The top movies to see in March
A documentary about Orson Welles' artwork and the fictional story of a convict who forms a bond with a horse are two of the films that won over Monitor film critic Peter Rainer during March.
‘Ash Is Purest White’ burns with quiet, incandescent force
In the extraordinary Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s “Ash Is Purest White,” there is not a moment when one does not experience the moment-to-moment passage of time, its slow sweep and quiet epiphanies. This is not the sort of movie that offers up immediate gratifications, though there are some of those. Instead, it moves along with a steady grace. Its ruminative power creeps up on you.
We are first introduced, in the coal mining village of Shanxi. His girlfriend, Qiao, played by Jia’s wife, Zhao Tao, who has appeared in almost all of his nondocumentary movies, enjoys being a gangster’s moll. Bin is brutally set upon by a rival gang and she saves his life when she disperses the attackers by firing an illegal gun into the air. Because she was in possession of an illegal firearm, she receives a five-year prison sentence. Bin never visits her in prison and is a no-show when she is finally released. With an almost fated compulsion, she sets out along the Yangtze River, to a village at the foot of the Three Gorges Dam, to find him. Zhao is remarkable in a complex role that, by the end, reveals what she is fully capable of.
