‘Resurrection’ Review: Director Bi Gan’s Beguiling, Beautifully Realized Journey Through the Life, Death and Possible Rebirth of Cinema

Tailor-made for those viewers who fantasize about being trapped in the Criterion closet, this dreamy 156-minute behemoth is certainly not for mainstream arthouse fans hoping to catch a glimpse of the next Oscar favorite. But it’s a rewarding watch that gives us another idea of what movies can do, even if Bi Gan seems to be mostly mourning their demise.

Death and dreams are indeed at the center of a phantasmagorical narrative divided into five long chapters, plus a short epilogue, each told in the specific style of its epoch. Bi loosely connects them through a premise that only a crazy film lover like him could conjure up: In a parallel world that may be our own, people no longer dream and can therefore live forever. The select few who choose to keep dreaming are known as “Fantasmers,” leading existences that burn brightly but shortly. And then there are “The Other Ones,” whose job is to awaken the Fantasmers from their illusive slumbers.

Does that make sense? Too bad, but anyway plot and plausibility are far less important than the experiential qualities Resurrection offers those willing to accept its fairy tale-like pitch. Bi guides us into his fantasy world during an opening section, set during the silent film era and narrated with intertitles, where The Other One (Shu Qi, star of several classic Hou Hsiao-Hsien movies) pursues a Nosferatu-like Fantasmer (Jackson Yee) across a merry-go-round of studio décors straight out of the German Expressionist period.

You don’t have to know your movie history to understand what Bi is doing in that sequence, though it certainly helps. His film is packed with nods to other films that trace the evolution of cinematic style and craft, from the jerky hand-cranked illusions of the 1910s and 20s to the roving Steadicam shots of the past era. Early on, the score by French electro group M83 either copies or barely remixes Bernard Herrmann’s themes from Vertigo — which, as all good Hitchcock fans know, is another story of death and resurrection.

Those themes quite literally bleed into the film’s succeeding chapters, which encompass a WWII-era film noir involving a trenchcoated investigator (Mark Chao); a Buddhist temple in the 1960s or 70s whose crumbling ruins give birth to a menacing spirit; a tale of magic and trickery involving a rich mobster (Zhang Zhijian) regretting the loss of his child; and a dazzling thriller set in a red-light district on the eve of the last millennium.

The Fantasmer reappears in each section as a different character with a new look, propelled from epoch to epoch by The Other One. (Don’t ask how this all happens.) He never ages and can seemingly live forever, just like the F.W. Murnau character of the silent movie part — or the actual vampire we see in the penultimate chapter. When, toward the start of the movie, 35mm film stock is inserted into the Fantasmer’s back, Bi seems to be suggesting that vampires and cinema have a lot in common: Both can survive eternally as long as they remain in the dark. For the latter, that means being projected onto a screen in front of an audience, which is why Resurrection begins and ends with scenes inside of a movie theater, one coming to life and the other melting away.

This is heady stuff and probably won’t interest those who can’t recognize many scenes — such as a recreation of the Lumière brothers’ pioneering short L’Arroseur Arrosé, which gets projected later on — as metaphors for, or homages to, film itself. And yet Bi’s talent for creating transfixing set-pieces, which at times recalls the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, allows you to get submerged by his movie without always knowing what you’re watching. You just need to keep your eyes open and go with the flow.

And it’s worth doing that in order to reach the 1999 chapter, during which the director stages another formidable, seemingly impossible long take that sees the Fantasmer and his elusive love interest (Li Gengxi) wandering through a riverside wasteland, from the closing minutes of the last century until the dawn of a new one. Reteaming with DP Dong Jingsong, who pulled off a similar feat in Long Day’s Journey into Night, Bi tries to top himself this time by shifting points of view within the same unending shot, racing down corridors and into rave parties, then into a karaoke scene interrupted by brutal gunfire, until we’re suddenly aboard a ship as the sun begins to rise on the year 2000.

Such sequence-shots, now known unfortunately as “oners,” tend to be destined for film lovers as well, who can admire the high level of craft it takes to pull them off. Bi is bold and unabashed when it comes to displaying (some would say showing off) his technique, nor does he hide his many references (in the case of the red-filtered long take, there are hints of Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels and Hou’s Millennium Mambo).