In “Resurrection,” 36-year-old director Bi Gan reveals a very telling thesis that helps explain the storytelling ethos of his previous work: humans cease to be humans without dreams; what it means to be us is to pervade logic from time to time.
In 2015, at the age of 26, he released his feature-length debut “Kaili Blues,” which progressively reveals subtle dosages of dream logic in an otherwise straightforward family drama. Much of the movie’s makeup appears inspired by the likes of auteurs such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-liang, Edward Yang and even Andrei Tarkovsky. That is, until the second half of the movie, where we’re introduced to a 41-minute long take in which the pre-established reality of the film is shattered into something uniquely surreal. Suddenly, not only is Bi Gan’s signature long-take established, but it furthermore leads him into potential auteurship, where his sheer daringness as a filmmaker is blatantly revealed to the world.
In 2018, at the age of 29, Bi Gan released his sophomore feature-length “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” which fully embraces the groundworks of having dreamlike execution throughout. The complete lack of confirmation as to what exactly is happening in the movie – insinuating that some parts are either reality, a memory or a dream – is used as a device to fabricate structural spontaneity, furthermore hinting at Bi Gan’s devotion towards depicting the illogical nature of our imagination.
In 2025, seven years after his last feature, “Resurrection” is released in what appears to be the director’s already attempted magnum opus: a straightforward anthology movie masquerading as an avant-garde dystopian sci-fi that’s much simpler than it’s made out to be. Yet, the sweeping elaborateness of its versatile set design and cinematography, and the attempted overbearingness of sandwiching multiple stories together, might convince viewers otherwise.
It’s a commendable effort on ambition alone, like any Bi Gan feature-length at this point, but one that is ultimately overcompensating for actual content or correlation, all professed in the name of the mystery of dreaming (i.e., cinema) being an extension of life’s incalculable assets and therefore, a necessary human right.
What about the objective reality that inspires dreams to exist in the first place? What about the potential psychological insinuations that dreams reveal about one’s self, subconscious and deepest desires? Why does a dream make us human, other than the fact that it makes us play out human familiarities? Why do dreams tend to escalate unrealistically? Is it because our emotions and feelings contribute to the sudden changes within the plot of a dream? Why are dreams a human right other than the fact that they allow us to place ourselves in any situation imaginable? Cause it enables empathy? Cinema enables empathy?
It could make sense though that expanding and elaborating upon these ideas wouldn’t concern or be the main priority for Bi Gan given his belief that the unknowing is much more compelling than the discovering, but the issue is, “Resurrection” isn’t exactly a whole lot of “unknowing” when we know, for the most part, exactly what styles he’s referencing and exactly what archetypes of tall-tales he’s riffing off of within his anthology stories.
Nonetheless, each anthology story in “Resurrection” has equal things to like about one another. The film’s introduction sequence is a euphoric recreation of not only the silent-era, but German expressionism more notably, which is perhaps the greatest cinematic movement one could reference when wanting to exemplify the surreal reinterpretation of reality that movies offer.
From then onwards, we’re placed in the film’s first segment: a homage to noir, featuring a gripping train fight and interrogation sequence, as well as a respectable homage to Orson Welles’s “Lady in Shanghai” during its mirror climax.
Next is maybe the best of the batch, that being a ghost tale set in a Buddhist temple where a man meets the alleged spirit of bitterness, who takes the form of the man’s father. The entire short is limited to a single location and is made up of almost entirely conversation, where Bi Gan showcases some genuinely spellbinding dialogue between the two characters, therefore causing the segment to appear less like a pastiche compared to the others.
Then, we get an admittedly generic one – the classic tale of a duo between a broke bachelor con-artist and an unusually gifted orphan – but executed exceptionally well, with the most transparent narrative development out of all the segments, therefore making it easily accessible.
Lastly, the closing story is where we get Bi Gan’s famous long-take, mostly riveting by the fact you’re watching an exceptionally thought-out and indisputably creative long-take with, howbeit, some pleasantly surprising supernatural elements, but it unfortunately relies on stereotypical and thus unfascinating romantic noir elements within its storytelling and characters that also plagued his previous feature.
The long takes in both “Kaili Blues” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” are much better earned than in “Resurrection,” however. In “Kaili Blues,” we’re gradually alluded to the prospect of our main character taking custody of his nephew, leading to the actual day he looks for him, which is mostly depicted via the long take. In “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” the long-take is even better transitioned into, where the entire first eighty minutes of the movie are a structural duet between the believed past and the believed present, the present slowly moment by moment leading to the day he searches at the place he believes his long lost lover to be, which is when the long-take finally begins.
In “Resurrection,” however, the long take feels obligatory, something included solely because he did it in his previous two features. Perhaps, however, it could represent the latest stage in cinema at the moment, where we now have the technological advancements to actually shoot something as baffling as a long take, but it could just be coincidental, given that every Bi Gan movie has climaxed in a “oner.” Nevertheless, this long take may be more visually seamless and impressive than ever before when divorced from the rest of the film, but it ultimately lacks the emotional resonance and pay-off that his previous two delivered.
Some might say “Resurrection” rings familiar to ambitious classics about the filmmaking experience, such as Federico Fellini’s “8 1/2,” but one cult hit seems almost too comparable to it, being French auteur Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors,” released only a little over a decade before Bi Gan’s latest feature. This is also a movie about an outcast playing different characters, all homaging different styles of cinema, such as motion-capture and musicals. It even begins with a similar meta and self-aware, “you’re watching a movie in a theater right now, aren’t you?” shtick that Bi Gan opens with as well. Perhaps why, however, one might perceive Leos Carax’s attempt to be a stronger effort than Bi Gan’s is the difference in maturity, that being Carax has been making films since the early 80s, and decided nearly forty years later to then make what many consider his magnum opus or his love letter to the very thing that’s made up more than half a century of his life. The film is also carried throughout by a powerhouse performance from Denis Lavant, which gives the viewers something consistent to latch onto and also naturally creates a controlled flow that “Resurrection” severely lacks.
The inherent issue with anthology stories is that they have a greater chance of not accommodating enough time to really develop any of the characters or plots that embody them, thus creating a psychological disconnect from the audience. “Holy Motors” cleverly avoids this by making it obvious that the anthology stories are intertwined with a singular subject.
“Resurrection” works best as a showcase of genuinely mind-blowing visual and stylistic technicalism that is obviously beyond the craftsmanship of most filmmakers working today. It also works best if you just unpretentiously view it as a wives-tales anthology movie or a love letter to the evolution of cinematic aesthetics. If you think of worldwide renowned directorial auteurs like Christopher Nolan or Denis Villeneuve, you might as well start considering Bi Gan in the conversation at this point as well, because it’s bound to happen the more he gains support and budget. But perhaps, there is a humbleness missing that should’ve eased its way out incrementally during his initial work, where he needed to cipher through more storytelling resources to overcome financial limitations like those two other auteurs. That humbleness is ever so noticeable in “Kaili Blues” and immediately abandoned as soon as “Long Days Journey Into Night” comes along. Right now, Bi Gan has little reason to change and stop indulging in this pattern, given his success.
As enjoyable as “Resurrection” was to watch, a part of me believes I would’ve been an even bigger anticipator for his future if there were more of not knowing where he’d go next, some mystery, if you will. His hunt for continuously advertising himself as a quote on quote “auteur” or this next big thing by being potentially disingenuous via prioritizing even bolder presentation with each coming movie seems much more demanding to him than actually searching for and implementing all the components that make up not only a masterpiece of storytelling, but a narrative truly original like the ones that inspired his own, and not just one trying so hard to pretend to be instead.
It’s a movie intended to worship cinema, yet is unable to see its own filmmaking deficiencies to really epitomize a love for cinema that even less metatextual movies do by just being incredible in every way; it’s virtually blinded by its confident ethos of thinking plot disorder is the key to dreams or ideal filmmaking; it seems to lack nuance within its take on fantasy and cinema, and ultimately comes off somewhat naive because so. Perhaps then, what “Resurrection” can be appreciated most for is its being an exemplar in representing what cinema has accumulated after such time has passed, and how it’s furthermore interpreted by younger filmmakers who’ve grown up in the age of “brainrot” or hyperstimulant media where we have instantaneous access to art from any point in human history. This is about as modern as a movie can get, chaotically representing the state of new art now as almost literal libraries of influences.
Turn off the Bright Lights 