Ash Is Purest White
Cohen Media Group | Release Date: March 15, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyNov 29, 2021
As ever, Zhao Tao puts in the best performance you’ll see this year. Read full review
100
The Observer (UK)Simran HansMay 2, 2019
This one hits its stride somewhere in the middle, bounding confidently towards its hopeless, poetic conclusion. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 2, 2019
This is one of Zhangke’s peak achievements: pure cinema, and a story of the underworld unlike anything you’ve seen before. Read full review
100
Original-CinLiam LaceyMar 21, 2019
Ash Is Purest White — constantly dislocating and unpredictable moment by moment — feels all of its 135-minute running time but long after, the individual sequences hang in the memory. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyMar 14, 2019
Like his prior film, 2015’s “Mountains May Depart,” this new picture from master Jia Zhangke is a three-part drama spanning decades. To this critic Ash is Purest White is a much more successful attempt at depicting a changing China through the lives of not-quite-tragic characters and their sufferings. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 21, 2018
Exquisite and ferocious. Read full review
100
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 14, 2018
Ash is Purest White is a tremendous, funny, heartbreaking, sprawling vehicle for Zhao, and what a gift it is to see her exploring the furthest reaches of those talents. Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMar 17, 2019
This is not the sort of movie that offers up immediate gratifications, though there are some of those. Instead, it moves along with a steady grace. Its ruminative power creeps up on you. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMar 18, 2019
All that we treasure in Jia is there in Zhao’s scrutinizing gaze, at once pointed and guarded, and in the fierce patience with which she deliberates before taking action. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 14, 2019
No one makes movies like Mr. Jia does. He’s a dramatist with the eye of a documentarian and the instincts of a historian, even a geographer. But he’s also a romantic poet, and his heroine, a strong woman with a pure heart, is driven by love as far as it can take her. Read full review
90
TheWrapRobert AbeleMar 14, 2019
With his latest, the crime romance Ash is Purest White — once again spotlighting a superb performance by his longtime creative partner and wife Zhao Tao — Jia’s vision makes for a heady brew of love, loss, and loneliness over three time frames that coincide with huge changes in China. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 13, 2019
Enthralling. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 14, 2018
The performances of the two leads are riveting. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenNov 8, 2019
Ash Is Purest White starts as a crackerjack, Bonnie and Clyde-style crime movie, then slows down into something more akin to Antonioni’s L’Avventura. It eventually ends as a mesmerizing mood piece about personal alienation and national dislocation. That’s quite a shift, but writer-director Jia Zhangke (A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart) finesses it effortlessly. Read full review
88
Boston GlobePeter KeoughMar 20, 2019
There are only two moments in Jia Zhang-Ke’s obliquely epic mobster (or “jianghu”) movie Ash Is Purest White when a gun goes off. Unlike the shots fired in Hollywood movies, these have consequences. As in many of the films Jia has made since his 1997 Bressonian debut, “Xiao Wu,” petty choices prove fateful and marginal lives are swept up by seismic social change. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineSam C. MacMay 23, 2018
It’s a quixotic and profound statement on the spatial and temporal dissonances that inform life in 21st-century China. Read full review
85
The AtlanticDavid SimsMar 19, 2019
Despite the grand scale, like all of Jia’s works, Ash Is Purest White leaves questions of good and evil to the viewer—this isn’t a philosophical story, but a personal one. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJordan RuimyMay 15, 2018
Ash is Purest White borrows heavily from “Mountains May Depart” — the narrative construct, the same actress, the musical gimmicks, even the flawed ending — and yet we are nevertheless absorbed by the finesse and grace in a film by this venerable artist. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 14, 2018
It’s a surprisingly funny, even loopy film at times, with bursts of slapstick and screwball humor, plus a sporadic absurdism. Read full review
80
Little White LiesTrevor JohnstonFeb 14, 2022
Fascinating in its balance between microcosm and aerial view, but the performances definitely raise more emotional heat. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyApr 30, 2019
It’s hard to remember the last time an actress aged as convincingly on screen as Zhao Tao does in the melancholic, gently epic Ash Is Purest White. Read full review
80
CineVueChristopher MachellApr 30, 2019
Ash Is Purest White’s is an epic spanning decades and vast geography that ultimately gives way to the intimate and personal. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerApr 26, 2019
Jia’s grip slackens slightly at the end but, especially in its middle section, Ash Is Purest White is engrossing, surprising and affecting, held together by a towering performance from Tao – her gaze alone should carry a licence to kill. Read full review
80
VarietyMaggie LeeMay 14, 2018
The work has its intellectually ponderous moments but is ultimately saved by Jia’s muse and wife, Zhao Tao, who surpasses herself in a role of mesmerizing complexity. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 14, 2018
What does the ending of Ash Is Purest White mean — and what does its middle or beginning mean? I’m not sure. It feels like a gripping parable for the vanity of human wishes, and another impassioned portrait of national malaise. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMar 20, 2019
What truly binds this film is the love story that lies at the heart of it. It’s a love battered by fate and bad luck, quite the opposite of such forces as planned redesigns of China’s social and geographic landscapes. Read full review
75
Washington PostPat PaduaMar 27, 2019
“Ash” may not hit the dizzying heights of “Sin” but, compared with “Mountain,” it’s a far more consistent and satisfying ride. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoMar 14, 2019
An exceptionally fine movie that plays out on a large and leisurely scale. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 8, 2018
Entire passages stretch along at a too-leisurely pace, allowing whatever anger Jia is surely carrying to too frequently cool off. Still, by the film’s New Year’s Eve-set finale, there’s little doubt Jia can create masterful cinematic moments when he so desires. Read full review
70
Screen DailyAllan HunterMay 14, 2018
The meandering narrative sprawls like a great Dickens novel but individual encounters and elements that may seem like distractions all reflect back on the greater themes. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 14, 2018
I love the way Jia grapples with large social shifts in such metaphorical and yet still intimate ways, peering in on individual people caught in the churn of time and growth and framing them in the defining context of their surroundings. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 14, 2018
By the end, the transformation of China is more compelling than Qiao’s love for Bin, but watching both unfold over time is continually thought-provoking, given the ephemerality of whole cities, much less love affairs. Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 14, 2018
It’s a movie that often feels like a mega-mix of Jia’s greatest hits, but one that rehashes them with precious little of the ineffable grace that make each of them so valuable on their own. Read full review
65
Film ThreatAlan NgMar 15, 2019
Its pace is unbearably slow at times and considering we’re watching a woman essentially wasting seventeen good years of her life chasing a man, tragic is the best way to describe the whole experience. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 7, 2019
Ash is the Purest White is a sweeping Chinese crime saga that’s more interesting for what it shows than what it’s about. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 14, 2018
Ash Is Purest White is a fascinating chapter in Jia’s ongoing chronicle of ordinary lives affected by unprecedented change in China. Read full review
More From This Movie

85 Critic Reviews

7.2 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 86 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
2 84 Are You There God? It's Me,...
3 78 John Wick: Chapter 4
4 75 Polite Society
5 73 Air
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL