Resurrection

SPOILERS AHEAD One should see Resurrection as a flow experience comprised of five separate films. Down to - obviously - plot, genre and style, cinematography. Surprisingly, all are connected by Jackson Hee. To think that someone so young can pull of such different portrayal is incredible! He was truly unrecognizable in the second and third segments. While I was watching this film, the thought of it being the definitive epic came up more than once and i constantly compared it to Love Exposure (due to the fact that recently, I came across many opinions saying that is the most "essential" film they'd ever seen). I think that Resurrection may have surpassed it in the magnitude of what it entails. 140 minutes of love, grief, yearning, violence, loss... Vampires, noir detectives, fake magicians and mob bosses all in one enthralling flux of stories, connected by the fact that they're dreams of a "Deriliant". The figure of the Deriliant is something truly interesting and thought-provoking. Bi Gan isn't the first to deal with a sci-fi (dystopian) world in which emotions, dreams - essentially, whatever makes us human - are forgone to achieve something greater. It's, of course, a premise engrained in our fear of the future and of losing what makes us us. But what I found interesting is that the focus is entirely inside the mind of said Deliriant. The glimpses we see outside of it - what I call the fifth film, the segments at the opening and at the ending, respectively - feels the most dreamlike, in a flipping of the logic. In fact, for the first segment, Bi Gan drew inspiration from the silent/expressionist films, in a superb manner. The agent tasked with snuffing out the Deliriant finds herself in a dollhouse-like opium den, and takes him into a hazy, smokey den towards the end, when she euthanizes him. Another "trope-flip" is the fact that she isn't a terminator, but a end-of-life caregiver for him. She gets compassionate about his condition and lets him live for "a hundred years", assisting him in his last voyage, to death. Another interesting aspect of the Deliriant himself is the fact that he's turned into a hunched, perennially crying monster. As if dreams were like a drug (that's why he's in the opium den) slowly killing him, but that he couldn't refuse. The constant association of film and dreams was really compelling, because i saw "film" as art in general, and what's art, if not a way to make our mind world alive? Maybe, in the world that Bi Gan imagined for Resurrection art doesn't exist: how can we inspire without dreams? How can we create without inspiration? One thing that really bemused me of the episodes is the stark difference in lighting and color-grading, as to further emphasize not only the time difference, but also the difference in theme. For the first segment, the gritty wartime noir, the film looks drenched in blues and indigoes, signifying both the coldness and starkness of the plot, but also the nature of the "obsessive love" that is the true protagonist of it. In this dream, the Deliriant finds himself to be the object of desire of a lover that literally can't live without hearing his voice. The most impressive sequences, here, are the one in which the agent is in the cipher room and there's some sort of vertigo(?) effect that makes his radio bigger and bigger, and, of course, the sequence in the "House Of Mirrors". It reminded me of The Lady from Shanghai. Thankfully, Bi Gan's ambitions were fullfilled and rendered in such an exciting and tense scene! For the second segment, the hues stay cold, also a nod to the snowy scenes portrayed. But there's a bit of color, too, albeit muted. Here, Jackson Hee's Deliriant is a former monk that is left behind by the team of thieves he guided to his former temple. He meets with a spirit (this reminded me of Weerasethakul's cinema) that reminds him of his father. The theme, here, is loss. But the Deliriant has killed his father (out of mercy), rather than just losing him. That explains the overall coldness of the scenario. Then we get the third segment. The tones are much warmer. Visual summer. The Deliriant is a criminal that exploits an aging mob boss obsessed with finding people with paranormal talents. The Deliriant recruits a street urchin (props to the child actress) for the task. The theme, here, is of trust and abandonment both. The Deliriant and the orphan enstablish a surrogate father-daughter relationship, for the little time they share. He trains her just like Henry Kassagi's character did in Bresson's Pickpocket , but then skips town after the tense "heist", despite promising her to find a solution to the riddle. As he dies, he does, but it's too late to share it. The Deliriant isn't the only one to abandon his daughter; the Old Man did so too and this brings us to the reason why he's so hellbent to find a psychic. He desperately wants to find out what she wrote to him in a burnt letter, the only thing he's left of her. That scene was really poignant. But the fourth segment is probably my favorite. We are now in 1999 and the aesthetic gets that to a T. Plus, it's a romantic vampire tale. I LOVE romantic vampire tales. That already sold it to me, but the long take and the constant red neon aesthetic did the rest of the work. This tragic tale reminded me of Suzhou River so much... It's probably the most emotional segment of the movie, but I'm maybe biased towards doomed romance. The surprise of this segment was Li Genxi's acting, which flowers expecially in the very last moment her and the kissless gangster share. The movie closes with a scene that gave me a vivid impression. We, essentially, became the product for an audience of light orbs. I was in a very small cinema, with the seats all close together, not so different from the teather in which the movie opens. The circular conclusion reverses the role. Our frist pov is that of the spectator, with the characters looking at us after burning a hole into the film. But then concludes with us being the film. So, not only it offers a closing to the experience Resurrection was, but also sparkles that feeling of actually having "partook" to the film. In essence, this is definitely the best film of the year 2025. And, probably, Bi Gan is the best director to hail from China. If this is only his fourth feature film, what else does he have in store for us? It'd be great if Resurrection attained the same praise, attention and fame outside of China. I hope that it will receive heaps of accolades, but even if it doesn't, this doesn't take away at the sheer masterpiece that it is.