Final Rating: 4.5/5
If you are excited by the idea of elevated Lynchian storytelling that is a love letter to the history of cinema as well as to the ugly heart of humanity, then allow me to recommend 2 hours and 40 minutes of mind-bending visual spectacle that will rewire your brain.
Bi Gan’s Resurrection is his first film since 2018’s Long Day’s Journey into Night – which bears no relation to the play of that name, but is instead a genre-blurring expedition into three dimensions that blew festival audiences away seven years ago. Before that, his first feature Kalli Blues (2015) won him the Best Emerging Director Award at Locarno. And now, with Resurrection premiering in competition at Cannes in 2025, co-writer (with Zhai Xiaohui) and director Bi Gan has fully emerged.
Resurrection walked away from Cannes with the Prix Spécial – the jury prize awarded to a film of remarkable originality. And, indeed, Bi has proven a complex big-picture understanding of filmatic form, visually and structurally. You will need to prepare yourself going in for a viewing experience that will challenge you just as much as it enthralls you with its hypnotic eye candy.
Like David Lynch, Bi Gan deals in dreams. Or, in this case, he creates the skeleton of a world in which dreams have been traded for immortality, for the “greater good.” And anyone who will not relinquish the chaos of dreaming is called a Deliriant. The Big Other (Shu Qi) is a hunter of such Deliriants, and the film begins with her entering one Deliriant’s dreams, trapping him, and sentencing him to a slow death, installing a film projector in his heart so that she may live 100 years of dreaming with him as he dies over and over in different lives.
Jackson Yee, who plays the Deliriant, is almost unrecognizable as he morphs between at least five different roles, each transformed by not only costuming but more so by entirely new personalities. As his century of dream-like death passes, the Deliriant becomes a murderer, “mongrel” monk, manipulative magician, and even things that don’t begin with the letter M.
The six chapters of this film flow seamlessly one to the next, jumping through eras of Chinese and global moviemaking, from a stunning German Expressionist-influenced silent cinema opening that is everything George Méliès could have ever hoped to imagine, to a much-talked-about 30-minute one-shot finale – a true one-shot with no hidden cuts – set in a gene-punk filter of the final moments of 1999. (Fear not for any details here; there is no way to spoil this stream-of-consciousness story.)
Along the way, Bi evokes Wong Kar-wai and certainly a hundred other landmark Chinese directors this Westerner behind the keyboard now feels driven to discover. From settings to themes, this is undeniably a Chinese film through and through. A film for anyone, yes, but I suspect Chinese viewers will see more layers than the rest of us can.
Each richly colored chapter, packed with details and movement, is a vignette with its own hazily formed narrative exploring one of the six Buddhist senses: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and mind. With its anthology-like structure, different sections will work more or less well for different viewers. In the first chapter, the camera and the cast move through the scenery in a literal dance to dreamy Classical music, shaking you loose of your expectations for any kind of grounded, plot-driven narrative. The second section (sound) is perhaps the most opaque of them all. Just give in to the lavish Neo-Noir worldbuilding and production design as pieces of scenes stitch themselves together, until forcibly unraveled as that chapter comes to a close.
There is literal eating of poppies, and discussion of opium – parts of this movie are openly about drug addiction, as well as capitalism. In one chapter, the Deliriant’s father appears as the Spirit of Bitterness, seeking Enlightenment. References to schizophrenia and LGBTQ+ themes are barely more veiled. In true Frankenstein fashion, this movie’s “monster” represents society’s othered – while interacting with others who often seem more monstrous than him. Other themes at times recall this year’s Sinners, in showing how some want to literally consume a talented artist, in one way or another, and be consumed in return. But, really, it’s difficult to imagine what great film this movie is not in conversation.
The dream clearly represents escapism – more specifically the escapism of cinema. How movies capture and preserve dreams of other eras. Bi does not forget the audience’s role in this either, opening and later returning to fourth-wall-breaking moments where the entire cast begins staring straight into your eyes. Bi wants to emphasize that this, as he said in an interview with Film at Lincoln Center, is a film for “people who still have the ability to love…and the ability to dream” – despite everything, all the both beauty and ugliness of the world. He says, “I really want to awaken, to resurrect, this particular feeling towards the purity of films.” And, as he speaks, his dark sense of humor peeks through, assuring us that we haven’t been laughing out of turn at some of the movie’s more unexpected moments that wink at the absurdity of our constant quest for meaning.
Go in knowing the plot is not the point: this is a film to evoke emotion, deep-seated recognition. It’s not a mystery box to solve. Pour yourself a drink and relax, as this 2.5-hour journey meanders, unafraid of taking its time. But it leaves you plenty of atmosphere and arresting images to luxuriate in. Your first watch will require patience, and focus – but will reward you as amply as you’ve ever been rewarded for the effort. You will, for one, experience perhaps the best cinematography of the year, in a year that boasts an embarrassment of such riches.
Yes, it can at times all feel a little indecipherable, but in that (to use this word once more) Lynchian way that invites your brain to keep trying, rather than shutting down. I rewatched some scenes up to five times trying to parse them, taking me back to the era of my Mulholland Drive fixation. This is a cinematic experience that will inspire that kind of passion, that yearning to unlock its secrets, that will likely help it stand the test of time, in cult-status form at least. It’s a movie that reinvents itself every 20 or so minutes – yet, somehow, at the end, I don’t seem to feel confused at all.
The film does become more accessible as it continues through the filmmaking styles to that dramatic one-shot ending that’s leaving every cinephile’s tongue wagging. But it remains a densely symbolic film, about which many an analytical essay will be written. It seems to be in part about what we give up, the soul of our culture, to form “a better society.” It could be interpreted as a quiet protest against the homogenization of Chinese culture – but one that proves that the ancient country’s spirit of invention is still alive and well, if you know where to look. And this film’s #1 opening at home shows that the Chinese public is still looking.
Now, excuse me while I run off to brush up on Buddhism, to start figuring out what other details I might have missed amidst all the folds of this well-draped story.
Thank you to Janus Films and filmswelike for the screener.
