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.
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.
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