Ash is Purest White

The English subtitles of the Chinese film called “jianghu” are not translated. It’s a term used for outlaw sects or societies, and it can’t actually be translated; but for this movie’s protagonist, it means more than simply “gangster” or the like it refers to a certain code of honor.

And that character happens to be a woman. In the opening scenes of the film which takes place at the turn of the 20th century Qiao (played by Tao Zhao in an amazing performance) struts into an underground mahjong parlor as if she owns the place, taking her seat beside gang leader Bin and stealing a few drags off his cigarette. When Bin steps in between two warring subjects and convinces one to put down the gun he’s just wildly brandished, Qiao picks up that gun and examines it with great interest.

Bin and Qiao turn out to be much more serious than they initially seem. Qiao has an ill father whose recent loss of employment he works in a soon to close mine is not helping his mood. Bin likes peaceable rule, even as he offers assistance to an elderly operator who’s getting into real estate. “Some assholes are saying my villas are haunted,” complains this older man; before Bin can look into it, that guy is stabbed in a parking lot.

Bin is involved in some kind of territorial dispute that ends when he is set upon by about a dozen teenagers who beat him mercilessly. To save him, it is Qiao who takes decisive action and winds up doing five years in prison on his behalf.

This new picture from master Jia Zhangke shares with his prior feature, 2015’s “Mountains May Depart,” a three-part structure that spans many years. However, I found “Ash Is Purest White” to be far superior as an attempt to depict changing China through the lives of less-than-tragic characters and their tribulations.

When Qiao is released from prison, in 2006, the unimaginably enormous Three Gorges project which was to permanently transform the Yangtze River is in progress. She takes a boat to find Bin, gets ripped off by a fake-devout woman sharing her cabin and has to track her ex-boyfriend down to get him to admit what he’s done with his life, which isn’t much.

After awhile it becomes apparent that Qiao’s heartache is not simply over the loss of a boyfriend; she is mourning a way of life. This leads her to embrace the jianghu code or at least her understanding of it with greater ferocity than ever before. By 2018, she has remade herself entirely, not unlike the railway on which she left Bin after their unsatisfactory reunion.

“Ash” ends in the now, as opposed to the rather sketchy not too distant future he journeyed to in “Mountains,” and so does everything else of Jia’s new film setting it with a genuine immediacy. And these living outside the law characters are also just more interesting than the betraying strivers of his previous movie.

The director and his leading lady are both at the top of their game here. Tao Zhao starts Qiao off as a tough kitten; during her prison stint she looks drawn and wan, and stays seemingly timid upon release. But gradually the actress lets us see that Qiao has indeed turned into a lioness though not just fearsome, but reflective and wise.

It’s always a pleasure to watch one of his movies, but be warned: The sound mix is so sharp that every time one of those iPhones goes off in the present-day scenes I was almost annoyed, thinking somebody in the screening room had left their device on. So wait a second in your local arthouse before yelling “turn it off!”

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