‘Resurrection’ moves from Expressionist opium dens to a breathless one-take finale, guided by Bi Gan’s distinctive style.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
From visionary writer-director Bi Gan (“Long Day’s Journey into Night”) comes “Resurrection,” a bizarre, cinema-besotted science-fiction tale set in a world where people have stopped dreaming. But dream renegades exist, called “deliriants,” and they choose to continue to dream, spreading trouble. Deliriants are hunted down in their Cronenbergian dreamworlds by “seekers,” who can “see through illusions.” We are also reminded that cinema “is a deliriant.” Confused yet?
Suddenly and perhaps aptly, we find ourselves in a 1920s-style Chinese opium den (speaking of dreams), built in the weirdly tortured dimensions of German Expressionism. Is an opium den a smack-fueled movie theater? Is that shadow in the den none other than F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Conrad Veidt’s murderous “somnambulatist,” or Paul Wegener’s immortal Golem? A woman seeker, primly dubbed Miss Shu, moves from place to place, tracking a monstrous figure (an unrecognizable Jackson Yee), and installs a reel of film where his heart used to be. What, no ticking clock?
Yee is a former boy band singer-dancer and a major star in China, and he plays multiple roles here in a performance arguably even more wide-ranging than the one Jacob Elordi gives in “Frankenstein.”
In a tale set in the mid-20th century, Yee is Qui, a young man in possession of a mysterious suitcase (Can you say, “MacGuffin?”), Inside is that most cinematic of unusual musical instruments, a theremin (cue “Spellbound” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still”). A fight to the death on a train will follow with eardrums pierced to the tune of the odd instrument. It is unnecessary to remind us that a train with its tracks and rushing scenery is so like the cinema and such a frequent setting in it.
Director Gan, who also served as the film’s editor, and his cinematographer Jingsong Dong (“The Wild Goose Lake”) are fond of “diopter shots,” which make the foreground and the background appear to have the same focus, giving the film an illusion of depth and a natural 3D look without those stinking glasses. In addition to David Cronenberg, “Resurrection” recalls Lars von Trier, David Lynch and the magical spaces that Jean Cocteau created in “La Belle et la Bette” (1946).
In a Freudian follow-up story, Yee is Mongrel, a wretched thief with an agonizing tooth working in a ruined Buddhist temple (compare this with the ruined Buddhist gate of Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”). Another man appears on the scene, a spirit in the form of Mongrel’s late father (Yongzhong Chen).
Next, Yee plays Jia, a con artist who recruits a young girl (Mucheng Guo) as his accomplice in a plot to shake down an aging gangster (Zhijian Zhang) and steal his money. A mysterious banknote appears with a riddle on it that would bring the girl’s missing father (fathers, again) back to her. For his part, the gangster asks the girl for help deciphering a burned letter from his estranged daughter.
Using a new DJI Ronin 4D camera, Gan and Dong shot the final 30 minutes of the film in a tour-de-force single take. It’s New Year’s Eve, 1999, at an unnamed port city. Remember Y2K? Yee plays a young hoodlum named Apollo on the run from the Raincoat Mob, who meets an enchanting girl named Tai Zhaomei (the delightful Li Gengxi). The story is a “Breathless”/“Before Sunrise”-style romance in which a lot of action, danger, flirting, scenery, walking and talking is compressed into a short time.
Gan loves fog, fire, cigarette smoke, spinning images, labyrinths, reflections, neon lights that turn the world red, the interlocking images of the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher and the interlocking characters and stories of his screenplay. The action features narrow, neon-lit streets, a shootout and a nightclub named Sunrise Karaoke Bar. Apollo is beaten mercilessly by some “Matrix”-looking guys. Suddenly, we’re in a vampire movie, a toothy “Jules et Jim,” a late 20th-century Chinese “Lost Boys.” “Resurrection” is a tale told in the language of cinema, a movie lover’s dazzling fever dream from an artist who wields his medium’s dark magic with stunning virtuosity. Don’t miss this.
‘Resurrection’
Rating: Not Rated, violence, grotesque imagery, profanity, mature themes
Cast: Jackson Yee, Shu Qi, Gengxi Lee
Director/Writer: Bi Gan
Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters
Grade: A
Boston Movie News 