Oblivion Beyond Forgetting: A Buddhist Reflection on Suffering in Ashes of Time (Critical Essay‪)‬

Article [1] Wong Kar-wai believes that human beings suffer because of memory, which is ironic because memory is generally supposed to be a blessed ability that people are afraid to lose. Hong Kong-based filmmaker Wong is a director who has persistently explored similar themes throughout his work. Most of his films focus on time and memory and on solitude and anguish as the results of lost time. Ashes of Time (Chinese title: Dongxie Xidu; 1994), which is based on Louis Cha's Chinese martial-art novel series The Eagle Shooting Heroes, addresses such themes. It describes the solitariness and alienation of people who are obsessed with the scars of memory. The film reflects Wong's revolutionary modification of the traditional Chinese martial-art story into a meditative and philosophical narrative that has a gloomy and melancholic tonality. In the film the heroic figures who typically appear in traditional martial art films are replaced by wounded and isolated beings whose lives are ruined by their memories.