Bi Gan's Resurrection demonstrates that the mechanism of cinema still has a pulse. I find that my previous remarks on Bi Gan still hold, but that Resurrection represents a wholehearted dive into the unconscious realms of surrealism. Some have accused the film of oneiric onanism, but I find the film contains pointed insights into both film and Chinese history. Titles trumpet the film's theme at the onset. The world is split into two, Yin and Yang, those who eschew dreams to live eternally and those rebels who live to dream; monikered here "the Deliriants". The film's one constant is the Deliriant figure embodied by Chinese boy bander Jackson Yee in a remarkable performance. The Deliriant's travails are shown in five discrete episodes. Each episode represents both a period in the history of cinema and modern China. The cinematic style used in each episode mimics that of the period. Thus, the opening section, set in the 1920s, is silent and filmed like the magic lantern visions of Méliès. The following episode, set during China's conflict with Japan, is shot using the conventions of expressionistic noir. And so on.
In each episode, the Deliriant lives on the fringes of society, a criminal, mongrel or monster. Throughout, there is a consistent aura of paranoia. The Deliriant is always ensnared or trapped by some aspect of society. In this respect, Resurrection stands as a veiled rebuke to Chinese authoritarianism. Bi Gan eschews the lengthy tracking shots of Long Day's Journey into Night enhancing the sense of the Deliriant's entrapment. That is until the last segment set on the eve of Y2K. In this section, the Deliriant is a young gang banger whose girl is under the control of a mobster. The camera follows the young lovers as they seek escape through the labyrinthian streets of the city. Only when they commandeer a barge and head out to sea, a recurring symbol of freedom in the film, do they seem at liberty.
Resurrection is chock full of film allusions. Now this can be a boon or a curse. The Bride has a host of references, not only Mary Shelley, but Bonnie and Clyde and Bartleby the Scrivener. Unfortunately, these allusion add little to the film. They merely serve to prop up a flimsy dramatic framework. Squeal, with its allusions to Barry Lyndon, is an example of a picture in which the film references add to its complexity and resonance. I feel much the same about Resurrection. The shout outs to Day of Wrath, The Lady From Shanghai, and Kiss Me Deadly add to the mood of mistrust and treachery. The China portrayed in Resurrection is the hall of mirrors of the modern totalitarian surveillance state.
Those seeking an overarching narrative in Resurrection are grasping at straws. The film is a set of variations on a theme. It is a movie designed to excite the mind's eye, as the continued use of the motif of the iris attests to. The episodes, as Tom Verlaine once put it, alternately dissolve and reveal. Actually Verlaine called it Dissolve/Reveal, a more cinematic version of the psychedelic pivot where the fire of everyday existence melts into the pool of the collective unconscious. The circularity of Resurrection's form, beginning and ending in a movie theater reflects the film's presentation of eternal recurrence. Same as it ever was through modern Chinese history. Deliriants of all stripes will find much to assay and treasure in this film.
