THE STORY – In a future where most of humanity has lost the capacity to dream, a woman discovers that one creature is still able to experience them. She enters the monster’s dreams, using her ability to perceive illusions to determine the truth in its visions of Chinese history.
THE CAST – Jackson Yee, Shu Qi, Mark Chao, Li Gengxi, Huang Jue, Chen Yongzhong, Zhang Zhijian, Chloe Maayan, Yan Nan & Guo Mucheng
THE TEAM – Bi Gan (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 160 Minutes
“I do not know who you will be in the future. I know you were once a skeleton in history immortalized by the silver screen.”
Bi Gan, the renowned Chinese filmmaker, has only made three films at this point in his already awe-inspiring career. With his latest, “Resurrection,” he may have given us his first genuine masterpiece. “Kaili Blues” and “Long Days Journey Into Night” were already widely acclaimed, earning the 35-year-old filmmaker multiple prizes all over the world. With this film, he’s now officially entered a whole new era of his career, one that will put him up there with the cinematic greats, whether it’s Akira Kurosawa, Wong Kar-Wai, or David Lynch, each of whom you can feel as an influence over his work here. “Resurrection” is both a kaleidoscopic spectacle and an audacious exploration of a hundred years of 20th-century Chinese cinema through six dreamlike stories, each unfolding across a different era of history and touching upon each of the human senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, until only its flickering consciousness remains at 24 frames a second.
Structured around six different stories, the film follows a mysterious figure known as the Fantasmer, portrayed in every form by Jackson Yee, who lives in a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream. The Fantasmer, though, remains mesmerized by the fading illusions of the dream world. This monster (looking almost like Nosferatu in his appearance) travels through decades of time to encounter visions no one else can see, and it will forget once it leaves to enter a new era of cinematic history. Suddenly, a woman appears known as “The Big Other“ (Shu Qi). The aspect ratio turns to 4:3, debris and scratches can be seen across the screen, and the images flicker in complete silence at 16 frames per second. We’re witnessing Bi Gan’s vision of Chinese cinema during the age of expressionism, which is gloriously captured through its stunning cinematography and production design from beginning to end. Gifted with the rare power to perceive these illusions for what they truly are, The Big Other has been looking for a Fantasmer and chooses to enter the monster’s dreams (by activating a film projector embedded in the Fantasmer’s back), and thus begins an unforgettable journey through several decades of cinematic history.
It’s an odyssey that starts with the very beginnings of cinema and takes us to that communal moment where our souls are subconsciously united for a brief period of time. And although our bodies will one day disintegrate and our memories fade, as visualized in the film through the melting of wax at the end of each segment, the images captured and put up on the screen will last beyond us. “Resurrection“ is an epic masterwork that reimagines history and the art form of cinema, with each segment exploring one human sense through one cinematic style (each with its own distinct color grading) and one haunted fragment of the Chinese experience: from the opening silent-era expressionist fable steeped in exile and revolution to a shadow-drenched 1940s noir set in a train station demolished by air raids gripped by paranoia; from a quietly decisive battle of wills against a conjured spirit to a tender father-daughter story to an audacious nearly 40-minute oner which takes us through a forbidden love story between a young man and a vampire on New Years Eve 1999 before the sun rises. While it may lack the flowing momentum of “Long Days Journey Into Night,” Gan’s latest compensates with a more sweeping, riskier vision, one that will try the audience’s patience but is vastly rewarding for those willing to stick with it.
At times confounding but always captivating, each chapter is less a straightforward linear narrative than a drifting daze into a state of consciousness we’ve rarely felt on screen since David Lynch. There’s minimal context given for any of the characters or situations, as the audience is just dropped into the hypnotizing ride backed by a sweeping, soothing score (M83) and some of the most breathtaking cinematography (Dong Jingsong) you’ll likely see this year. The film culminates in an unbroken sequence that rivals “Long Days Journey Into Night’s” 59-minute 3D oner, a fever-dream of tonal shifts, gangster-sung karaoke, rain-soaked violence, and the passionate desire for a vampire’s first bite all doused in neon red, that simply takes the breath away.
Yee delivers several shape-shifting performances as the Fantasmer reincarnates across several different identities: a disgraced war criminal looking for a briefcase that may contain the hidden secret to ending the war, a former Buddhist monk engaged in a battle against the Spirit Of Bitterness (Chen Yongzhong), a drifting con man using his daughter’s (Guo Mucheng) extraordinary gift to his benefit, a lonely gangster looking to snag a kiss from a young woman he’s infatuated with, and the aforementioned Fantasmer itself. Each form offers a rumination on transformation in physical and metaphysical form, the collective memory shared by cinemagoers, and the nature of identity as China’s cinematic history is distilled into two and a half hours through Yee’s performances. However, the real star is Bi Gan, and his ambition is felt in every frame of “Resurrection.”
Generated in isolation during the pandemic, “Resurrection” mourns the time that has been lost but celebrates the very act of how dreaming can create new memories for our collective history. In an age of distraction and brain rot, Bi Gan demands audiences to pay attention with all of their senses to the possibilities that cinema presents. This is not a film that seeks to be understood but to be experienced. Much like Gan’s ever-moving camera, you wander through it; it sometimes jolts you awake, but for the most part, you glide through it in a trance, one that leaves an indelible impression you will take outside the cinema once it is over and hopefully feel invigorated enough to want to share with someone else. Through its hypnotic style and profound emotions (some of which reminded me of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s sprawling ten-story piece, “Dekalog”), Bi Gan cements his place as one of the most visionary filmmakers of his generation. This is a mesmerizing ritual of remembrance, a resurrection of that which has been lost, and a love letter to fading dreams through the cinematic language that will immortalize them for as long as this planet exists. It’s the kind of work that instantly grabs your attention and inspires a generation to pick up a camera and put their own dreams up on the silver screen.
