Resurrection (Kuang ye shi dai)

 

Director Bi Gan 

director and cast on the red carpet at Cannes

Shu Qi at Cannes, 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RESURRECTION (Kuang ye shi dai)                       B+                                                       China  France  USA  (160 mi)  2025  d: Bi Gan

Unlike any other film you’ll ever see, a radical departure from any other cinema experience, Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan, the maker of such extraordinary films as 2016 Top Ten List #2 Kaili Blues (Lu bian ye can) and 2019 Top Ten List #6 Long Day's Journey Into Night (Di qiu zui hou de ye wan), has been described by Canadian writer, critic, and Chinese film curator Shelly Kraicer, who lived in Beijing for more than a decade, as the anti-Jia Zhangke ('Resurrection' review by Shelly Kraicer), now moving in a completely new direction, more modernist, with a stream-of-consciousness spirit, as movie references abound, becoming an ode to cinema and a lamentation for our times, creating an imaginary sci-fi universe that lives only in the imagination, which becomes the beating heart that lives within us, coinciding with the life of dreams, which cease to exist when the body dies.  But new life emerges with every subsequent conscious existence, allowing the life cycle to begin again with a true out-of-body experience.  Seemingly inspired by the darkly immersive atmospheric tone of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), writer/director Bi Gan and co-writer Zhai Xiaohui spent years in the lab constructing a new cinematic vision for this film, which was literally years in the making, as his last feature was seven years ago, but this nearly three-hour venture is a different kind of cinematic excursion that requires an open mind, as it simply resists logical evaluation and sets itself apart from the rest, like a time-traveling experience existing almost entirely in dream language.  A late edition to the Cannes lineup in 2025, added just five days before the festival began, winning a Special Grand Jury Prize, where jury president Juliette Binoche likened it to an “unidentified flying object,” the film has been re-edited since that initial premiere, yet it remains confusing enough, where it will be difficult for anyone to make sense of this sprawling epic work that simply goes places we’ve never been, yet the acclaim for this film will likely only grow over time.  Unraveling over the course of 100 years, like an anthology of short stories without chapter headings, told in six segments, with each one corresponding to one of the six senses recognized in Buddhist thought (The Six Sense Bases), sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind, where the protagonist in each segment is Jackson Yee, a Chinese actor, singer, and member of boy group TFBoys, who takes on five different roles, working with the director for a year and a half to make this film.  While there are multiple movie references, which the director takes in new directions, it’s difficult to say where this stands in Chinese movie history, as it’s remarkably ambitious visually, creating something onscreen that is simply unimaginable, yet it remains distanced and aloof, only occasionally connecting emotionally, leaving viewers befuddled and perplexed at the audaciousness of what they’ve just experienced.  Ultimately the film is something of a puzzlebox that the director himself wanted to watch, which makes perfect sense.      

Title cards explain that the film is set in a post-apocalyptic future when humanity has achieved immortality, but only by giving up dreaming, while those that continue to dream are called Deliriants, outcasts viewed as monsters that are knowingly veering towards their own death, living on a different level of human existence from the others, supposedly “bringing pain to reality and chaos to history.”  Using narratives that transcend space and time, moving from Silent-era German Expressionism to film noir to a Chinese ghost story to a phantastical vampire love story, shot by Dong Jingsong through various color filters, the film utilizes a film-within-a-film technique, opening in a silent movie theater, where film is considered part of an ancient forgotten past, with Bi Gan’s film dealing with the resurrection of dreams, of cinema, and of memory itself.  We discover a woman known as the Big Other, Shu Qi from Hou Hsiao-hsien’s MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001),  THREE TIMES (2005), and 2015 Top Ten List #9 The Assassin (Nie Yinniang), who is capable of seeing through illusions, and is assigned to bringing Deliriants back to reality, sent to hunt them down, just like the hunt for Replicants in Blade Runner, gifted with the rare power to perceive these illusions for what they truly are, as she chooses to enter the monster’s dreams, determined to uncover the truth that lies hidden within.  Starting in an old Chinese opium den, elaborately constructed, like a dollhouse, featuring a multi-level space with adjoining rooms, windows, and walkways, each rendering a different activity, Resurrection (2025) Dir. Bi Gan : r/CineShots YouTube (46 seconds), but occasionally an outsized human hand intercedes, as she follows a secret underground passageway, like falling down an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, where she discovers a grotesque Nosferatu-resembling Deliriant (Jackson Yee) munching on raw poppy flowers to help stimulate his dreams, but they are killing him.  Unable to understand his irrational compulsion, she discovers a movie projector for a heart, and decides to load it with film, allowing him to replay his past life in dreams before dying, as a series of four elaborately constructed dreams (framed by a prologue and epilogue) unfold before our eyes, with a brief shot of a wax candle melting and Shu Qi’s voiceover coming between each section, chronologically representing an unnamed historical period and a different period of cinema, which acts like a portal into the world of the subconscious imagination, taking us upon a shape-shifting odyssey through illusion, beauty, and terror that takes him across a century of cinema and to the end of time.

What stands out in all three Bi Gan films is the complex visual style, each featuring extended one-shot takes that extend beyond 30-minutes, become a signature aspect of his filmmaking, which is never less than enthralling, arguably a natural extension from the seductive, all-consuming style that began with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s neon-splashed, adrenaline-rush submersion into the techno-scored nightlife of Taipei in MILLENNIUM MAMBO, connected, of course, by actress Shu Qi.  Tinged with science fiction and fantasy, with a layered synthesized soundtrack by French electro-duo M83, while paying tribute to various movie genres, it’s important to note that in every iteration, the character Jackson Yee portrays is an outlaw, with a dream sequence moving into the lead-up of WWII and film noir territory, shot using a blue color filter or featuring the pervasive use of the color, where he appears to be a musician/spy suspect/political prisoner who is both reviled and revered because of his voice, capable of inducing madness in men, a homoerotic object of desire for both the Composer (Yan Nan) and the Commander (Mark Chao), one wanting to hear his voice, while the other wants to unlock his precious secrets, FNC 2025 | Resurrection (Bi Gan) (51 seconds).  Nearly indecipherable, this mysterious segment involves a fleeting reference to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s DAY OF WRATH (1943), an elaborate prison, a lengthy interrogation, a near-death train incident, a missing suitcase, a theremin, an Orson Welles’ LADY OF SHANGHAI (1947) house of mirrors, a panicked train station engulfed in fog, the stabbing of eardrums, and the last sounds heard, the warbling sounds of a Bach song, BWV 478, “Come, sweet death, come, blessed rest” played on a theremin which magically closes one world while opening another.  That song foreshadows a series of deaths that are yet to come.  The next sequence jumps ahead to the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s, a winter’s tale with snow inexplicably covering the ground of an abandoned Buddhist monastery, where a former monk, known as Mongrel, goes on a looting spree of locating Buddha statues before destroying them, all part of destroying the old ways, yet succumbing to a fever-inducing toothache, using a broken piece to knock out his rotten tooth, inducing the “Spirit of Bitterness,” who takes human form (Bi’s uncle, Chen Yongzhong, appearing in all his films).  The two engage in witty banter before the spirit, assuming the appearance of his late father, transports us into his dreamworld, reflective of a Chinese ghost story, revealing a mysterious backstory, offering a window into China’s dark past, where a dog reflects the karmic punishment for betraying the past, with Mongrel quickly realizing the past cannot be destroyed, as it exists in our minds and imagination.

Jia is a con artist during the onset of China’s market economy in the 80’s, who schemes to win prize money offered by an Old Man crime boss (Zhang Zhijian) who executes people who cross him.  In a world ruled by money, Jia befriends an orphan (Guo Mucheng), teaching her a card trick, hoping to convince the Old Man in the supernatural, or that she can identify a card simply by smelling it.  Posing as Jia’s daughter, even while blindfolded and wired to a lie detector machine, she manages to outwit the Old Man and win a cash prize, which they split before Jia leaves town and is immediately robbed and left for dead.  Meanwhile, the Old Man summons the girl for his real purpose, having abandoned his own daughter years ago, but longs to read a burnt out letter she wrote before she died in a fire.  Using the power of smell, she surprises us all by reading aloud the full contents of the letter written to an absent father.  In what is arguably the most elaborately staged segment, the pièce de résistance is a nearly forty-minute single-take tale that begins with a fireworks sequence, shot with breathtaking technical brilliance, mostly through a red color filter of rainy streets and smoky nightclubs, set during a millennium celebration on New Year’s Eve in 1999, as the Deliriant is reborn as Apollo, a reckless young hoodlum who has never been kissed, but is unfazed watching someone get strung up near the docks, yet when he meets a free-spirited young girl Tai Zhaomei (Li Gengxi), who may be a vampire but has never bitten anyone, his fortunes turn, no longer feeling alone.  As they run through abandoned buildings and back alleyways like the young kids in Godard’s ode to youth, Band of Outsiders (Bande à Part) (1964), caught up in a world of dream and reality, this becomes an evocation of youthful hope and joy at the dawn of the new millennium.  But there’s a catch, as she works for a mob boss, Mr. Lu (Huang Jue), feeding on blood that he supplies from his victims, turning into an eerie vampire love story, including an astonishing nightclub sequence, Resurrection (2025) - Nightclub Karaoke Scene YouTube (9:18), with its constantly moving camera, where Apollo gets the snot kicked out of him, but he perseveres, using a time-lapse technique to go from night to the next morning, yet just when they think they can escape it all, kissing passionately on a barge right out of Vigo’s L'Atalante (1934) in the moments before sunrise, their own combustible passion self destructs, effectively ending their dream.  In an epilogue, Shu Qi’s Big Other wraps things up, dressing up Apollo to resemble the original Deliriant, setting his corpse free in a gigantic vault filled with liquid, Resurrection 2025 Movie Ending Scene YouTube (2:16), returning us back to the wax movie theater filled with illuminated patrons, but one by one, each light goes out until only darkness remains, as the film ends with the theater, like time itself, melting away.  Yet if this film proves anything, it is that dreams, or inner freedom, is the one thing that cannot be controlled by outside forces.  

2015 Top Ten List #9 The Assassin (Nie Yinniang)

THE ASSASSIN (Nie Yinniang)          A-           
Taiwan  China  Hong Kong  France  (107 mi)  2015  d:  Hou Hsiao-hsien     Official site [Japan]

Winner of the Best Director at Cannes, shot on 35 mm by longtime cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin, this is undoubtedly one of the most ravishingly beautiful films ever seen, thought of during the screening as a cross between Wong Kar-wai’s ASHES OF TIME REDUX (2008, from 1994 version) and Kurosawa in 3D.  From the outset one can’t help but be impressed by the luxuriousness of the images and the multiple layers of form that exist like wavy tree branches swaying in the breeze, with someone seen stirring in the shadows, moving slowly between the various fields of visions, as rocky crevices seemingly protrude off the screen, where movement is expressed by changes of focus within the frame of the same shot, continually altering the depth perception of the viewer, offering an experience like no other.  While this is Hou Hsiao-hsien’s rendering of a Wuxia film, slow and hypnotically mesmerizing, thoughtfully accentuating the historical period detail in a film drenched in a painterly opulence that supersedes any consideration for action sequences, credit must be given to costumes and production designer Huang Wen-ying that so illustriously recreates the meticulous look of the 9th century, including paintings on the set that were drawn by students from the academy of fine arts in Taipei, while also featuring the captivatingly percussive music by Lim Giong, as there isn’t a single frame that doesn’t appear in synch with the director’s artistic vision.  The problem, as there is for most all martial arts films, is there’s simply not much of a story, and what little there is feels overshadowed by the luminous dreamlike quality of the film.  His first costume drama since the hypnotic allure of Flowers of Shanghai (Hai shang hua) (1998), and his first feature in 8 years since THE FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON (2007), this is an almost equally financed Taiwan-China production (also a first for this director) costing ten times more than any of his previous works, adapted from a 9th century short story from the Tang Dynasty scribe Pei Xing, known as chuanqi, freely reimagined by the director who has had this film in mind for the past 25 years, initially written in very precise, classical Chinese language, simplified in the English subtitles for easier comprehension, yet also pared down again by the director who refuses to reveal too much, eliminating all extraneous material, leaving behind only a minimalist, barebones outline of a story.   

Set in a time when the Imperial Court and the Weibo province (the largest and strongest of the many provinces) co-exist in an uneasy alliance when various military factions are still vying for power and control in China, the film is named after the lead character, Nie Yinniang, Shu Qi from THREE TMES (2005), exiled by her family at the age of ten where she was raised by Jiaxin (Sheu Fang-yi), a princess turned Taoist nun, a near mythological creature that trains her to become a lethal assassin charged with the task of targeting a tyranny of governors that avoid the authority of the Emperor in the Imperial Court.  In the opening prologue, filmed in black and white, condensed into a boxed 1:37 aspect ratio, we see Yinniang (which means Hidden Woman) dressed entirely in black, waiting patiently lurking in the shadows before springing into action, literally flying across the screen, striking a lethal blow, slitting the throat of a man on horseback, all happening in the blink of an eye, seemingly faster than the eye can see.  When it becomes apparent what’s happened, the stunned guards react angrily, but all we see are flashes of swords chasing through the foliage of a dense forest that fades into darkness.   Moving on to the house of her next prey, she is once again a near invisible presence, but decides not to strike her intended victim, preferring not to kill him in front of his young son seen innocently chasing after a butterfly.  This sentiment clearly angers her teacher, believing the art of killing is coldblooded efficiency, with all emotions held in check.  As a test of her resolve, Jiaxin sends her on a mission to murder the governor of Weibo, the place where Yinniang was born.  Upon returning to the familiar grounds of her family home after the passage of who knows how many years, a place she no longer has any connection to, the frame expands to widescreen along with bursts of color, as the opening title greets the audience set against the crimson colors of a stunning landscape shot at sunset.  What follows is a stream of confusion, as Hou introduces a flurry of new characters each with differing motives, including a new palace aflutter with rumors and political turmoil in an expanding interior architectural design featuring stunning ornamental decors, blending the lavish elegance and color of the silk robes illuminated by candlelight with the curtains blowing in the breeze.  Once again, the camera pans around the corners of existing layers that exist within the frame of each composition, where Yinniang lurks in hidden places only the audience sees. 

Chang Chen, previously paired with Shu Qi in THREE TIMES (2005), having evolved from the young 14-year old nonprofessional lead in Edward Yang’s masterwork A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991), plays the targeted governor Lord Tian Ji’an, the most powerful leader in the Weibo province, who just happens to be Yinniang’s cousin, where once they were young lovers slated to be married, but we learn his mother betrayed her, so she was sent away instead, and a political marriage was arranged between two powerful families in order to help maintain the peace between Weibo and the Imperial Court.  One of the more poignant aspects of the film is revealed when Lord Tian explains the significance of two matching jade pieces that he and Yinniang were given as children.  All of this adds an element of intrigue surrounding her mission, as she’s ordered to kill a man she once loved.  In the flurry of activity inside the palace, Lord Tian has problems of his own, where the supposed peace appears to be crumbling, angrily banishing a young lord for speaking unwisely, sending soldiers after him to bury him alive, leading to a confrontation with Yinniang in a gorgeously realized ambush in the birch trees, while his wife Lady Tian (Zhou Yun) is growing more increasingly hostile towards his favorite concubine, Huji (Hsieh Hsin-ying), who is concealing her pregnancy.  Making matters worse, Lord Tian is regularly approached by a seemingly dark presence that appears out of the shadows, always arriving unexpectedly, none more amusing than when Yinniang reveals herself to the Lord by falling from the roof and coming face-to-face to announce Huji’s pregnancy, then disappearing just as quickly into the night.  One of the more bizarre scenes features Yinniang having to dual a literal mirror image of herself, another female adversary in a gold mask, which suggests she’s from a wealthy house, in contrast to the black outfit worn by Yinniang.  While this scene is never explained and is more of a puzzle than anything else, with some suggesting she’s fighting her own inner demons, the lady in the gold mask is none other than Lady Tian, apparently unhappy with the way Yinniang has returned to meddle in her husband’s affairs, also showing she’s willing to fight any perceived threat to her own family’s position in Weibo, playing a more complex, Lady Macbeth role (even more devious later), which gives Yinniang reason to pause.  Of interest, the lady in the gold mask and Lady Tian were two different characters in the original script, but were merged into one by the final shooting.    

One of the more sinister characters behind the scenes is a bald wizard with huge eyebrows and an overflowing beard, viewed as a martial arts master with magic powers (perhaps the teacher of Lady Tian), who makes paper dolls carrying demonic spells.  In the one supernatural sequence of the film, the doll produces a poisonous fog that seems to disintegrate the unsuspecting Huji, only to be thwarted by the intervention of Yinniang who discovers the murderous plot.  When the soldiers find the old wizard, they shoot him with a volley of arrows.  In Hou’s original conception, however, the old man magically escapes by disappearing in front of the soldiers, leaving the arrows to find only his clothes that remain without a human body.  But Hou never found a way to make this look convincing, so the old man perished.  Certainly one of the most gorgeous scenes is a rhapsodic ceremonial sequence that is literally drenched in the visual extravagance of Oriental fantasies, which is an astonishing physical reconstruction of 9th century Weibo.  Populating the landscape with remarkably dense forests from Inner Mongolia and China’s Hubei province, the martial arts sequences are themselves conceived as short bursts of energy, viewed as a perfect economy of the spirit, practicing humility, while always maintaining harmonious balance according to the teachings of the I Ching.  According to interviews, Hou has indicated viewers may need to see this film as many as three times in order to fully understand the intricacies involved, first to get a rough idea of the artistic presentation, second to understand the story buried so deeply within the rich textures of the film, and third to fully appreciate just how extraordinary this film is.  It does pose a Shakespearean dilemma posed in Hamlet, but in this film, which audaciously features an assassin as the protagonist, it asks the question:  to kill or not to kill?  Spending most of the movie waiting and ponderously observing, the character could serve as an alter ego or stand-in for the filmmaker himself, as Yinniang is torn between the teachings of her Taoist master to carry out her assignment, while also having to contend with her own family, as her father is an advisor to Lord Tian, to whom she may still have an unspoken connection of her own, becoming something of a prolonged battle of wills.  While it’s extremely unusual for a lead character to only have about nine speaking lines, her opaque, gravely toned down performance matches the severity of her mission, which allows the audience to interpret what she’s experiencing while continuously looming behind the scenes.  While she’s curiously indecisive, playing to the strength of her mental resolve to evaluate in its entirety just how things are playing out in the Weibo palace before she acts, only intervening from time to time, as she allows the natural order of things to unfold while assailing the unpredictable fluctuations of history and time.  When all is said and done, she emerges as the master of her own destiny, much like the director who has made yet another film unlike anyone else, redefining the well-traveled genre as an art form that can literally transport an audience back into another mystical time and place in breathtaking fashion.