RESURRECTION – Review by Diane Carson
Resurrection defies superlatives as it travels through dreams
Chronicling one hundred plus years of cinema’s history, including multiple genres and the unique stylistic signature for each, Chinese director Bi Gan’s Resurrection, even at two hours 40 minutes, astonishes with its imaginative flourishes and sustained engagement. Often challenging, even a bit elusive, introductory narrator Miss Shu introduces the Deliriant, a curious guide for a mind-bending journey. Divided into chapters, the sequential sections emphasize the six Buddhist identified senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind.
Alarmingly, in this dystopian future, humanity has traded mortality for immortality, surrendering and sacrificing the precious, cathartic ability to dream. But enthralled by an extraordinary Deliriant (Jackson Yee) who still enjoys reveries, the Fantasmer Shu explores his riveting dreams in an effort to wake him. Empathically, Miss Shu (Shu Qi), also an Other One as the Deliriants are known, will thereby facilitate this specific representative’s death, liberating him from an eternal time zone. For she maintains the ability through his rare gift to access surreal realms. If all this sounds complicated, even daunting, know that the experience is immersive, indeed dreamlike, and hypnotic.
In succession throughout the film, the diverse experiences emanate from a film projector Miss Shu inserts within the Deliriant’s body so that she may vicariously share his dreams. Through distinctive, aesthetically differentiated stories, the Deliriant will shape shift his way from the origins of film to present iterations while also surveying Chinese history. His passage toward death will culminate in a lengthy vampire story defined by dominant color changes: saturated green suffusing the image yielding to red and transitioning to a heady blue.
Beginning and ending with an address to the viewer, animated and live action blend a striking introduction leading to playful cinematic homages segueing to serious fare. They include a repeated nod to Louis Lumiere’s iconic 1895 short The Waterer Watered, moments of praise for fantasy sci-fi special effects champion George Méliès, a bow to German chiaroscuro enthusiast F.W. Murnau, an imitation of Orson Welles’ mirror scene shootout in Touch of Evil, and a segment reminiscent Wong Kar Wai’s elegance, amidst many more tributes. Several genres merit considerable development through extended plots, including monster, gangster, and vampire films. Notably, for each change of theme, the technical elements—camera distance and angles, music and sound, pace of the editing, dialogue, art direction—illustrate and define that group’s definitive style. Concluding the vampire tale, a very long take delivers a stunning conclusion that left me as breathless as the final disintegration of Bi Gan’s mystifying, hallucinatory world.
Central characters change from an accused murderer to a thief isolated in a Buddhist temple, from a con artist to a young gangster. Occasionally enigmatic while always completely mesmerizing, how all this blends eludes clear-cut, logical analysis as Bin invites viewers on a fun-fare ride, never mind the logic. For astonishing bravado amidst impressive historical knowledge, Bin immerses viewers in his and his characters’ imagination. Waking to our reality is a striking disappointment after visiting a creativity that defies description.
Winner of this past year’s Cannes Film Festival Prix Spécial (Special Prize) for its unique cinematic vision, Resurrection is in Mandarin with English subtitles.
