With just his first two features, Bi Gan won a place in world cinema. Kaili Blues and Long Day's Journey into Night grabbed attention more for Bi's visual style than for what the movies were saying.
With Resurrection, the writer and director takes a further step into critical renown, fashioning an alternate history of cinema in five chapters and almost three hours.
The opening segment introduces a sci-fi world where eternal life is available to those who do not dream. "Fantasmers" defy bans against dreaming, causing leaps in time and space while turning into monsters. "Big Others" hunt them out.
Using an Academy frame and amusingly fake sets, Bi Gan sets the first story in the world of silent melodrama, as a Big Other, played by Shu Qi, hunts Jackson Yee's fantasmer. References to Murnau and Méliès, to German expressionism and Lumière Brothers slapstick, fill out a creepily sadomasochistic plot.
Subsequent chapters call on film noir tropes, spy thrillers, The Lady from Shanghai, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, Paper Moon, you name it. Bi Gan's appetite is voracious, his plotting inscrutable. How does Bach's "Come Sweet Death" connect to wire recorders and theremins? Is there an answer?
In lieu of plot, there is Bi's amazing command of production design and cinematography, his uncanny ability to bring fresh visuals to the tritest narratives, and his unwavering focus. His forceful, assertive style is hypnotic even when it's difficult to grasp what he is saying.
Kaili Blues had a 45-minute take that started on motorcycles and trucks and ended up crossing a river below a rural village, a tour de force he originally wanted to extend ever further. The second half of Long Day's Journey was an hour-long take in 3D.
Here he presents a half-hour shot set on New Year's Eve, 1999. It begins with waterfront fireworks, travels through alleyways and nightclubs, violence escalating around Jackson Yee and his new partner Li Gengxi, until dawn breaks. It's the kind of balancing act that will keep you breathless.
Shu Qi appears briefly and also narrates. Ordinarily a superb performer, she seems slightly out of tune here. Jackson Yee is one of China's heartthrobs after appearing in films like Better Days. Here he's up to the task of playing a shape-shifting monster, although there's rarely a sense of an interior life to his characters. Li Gengxi is simply spectacular as a femme fatale with a truly dark secret.
Bi Gan's films are events to be savored, examples of how artistry and technique can expand cinema's potential. They are also a hodgepodge of esoteric ideas and weak metaphors. Like his other films, I'll revisit the good parts and skip the others.
Resurrection has played at numerous festivals, including the New York Film Festival. It will be released December 15, only in movie theaters.