Written by: Louis Pelingen
The concept of a film made as a love letter to cinema becomes an ambitious take that goes both ways: it succeeds in showcasing cinema’s encapsulating beauty, or it fails to do so, as personal indulgence seeps through the cracks. There is no shortage of such a concept, and for good reason. Film becomes a piece that crafts an experience like no other, demanding all your senses as we pay attention to what is being told and remembered on screen. Yet, to make an engrossing concept land becomes an impassioned effort, where grandeur and scope have to come from its rich past, then make meaning of it all in the present.
Yet, throughout the ebb and flow of Bi Gan’s recently crafted film, ‘Resurrection’, he aims to shake things up a lot more. Crafting a film piece that delves into immense depths, allowing for more layered insights surrounding the essence of cinema and history to erupt in vast fashion. He still showcases the overall decadence of its cinematic power, but he’s also willing to focus more on the fractures and weight that can only be pulled together within the process of filmmaking as a whole.
From beginning to end, you can’t help but be invited to the technical masquerade that spills forth from every seam. In each chapter, there’s a variation towards the colors, camera shots, and visual techniques that contain the stories being told into their own segments. Emphasizing different temperaments and dynamics in every passing turn, where Bi Gan’s creative imprint towards synchronizing the stylistic visuals with meaningful tonal flair is masterful. For the entire three-hour runtime, you can’t keep your eyes away from the marvellous technicolor that’s on display, immersing you into the meaningful thoughts and emotions that are being placed down.
It is all through what the film imparts that becomes its strongest aspect. Putting the focus of the story within a future where dreaming is completely surrendered, and immortality is ever so prioritized. Yet, through the presence of derilients – people who still have the capability to dream – they become a cusp of hope that’s been searched by rogue dreamers known as the other ones / fantasmers. One such derilient (played by Jackson Yee) has been discovered by an other one (played by Shu Qi), and as a way to fulfill her responsibility, she inserts a film within the derilient, letting him go through the lives of individuals in various moments of time and circumstances. It is within this chronological structure, paired with the technical marvel alongside gripping performances, that fuels the sense of place and voice that this film continues to immerse within. Where all the fleeting individuals and their melancholic situations who lived across these set pieces allure the senses, and encourage the derilient to dream further across time and space, with eras that echoes around Chinese history and Buddhist thought.
Yet, as the film continues to unfold these stories, it also leaps into layered statements that become ‘Resurrection’s important centrepiece. There is an emphasis on how film as a whole not just carries stirring beauty, but also an imaginative essence that glows so brightly. A subtle acknowledgement of how the cast and crew become responsible for the heartbeat of the film that keeps on breathing, and provides an immersive feeling that can’t be taken away easily. It all becomes a reminder that allows people to dream amidst their limited lives, wherein, despite witnessing the conclusion of a film, the experiences do not stop there. There is always a resonance that will bubble up every time they remind themselves of what went on in such a cinematic narrative, and remember the moments that stuck with them.
With all that being said, this buoyant thematic scope increases the chances of landing gloriously and falling hard. Yet even with those risks laid down upon Bi Gan, he manages to walk that tightrope of crafting a script that synthesizes the concepts of Chinese history, buddhist philosophy, and the evolving flow of filmmaking and flesh out all their evocative details in full throttle – even with the constraints of developing the last chapter in its best capacity. Such an overwhelmingly breathtaking and reflective concept can only be finetuned by someone who knows what they’re doing and still fleshes everything out with or without such struggles. It might be a bit elusive to get through at spots given its dreamy and maze-like structure, but once given the time to process, it’s where the beauty of Resurrection surfaces. Your consciousness is elated. Your senses are stimulated.
Thus, within Resurrection, Bi Gan lets the cinematic heft become not just an ode to film itself, but also a reflection. One echoed through the historical and emotional depths of China, where its richness magnificently goes hand in hand with the constant evolution and magnetic essence of film as an artistic process and emotional fragment. Pulling all such verbose concepts with an approach that is outwardly vast and curious.
Even if there is such a conclusion, the important matter is to simmer the films that we take in, and engage in conversation with others. Through such acts, we can only find the emotions and passions resurrected once more. Such is the grand escapades of film itself.
