Ash Is Purest White

Jia Zhangke is one of the most compelling contemporary directors making films today and his latest, Ash Is Purest White (2018) demonstrates why. It is essentially about the relationship between Bin (Fan Lio) a jianghu (something like a gangster or yakuza) boss and his girlfriend Qiou (Tao Zhao) over the course of time. In the beginning there is an easy intimacy between them but their world is shattered when they are attacked by a gang of motorcycle thugs and Qiou is forced to intervene by firing a pistol off to keep Bin from being beaten to death. As a result, she is jailed for possession of a a lethal weapon. When she emerges five years later she cannot find Bin and travels to Hubei province by boat to find him. This allows Zhangke to give the viewer an extensive overview of changing China-always a theme with him -and I suspect he uses earlier shot footage from his earlier film Still Life to show the Three River Gorges before the flooding on the way to her destination. Bin has turned off his phone and not present when she confronts common friends she is told that he has moved on and has another girlfriend. Later she arranges a situation to meet him face to face and he she confronts him and asks him to tell her face to face that it is over-he says he is a new man. Then she returns to Datong, her hometown and starts a mahjong parlor. A few years alter she gets a phone call from Bin who asks her to pick him up, she goes only  to find him in a wheel chair. He tells her has suffered a stroke form excessive drinking and he is surly and combative with old friends as Qiou finds him a doctor and helps him recuperate enough so that he can walk. Once he can walk he leaves her again. I find Zhangke's visual displays of changing China fascinating and he has a gift for composing dance sequences with large groups of people. It is the visual elements of his film that always linger in my mind, but he also has a good sense of desperate romances and tragedies of life as well.