Resurrection

I’ve thought long & hard about what to really say about this film, I haven’t really stopped thinking about it at all & not only is this one of the best & most beautiful movies you’ll ever see this year, it’s also one big fat head scratcher. Forgetting all that though this is a bonafide masterpiece & a film that feels like a turning point in the whole landscape this year, it just felt like a landmark moment in cinema for me but then again this could just be all hype from the festival itself but I don’t know I just feel like I saw something special here! First thing I wanna mention is the film has this motif or whole comparison it plays throughout its narrative, I don’t think it could be more beautiful & apt, it’s to imagine how a candle specially a wax candle can last forever if you never light it but anyway this is an epic anthology about dreaming being illegal & trying to find the dreamers out there but then that only really comes up in parts you kinda have to be paying attention, it’s really a travelogue type film, beginning with this essentially a silent experimental type film, very reminiscent of late Kiarostami but then the film itself is going back to the beginning of silent films themselves & like bits of German expressionism’s with its visual. Then switches into this war time thing with spies but I’d really struggle to explain the narrative engine of this but pretty much each segment corresponds to a different era & style of filmmaking. There’s silent, there’s noir, there’s a samurai kinda thing, a family drama bit & then the 4th segment is this wong kar wai inspired segment that if you’re familiar with BI’s work then the guy loves a oner & that whole last segment is a mind blowing oner, there’s some serious execution there & it’s just one of those films you gotta let it pour over you & try not to over analyse it in the moment cause this is some immense work! This is film as art and this feels like a great expression of that cause it’s beautiful! The dreams weave through different epochs of film history & span the time of the 20th century in its runtime, feel very comftable saying that they’re all very moving, effective, creative and poetic shorts on their own, and together they create this nature of the medium to which I’m sure everyone using this app devotes their time to watching. I really cannot stress how much I recommend this, the genius that is packed inside BI’s mind is not really matched these days, his filmmaking is on another planet & just go watch it cause it’s a treat! I think there’s almost a nostalgia in the film, a melancholy in this film for the way we used to pay attention to movies in general & that’s kind of the same way that you pay undivided attention to your own dreams because you don’t have any choice, things just started to fall in place with this as this beautiful invitation to surrender yourself to this and to not get too bogged down or worried about logic of it because I don’t think that’s necessarily there but just let yourself being able to let go is what this films really about cause then you’ll just open yourself up to this great film. Truly one of the most impressive singular things I’ve ever seen in my entire life! There’s of course a oner in this, think it’s give or take about 40 odd minutes & it’s unbelievable for beginning to end, can’t really think of enough describing words to sum it all up but there’s one thing that he does that truly amazed me, like I can’t really wrap my head around how you’ve done it type stuff. Several times it’ll go in & out of somebody’s subjectivity but you can’t see the seem, at one point your very clearly the camera via this peripheral character so it’s first person and then SEAMLESSLY he steps in front of the camera so it’s no longer first person anymore and that happens more than once & each time it just blew my tiny brain. There’s another moment with a in camera bit where everything has been very lit in red & then one character breaks through a window but as he goes in the entire filter of the camera changes to blue, could not feel more spontaneous! There’s also another bit where the camera even though it’s moving majority of the time, it does stop once to observe this party outside, it has people moving really fast but it’s got a sheet hanging with a silent movie projection on it and that’s running at normal speed but then the sky is lighting very fast behind that, so Bi is just flexing at this point, playing with time within a oner which is what you normally do when you want to lock it into a sense of time so it’s all clever & playful like really nobody does it like this guy ! Craftsmanship is incredible like truly incredible, production design which is shown off so early on and it’s wild like I’m absolutely flabbergasted. Not fully sure how he’s managed it, I don’t know if china have just decided to throw a load of money and allow Bi to do whatever he wants & just go crazy cause this is intricacy of it all, I think it’s staggering that he’s managed to get it done in 7 years not so much that we’ve had to wait for it. Just a magnificent stew of Asian auteurs & a bit of Hollywood as well, a truly filmic educational experience cause I only picked up on a few but there’s probably infinitely more references that you could probably spend a whole year watching & I don’t think you’d scratch the surface really or it’s mysterious! I think this is insanely incredible, insanely interesting and just insanely good piece of cinema. One of the very rare moments in a cinema chair where the back of my head just flew off & I was just floating, think there’s less than a handful of films to ever do that to me. BRAVO