Review: Jia Zhangke's 'Ash Is Purest White' is a deeply moving gangster love story
"Ash Is Purest White," the English title of Jia Zhangke's exquisite and ferocious new movie, references a conversation between a woman, Qiao (Zhao Tao), and her boyfriend, Bin (Liao Fan), as they survey an extinct volcano on the horizon. It's 2001, more than a thousand years after the last recorded eruptions near Datong, a coal-rich city in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi. Reflecting on the ash still dusting the nearby mountaintop, Qiao marvels, "Anything that burns at high temperatures has been made pure."
The notion of purity - another word for it might be loyalty - courses through this beautiful, expansive and deeply melancholy drama, in which Qiao will endure her own intense trial by fire.
