X
- 2019
- Not Rated
- Cohen Media Group
- 2 h 16 m
- 2019
- Not Rated
- Cohen Media Group
- 2 h 16 m
Summary Qiao (Zhao Tao) is in love with Bin, a local mobster. During a fight between rival gangs, she fires a gun to protect him. Qiao gets five years in prison for this act of loyalty. Upon her release, she goes looking for Bin to pick up where they left off.
Directed By: Zhangke Jia
Written By: Zhangke Jia
- 2019
- Not Rated
- Cohen Media Group
- 2 h 16 m
- 2019
- Not Rated
- Cohen Media Group
- 2 h 16 m
Ash Is Purest White
7.2
Where to Watch
Summary Qiao (Zhao Tao) is in love with Bin, a local mobster. During a fight between rival gangs, she fires a gun to protect him. Qiao gets five years in prison for this act of loyalty. Upon her release, she goes looking for Bin to pick up where they left off.
Directed By: Zhangke Jia
Written By: Zhangke Jia
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
85
97% Positive
35 Reviews
35 Reviews
3% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
85
97% Positive
35 Reviews
35 Reviews
3% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
As ever, Zhao Tao puts in the best performance you’ll see this year.
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.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 38 User Ratings
7.2
84% Positive
32 Ratings
32 Ratings
8% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
8% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 38 User Ratings
7.2
84% Positive
32 Ratings
32 Ratings
8% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
8% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
Ash is Purest White is one of the best films I've seen this year.
A film that deceives by its apparent simplicity, and yet rewards you for its structural richness.
But the details are appreciated only if you're willing to pay attention.
If your thing is not films that have a slow but captivating pace, stay away.
This is not about finding an answer to the plot but about absorbing it.
The story of Qiao played by a magnificent Zhao Tao is an impressive journey of loyalty, love, change, betrayal and loss, and is given an impressive representation by director Jia Zhangke.
Not to be missed.
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This is very much a bleak and sometimes quite gritty film. Its got a mostly urban setting and by the end its somewhat introspective. The main protagonist seems quite mysterious, which intrigued me a bit. I felt myself rooting for her at times. I did feel the film seemed a bit directionless at times, plot wise, which didn't help.
As I say, there's a sobering side to what goes on, the principles and morals that are discussed. It's not a film that I found entirely memorable or would want to watch again but its ok. It had a bit of a feel of An Elephant Sitting Still, I thought. I'm not sure what else I could say but I'd only recommend it to people quite familiar with these sorts of films, who are prepared to give it a shot, if you know what I mean.
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The performances of the two leads are riveting.
It’s a surprisingly funny, even loopy film at times, with bursts of slapstick and screwball humor, plus a sporadic absurdism.
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.
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.
Ash Is Purest White is a fascinating chapter in Jia’s ongoing chronicle of ordinary lives affected by unprecedented change in China.
You are looking for a reason, a past life, a missing blank and then you realise, "This is a love story".
Ash Is Purest White
The writer and director Zhangke Jia is a, if I may, a sadistic person when it comes to portray love in cinema. And there's nothing wrong with that. You can see the result here. It is just, personally I feel sobered up when I start jumping on this train. Now, this is not just any "sober"-ness that he offers us. It is a post hangover, too many cups of coffee, sober. What it sums up too, is an experience. An experience of a lifetime? Sure, why not. For if the writing and direction of the film is pretty standard. What Jia has achieved in this passionate project of his, is something I haven't seen before.
And maybe, I will remember it years later, for its originality. Or just freshness, in my life. Over the two hours in our world, and more than 15 years in the character's world, Jia defines love. Now, there have been so many filmmakers, storytellers, philosophers and whatnots that had tried to conjure the essence of what love is. Where some has been so theoretical and meticulous and a bit math about their love, some has been awfully blunt in their grammar.
And maybe this one comes in later or maybe in both of them. Jia describes it disproportionately. The writers, before him, have gone through enormous lengths to justify it, balance it and share it as much as they could. And even if this one shares its share inadvertently, it is also never called upon. This leaves a hollow space in your head. You are numb for the rest of the day when you get in contact with this. Ash Is Purest White, it concludes, pretty early on, and by the last bell is rung, you'd wish for some, some filter in their voices.
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If you don’t like “art house movies” (I mean early Ingmar Bergman films and not low-level porn), stay away from this movie. I rather liked it, as you can see by my numerical rating, but after the first third or so, which is about gangsters, you start on a long train ride through central China where the scenery is colorless and the company is not especially interesting. Someone seems to take a job studying UFOs and there is some successful acupuncture later on (maybe), but that’s about it for excitement. I once sent a cousin of mine to an early Bergman film, and she is still not speaking to me, so be warned.
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(Mauro Lanari)
Contamination of genres and styles is not an intrinsic value if they do not mix. 17 years and 136 minutes to tell that, ultimately, space and time change nothing, at most they decant the decline already underway: the anthropological, Chinese, amorous, friendly, corporeal one. An interminable choral river pompously immersed in the geographical solitude of boundless territories and in a hyper-dilated chronology inhabited exclusively by stories of losers: an epic attempt as unsuccessful as its characters, with symbolisms and stylizations that destroy in the bud the semblances of neorealism. Then, after the hundredth deserted wide shot, one loses count and gets bored.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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Production Company
Shanghai Film Group,
Xstream Pictures,
Huanxi Media Group,
MK2 Productions,
Arte France Cinéma,
ARTE,
L'Aide aux Cinémas du Monde,
Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC),
Institut Français,
Huayi Brothers Pictures,
Beijing Runjin Investment,
Wishart Media,
Enchant Film and Televisione Culture,
Huaxia Film Distribution,
Shanghai Tao Piao Piao Movie & TV Culture,
Fujian Hengye Pictures Co,
Up Pictures,
Office Kitano
Release Date Mar 15, 2019
Duration 2 h 16 m
Rating Not Rated
Awards
To Ten Chinese Films Festival
• 7 Wins & 9 Nominations
China Film Director's Guild Awards
• 1 Win & 5 Nominations
Asian Film Critics Association Awards
• 1 Win & 5 Nominations
