After humanity sacrifices its ability to dream in exchange for immortality, an operative enters the mind of a lone dreamer whose visions may hold the key to what has been lost.
A surrealistic chronicle that will appeal to your senses rather than your reason.
There could hardly be a more fitting opening thought for Bi Gan’s Resurrection, a film that feels less like a story and more like a celebration of cinema itself. From the flickering cadence of silent-era Expressionism – when films were projected at around sixteen frames per second and stop-motion carried an almost magical quality – to the surreal worlds of Luis Buñuel, the noir detective films of the 1940s, the eccentric masterpieces of Andrei Tarkovsky, Terry Gilliam and David Lynch, the philosophical science fiction of The Matrix (1999) and Cloud Atlas (2012), and so many more in between, Resurrection absorbs over a century of cinematic history and transforms it into something… of its own.
Visually, it is mesmerising. Cold colour palettes, dimly lit grotesque interiors, dreamlike architecture, and haunting landscapes create a dystopian world where humanity has sacrificed its capacity to dream in exchange for prolonged life. Within that world, an operative is tasked with entering the subconscious of a mysterious dreamer to guide him away from the visions that separate him from the reality imposed on him.
Writer Zhai Xiaohui and co-writer/editor/director Bi Gan structure the narrative around six interconnected dream states, each inspired by one of the six channels through which Buddhist philosophy understands human perception. Rather than progressing conventionally, Gan invites us to drift from one sensory experience to another, as though memory itself were editing the story. Whether audiences embrace that invitation is another matter.
Gan’s vision is crystal clear, and production designer Qiang Liu brings the premise and setting of that vision to life. Yet clarity of intention does not necessarily translate into clarity of interpretation. Experimental and arthouse audiences will eagerly immerse themselves in the film’s intricate symbolism, while others may naturally ask: What transformed this society into what it has become? Why does dreaming stand in opposition to longevity? Are these dream experiences unique to this individual or shared by others like him? And what exactly makes those dreams so significant to the powers attempting to control them?
The film never rushes to answer. Nor should it. Because Resurrection is ultimately an audiovisual experience rather than a puzzle demanding a single solution. It is a cinematic chronicle that stretches from the birth of cinema to its present, somewhat stating that every generation dreams differently yet continues dreaming nonetheless.
On a personal note, Resurrection becomes another fascinating addition to the films I have been exploring in my attempt to understand dreams and their wonderfully undecoded nature and structure – from Wild Strawberries (1957) to today. Like dreams themselves, not fully understanding everything is not a flaw. What matters is how the experience transforms you and how you feel when you wake up.
Think Twin Peaks. Think observation before explanation. Feeling before decoding. But here’s my one hint that will hopefully guide you on this journey. Cinema dies only when we stop dreaming. As long as we dream, stories will always find a way to… resurrect themselves. And Gan lets cinema dream one last time.
P.S. What a beautiful, beautiful final almost forty-minute oner.
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