Resurrection

A love letter to cinema and life. Bi Gan creates a world that runs through eras of film that also seem to relate to our 6 senses. There’s the vision chapter centered around the silent film era. Then we have the vision and taste chapters centering around noir and folktale cinema respectively. Then of course the final 2 chapters (the best ones imo), which is focused around the sense of smell and the use of that sense for the hustler type narrative, as well as the 5th chapter focusing around touch through romance in both a physical and metaphysical way. All of these senses combine to create a masterpiece centered around the illusion of our dreams and life. Everything is built up to show how we inevitably can share our dreams with others and help them experience our experiences and illusions. The answer is through art, in this case it’s the art of film which is a representation of our sensory where we can see others dreams as well as our own dreams with in it. This is the 6th sense or the sense of mind where we learn to understand one another through the medium of art. Now for the actual entertainment factor of the film it varied in sections. Sections like the hustler and vampire were some of the best pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen, where as the noir and folktale sections felt good but didn’t stand out to me much in the grand scheme of the film. It was also an arthouse film so it isn’t meant to be some ultra engaging slop that doesn’t force you to think. Instead it hooks you through the absolutely gorgeous cinematography and deeply philosophical story and themes that give breathing room for thought. I spent the entire film understanding it to a degree but feeling like I was always missing that one piece to fully understand the purpose of it all which made this film a total thrill to watch.  Of course I also want to talk about Jackson Yee’s performance, as it took the movie ending before I realized he played the delirent in every dream. The differences in the characters both visually and personality wise was an absolute masterclass in acting that was probably in my top 3 favorite performances of 2025.  Overall fantastic film that was so masterfully made and defied my expectations to the point I was almost emotional from just the experience of watching it. It’s frustrating trying to understand what it’s trying to say, but never to the point you don’t want to watch it as allowing the viewer to dissect what’s happening is this films greatest strength. Worth a watch ESPECIALLY if you can watch it in a theater because that would probably be a fantastic experience.