A film director Wong Kar Wai"s film tells us the love and loneliness of a modern man.
His movie ?東邪西毒: Ashes of Time?can be understood under such background. By the way, he nominated a chivalrous fighter as a class to show love and loneliness the most compressively. And he did not nominated a chivalrous fighter of ‘powerful groups’ stuffed by
an ideology in a virtual space but the living one outside ‘powerful groups’ who had to struggle to survive in a historical moment.
This study has tried to investigate and find the meanings of ?東邪西毒: Ashes of Time?as a martial art movie starting from the critical mind that the existing studies thereof have a little bit neglected its chivalrous factors. In brief, the meanings are as followings.
First, the Mise-en-Scene, story line, acting and so on thereof have been analyzed in the dimension of a motion picture technique, and such analysis makes us know what director Wong Kar Wai wants to show in this movie is not the stories of chivalrous fighters dictating to the whole country in a virtual space ‘powerful groups’ but inner conflicts and pain that chivalrous fighters who would actually and historically exist pass through in realities of life. It is the unique feature of ?東邪西毒: Ashes of Time?which is definitely different from the films in the existing martial art genre.
Second, this study examined that the love of ?東邪西毒: Ashes of Time?has three features - ‘complicated love triangle’, ‘sexual implication’ and ‘shadow of death’. And the love story reveals the essence of life by emphasizing affirmation of ‘instant life’ that an acute social class-chivalrous fighter who is on the verge of death can sense only and the premonition of ‘eternal death’.
Third, this study studied the main motifs such as ‘frustration of love’, ‘the passage of time’ and so on associating with the corresponding aspect for the death of a movie character. Thus, ?東邪西毒: Ashes of Time?was a film showing the loneliness of the existence facing
death, nominating a special class called a chivalrous fighter ‘Hyeob’.
Such story thereof thoroughly escapes from the rules of martial art films, and simultaneously shows the inner world of a chivalrous fighter ‘Hyeob’ who would historically exist. That is, this movie could be the most non-martial art film and the most martial art film at the same time. And this movie becomes face up to the emptiness of love that modern people feel and the identify of loneliness that it is unable to know the origin via such the most non-martial art and the most martial art film. It is the meaning and value of ?東邪西毒: Ashes of Time? as an authorism art film.