I actually lasted almost 2 hours (although I was working on my laptop) and only bailed when the characters start these kitchen sink arguments, which reminded me of _The World_ (which I walked out of halfway through). I also saw Jia's _Unknown Pleasure_
on DVD -- unwisely, in its entirety. It was amateurish, undisciplined, incoherent, mixing random styles (from Godard and others) -- truly the most worthless film I've ever seen.

_Ash is the Purest White_ isn't nearly that bad -- it is just cloyingly sentimental. It fetishizes gangsters, invoking the theme song from John Woo's _The Killer_, the TV show "Shanghai Beach" theme music, and worse. I really appreciate the long review
by "US Internet user," but what really is this 2+ hour film's moral -- that people aren't gangsta enough now? The protagonist is upset that her ex-boyfriend decides to leave his life of crime -- how is that a bad thing? (She gets out of jail and continue
to play the grifter.) We know that gangsters are supreme sentimentalists (second only to bad filmmakers), but the glorification of the "rivers and lake" brand of brotherhood and loyalty is mind-boggling, and would have made even John Woo cringe.

It is perhaps a sign of Chinese cinema's immaturity that its anointed auteur is treated as an oracle/mouthpiece every time. If "China" is a character in _Ash_, is it a well-written character, is it compelling? Lou Ye's _Summer Palace_ also has a
protagonist who yearns for her man across the cataclysmic transformation that is the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which splits the film (and characters' lives) in two. _Summer Palace_ can shoulder the weight because it is so well made, poetic, generous,
and true. If we want to talk about China's transformation, the biggest and most heart-breaking one is that a generation willing to die for democracy and human rights in China has given way to another that toes the party line about crushing democracy in
Hong Kong and locking up minorities in concentration camps in Xinjiang (mentioned as a tourist paradise in _Ash_, without irony). But making a film about this change in China would take a far braver and better director than Jia Zhangke.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)