Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan has made a meal of exploring memory and dreams in the past, with movies like 2018’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” But with “Resurrection,” he’s made a true masterpiece of fantasia.
In a world where the majority of the world has traded the ability to dream for immortal life, some creatures still can see dreams. One such creature (Jackson Yee), is hunted down by Miss Shu (Shu Qi), who enters his dreams in an attempt to find the illusion and truth within his ideas of Chinese history. “Resurrection” is an ode to both Chinese and cinema history alike, tracing its way through the 20th century via genre. The film is broken up into chapters moving all the way from the silent era to Y2K, each chapter using a different sense — sound, sight, smell, touch, and taste — to unveil the secrets of history, both cinematic and otherwise.
“Resurrection” features little dialogue. It’s a purely visual experience in the way that too few films truly are anymore, and it ensnares you completely from its opening moments to its end. I recently spoke with Bi Gan (via a translator) about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I was reading an interview with you where you were talking about your impetus, I guess, for making this film, as exploring the 20th century and all that entails. I’m curious, why did you settle on cinema as a ripe tool for that exploration?
Bi Gan: For me, I really thought about, how am I going to explore these 100 years of the 20th century? I thought that film as a medium has its own film history, and also it is a universal language that somehow can resonate with people from around the world. I thought that would also be a great entry point to look at the past 100 years of Chinese history within this particular film history. That’s three reasons why this would be a great way to get there.
Going to that idea of exploring Chinese history, and through it cinema history as well, how much research went into figuring out how you wanted to focus those two stories together, and how you wanted to blend those two things? What was your research process like for this movie?
Bi: I really thought about, how am I going to use different elements to structure this particular film, including using the different sensory channels to really mark different chapters. Along with different sensory channels, I paired that with different genres and different filmic languages so that everything goes very well together. I think that everything works pretty well, except for — the most challenging part is actually the fourth chapter, about the sense of smell. Just because that is a hard genre and hard filmic language to pin down, to pair with this particular sensory channel. I thought about going to the histories in China in the 80s, and how am I using, at the time, the popular narrative films as a way to tease out this particular sensory channel — this sense of smell. Out of all the different chapters, this is probably the most realistic in its tone and its form.
Then the other chapter come into place very naturally, starting alone with the film history, and the history of China, the turn of the century with silent films; and then moving on to the noir genre, to really touch upon the sense of hearing, the audio; and then going into the temple scenarios to talk about the sense of taste; and then all the way to at the end — for me, the ending chapter, I was envisioning it as more of the science fiction genre, but at the same time, towards the end I realized that maybe something more poetic would be even more effective. That’s the reason why I close the film with that kind of poetic tone to it.
I think that this film is so interesting to me to make because not only we’re talking about film history in general, we’re also talking about film history in China, and along with history in general in China. Three things that work well together.
If it makes you feel any better, the sense of smell one was my favorite section. I found it very affecting.
Bi: This particular chapter for sense of smell, to me, is also a departure from my previous films in terms of aesthetics, because it’s so realistic, rather than very dream-like, or very much about memories. This is very much sort of a realism that is different from my previous films.
One thing I’ve noticed watching your films is there’s not that much dialogue. You’re a very visual filmmaker, and very focused on those visuals. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the color grading in this film. It feels like there’s an evolution from the first vignette after the silent film. It’s very blue, almost gray, slate-like and then as the vignettes go on, we evolve until we finally get to this very bright, vibrant red world. Even the blues are more vibrant in that world. I was curious, what was your intention behind that?
Bi: The color story is very much something that I discussed a lot with my [director of photography] Dong Jingsong. The discussions that we had is to think about, how are we going to use color along with the different sensory channels for each chapter, and also with the plot lines and story lines that we’re going to depict for each chapter? And how are we going to somehow find a way to have a color story that is organic, but at the same time from chapter to chapter will not be too independent or too separate from one another? That’s the general direction.
For me, as a director, the process, to think how am I going to create this progression, is to tap into my own sensibility, my own aesthetics, in terms of how I intuitively think that each genre, each story, and each sensory channels will have some type of certain colors that I tend to be more inclined to depict. My leaning towards each chapter is that, the first one is silent film. It’s very visual, and I wanted to have this retro feeling to it. So it is this off-yellow, rusty color, to really bring out that nostalgia and that kind of retro grade. Moving onto the noir, I really wanted to focus on the color blue and slowly increase its intensity, and then turn into an intense purple towards the end. The third one, of the temple about the sense of taste, is all white, to use that as a backdrop to really talk about and explore a sense of pain, a sense of guilt, and a sense of redemption, so to speak, that are within the story. That was the design of the white color for that particular chapter. Moving on to the fourth, it’s very much sun-based, about the natural sunlight. This particular scene, unlike other chapters, is very bright, full of sunlight, including when the older gentleman boss trying to figure out what’s in that box — it was shot during sunset. It is very much along the line of the sun-drenched color that I wanted to use. Moving onto the fifth, which is the sense of touch … about the two young protagonists trying to elope within this particular context of a vampire story. Of course, I used red to start from the point of view of the vampire. Then, when the window crashed into the next scene, into the KTV [Chinese Karaoke] scene, then you go into this multicolored KTV environment. Moving from that … It’s deep in the night, and then dark, and then from there progressively to the magic hour sunrise, to the natural light of the sky as they are trying to escape, trying to elope, and running for their freedom.
Sticking on that last chapter in particular, and maybe I’m reading into this a little much, but I noticed there were some similarities between that last section and your previous film, “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” The name Tai Zhao Mei, I believe the same actor is used in one role, the karaoke aspect. Both of these movies have so much to do with memory, and dreams. But I’m curious if there’s a deeper link you were looking to make using those same things over again?
Bi: This is sort of the way that I have been working with all my previous films, including “Kaili Blues.” There are certain details that you can also see in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” that are connections, details that I intentionally embedded into “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” When I was making the film “Resurrection” I also had a long discussion along with my art director Liu Qiang and my [director of photography] Dong Jingsong thinking about the good old days seven years ago when we were making “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” There are certain details that we sort of want to relive, or somehow to revisit, incorporate that into “Resurrection” — not so much paying homage to my previous film, but it’s very enjoyable to somehow use these details to tell a completely different story. It’s almost as if we are resurrecting different details from “Long Day’s Journey into Night” into this particular new film with a completely different story, but … we are the same crew. And we had been through this seven years ago. We thought that by having that kind of detail somehow echo one another is an interesting story to tell a completely different story for this particular new film.