"If you've ever wondered what filming your dreams would look like, director Bi Gan's Resurrection has an answer. The Chinese auteur's newest feature is as sprawling as it is enigmatic, conjuring up dreamlike forces from transcendent worlds and blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. The film's nearly three-hour run time feels as such, and for some, the payoff may not be worth it. But Resurrection is less interested in an audience's pleasure than in widening a sense of cinematic possibility."
"Beginning and ending in a movie theatre, the film unfolds as a sweeping tribute to Chinese history and to the enduring power of global cinema. Resurrection opens with a series of title cards, reminiscent of those in the silent film era. They explain that the film is set in a futuristic world where humans can live indefinitely if they do not dream. "People not dreaming is like candles that don't burn, they can exist forever," one intertitle reads."
Resurrection imagines a futuristic premise where humans can live indefinitely if they do not dream, while a few Deliriants remain trapped in dreaming. A woman called The Big Other, played by Shu Qi, is tasked with stopping the Deliriants by projecting and draining their dreams like movies. The central Deliriant, portrayed by Jackson Yee, appears as a Nosferatu-esque hunchback who has been hiding in an ancient, forgotten past. The film primarily inhabits the Deliriant's dreams, spanning four storylines across different points in 20th-century China. The work begins and ends in a movie theatre and pays sweeping tribute to Chinese history and global cinema, favoring expansive cinematic experimentation over straightforward audience gratification.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]