Resurrection Film Review

 

⭐ 1. Resurrection

🎬 Director: Bi Gan
🎯 Genre: Surreal drama / psychological mystery

🖋️ Review

Bi Gan’s Resurrection continues his reputation as one of cinema’s great dreamweavers, following the haunting lineage of Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Here, he ventures even further into the recesses of memory and guilt, constructing a cinematic poem that feels as much about the textures of consciousness as it is about story.

The film centers on a man (Song Yang) returning to his hometown after years abroad, only to find time fractured and reality collapsing around him. Childhood visions merge with adult regrets, ghostly figures drift through neon-tinged alleyways, and conversations seem to loop with haunting familiarity.

Bi Gan employs long, intricate tracking shots that dislocate the viewer from time—at one point, we drift for what feels like an eternity through a misty riverside village, the camera lingering on mundane details until they pulse with eerie significance. There’s a powerful sequence involving an old theater performance that seems to enact not only the protagonist’s past but also alternate futures that could have been.

🎨 Technical & thematic brilliance

The cinematography is breathtaking. Color palettes shift between warm nostalgia and cool dread, mirroring the protagonist’s conflicted psyche. The sound design hums with low, almost subliminal tones that evoke the sensation of buried memories rising unbidden.

Themes of dislocation, failed redemption, and the impossibility of truly escaping the past resonate throughout. Critics like The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw have called it “deeply mysterious and deeply moving,” while others hailed it as Bi Gan’s most mature work yet.

🏆 Verdict

9/10 — Resurrection is not for those seeking linear clarity, but for viewers willing to surrender to its immersive language of dreams, it’s easily one of the year’s most transporting cinematic experiences.