai has cut the film once more which from reports seems to be close to the original cuts with a few changed shots, some image manipulation and a slight alteration in music. I have no idea if this will improve or detract from the film which some people see as a a masterpiece. Some things I've read have tried to put the film into a context based upon Wong Kar-Wai's other films, implying that if you've seen other films by the same director this film will be easier to digest. Maybe, but I'm not too sure since it plays differently than any of his other films (and I've seen most of them).I don't know. I'm going to have to ponder this.

guneo As a Chinese, I had chance to watch Kar Wai Wong's movies in my childhood. One of them is Dung che sai duk. But at that time, I couldn't even understand any of the actor's lines. Didn't understand why they people fight or cry. Then I fell asleep.But after many years, when I went to university, when the girl I deep in love with left me to another country. I saw DVD of this film again, alone. And this time I cannot help enjoying it. Every actor's line touched me very very much.What's behind the mountain? May be another mountain, and another. How wonderful it'd be to forget the past. Everyday would be a new beginning. Isn't that great? What's love? Maybe love is to leave the one you love, to win the one then finally find you have lost everything including yourself.Now I have my job and new life. Many things have been past for a long time. And this movie, I cannot remember some of the scenes. But sometimes I still recall lots of words they say. When I am alone, when I feel gloomy or a little bit sad, the words will come to my mind with beautiful music and the scene of huge desert.In this world, something's gonna change, something's not. If you cannot have someone, the only thing you can do is not to forget.I will never forget.