Ash is Purest White (Jiang hu er nv)

“this hand saved my life” “i’m not left-handed”

KYK

Great film. Great performances. Very engaging. I understand that the film had to span the 17 years in order to show the great change that has occurred in China however the emotional whallop came for me in the 2nd section... not sure I needed the third. But this is one…

Sean Baker

Life after modernity, and fighting to retain values after even time and history become completely imperceptible. A high masterpiece and Jia's finest work to date, continuing a schematism and line of inquiry hinted at in Mountains May Depart and pushing Jia's work in a…

Neil Bahadur

In Ash is Purest White's press-kit, Jia Zhangke explains how the film had been shot with multiple camera models, and as the film progresses there is an update to the camera technology used based on what year the narrative is taking place in. So, when we start in 2001,…

Neil Bahadur

A culminating work, the full blossom of Jia's efforts to mix his undergirding aesthetic and thematic documentation of China's modernization with his recent forays into genre filmmaking. Living proof of the anguish of Major Briggs's stated fear in Twin Peaks that "love is…

Jake Cole

it’s all about movement. from dance, to violence, to a hug between two lost souls needing solace, to the simple act of holding your lover’s hand after so much time and life has passed, where you’ve forgotten what hand they use more and how it felt against your skin. time…

Logan Kenny

A long and melancholy summation of better movies the brilliant Jia Zhangke has made before, “Ash Is Purest White” finds China’s most prominent filmmaker wistfully replaying the hits in order to further romanticize some of the fixations that have always dominated his work.…

davidehrlich

"Is it a private business, or is it state-owned?" "It makes no difference. All you need in this business is a sense of the cosmos. The bottom line is: we're all prisoners of the universe."

Sean Gilman

“It’s a way of being warmer, more genuine, more welcoming, when you call yourself what everyone else calls you... We’re trying to simplify how we tell the story of what we do, and the name represents that... [It is a] momentous event in the history of the Y [that] honors…

Eli Hayes