Wong is the modern auteurist's dreamtime superhero, and what he's done here... is convert the martial arts saga, with its strange hierarchal struggles and ideas of honor and repetitious matches, into an imagistic opera, a roaring aria of Wongian rue and mourning. None of the epic and wickedly shot-and-cut battle scenes matter in the story so much as a single coat button, representing, as so many innocent but totemic objects do in Wong, a heartbreaking as gorgeous as falling snow.
Michael Atkinson
November 21, 2013