Hi all! This is not Marlowe, but instead Marlowe’s friend Slug. Marlowe was kind enough to let me use his blog to post a review for a movie that I liked, so now YOU need to endure my opinion.
I saw Resurrection, the 2025 film by Bi Gan, on something of a whim, which in my case turned out to be a fantastic idea.
The luxury of living in a place that has a lot of independent theatres is they will show very strange movies, and as a lover of strange movies I am trying hard to take advantage of this. One of my ongoing goals to battle malaise is to be more impulsive, which means I am doing things like looking at the summary for a movie, thinking ‘that sounds interesting’, buying tickets, and then instantly forgetting any and all plot details.
In the case of Resurrection I also went with two friends, with the general idea being that even if the movie was less than stunning I would still have had the elusive experience of Friend Time. The movie, however, ended up being so much better than I could have ever expected. Perhaps, though, I was only able to achieve this by going in blind (I didn’t even check the run time of the movie, which ended up being nearly three hours)
It has now been two days since I saw Resurrection, and it still sticks with me. I feel like i should at least attempt to summarize this movie, although to paraphrase another critic it is an easier movie to watch than to summarize.
In broad strokes it is about the last dreams of a dying man that takes the form of four movies, each of which highlights a different era of film, but also of different sociological eras of China in the 20th century. I think that for most audiences the film references obscure the underlying historical cultural touchpoints, which
I admit that a lot of my love of this movie comes from the fact it is seemingly tailor made For Me. I love anthology films, I love long weird art movies, and I love pretty much every genre and director that Bi Gan references throughout the movie (my personal favorite being what I consider to be the Tarkovsky inspired story set in an abandoned buddhist temple). So this movie didn’t struggle to win me over the way it might have others. I was already prepped and ready for it.
The thing about Resurrection is that it is easy to get waylaid by describing the plot of each vignette. I don’t even think that’s necessarily a bad thing to fixate on, as they are all fascinating in their own ways and any one of them deserves to be fully analyzed. But i do think that, by trying to blandly recite the actions within each segment, the full emotional impact is diluted. This is perhaps true of all anthology movies, maybe? By defining each short we then lose out on the interactions BETWEEN each short and the experience of seeing them in succession.
The overarching plot is very…when I say bizarre, I mean so as a compliment. It tosses the viewer into the deep end by stating that humans have found the cure to mortality. They simply need to stop dreaming. Not everyone is content to live this dreamless existence, and continue to dream in defiance of the allure of immortality. These are known as Deliriants, who are pursued by forces known as Big Others in order to stop their rogue dreaming.
The first of the six anthology films covers the meeting between one Big Other and one Deliriant. Upon finding the Deliriant hiding from reality in a dream opium den, the Big Other proceeds to cleanse the Deliriant and reawaken his heart– an old film projector, which she then puts a new roll of film into.
I am also surprised that others thought the movie lacked an emotional core, since I found the emotional core to be both very evident and deeply moving. I wonder if perhaps some of this can be attributed to the different translations of the movie– it seems like the initial screening at Cannes used different terminology, which might have alienated the viewers slightly. Then again, it may be that the rest of the movie distracts the viewer enough that they lose sight of this core. This is another reason i am not bothering to summarize each of the vignettes, as doing so would obstruct what i perceive to be the main point of the movie: art as a way to facilitate human connection
Again i wonder if this is an issue of translation, because many reviews state that the Big Other put the camera inside of him, whereas my screening made it clear that the camera was always in his heart, it had just fallen out of use. She is so moved by the form of his dreams (movies) that she then crafts a dream for him that will last him until he dies. It is a phenomenal act of kindness and empathy. As the movie says, she tries to communicate with him using the long dead art of cinematography. That is, to me, the point of the movie. To convey any emotion, Resurrection says, through film is the point of all film.
In all the reviews I have read (about 10 as of writing this) none touch on the spirituality of the film (another reason why I want to focus on the overarching narrative rather than the individual stories). It wasn’t something I picked up on, but in talking about the film with my friend afterward she mentioned that there was a buddhist reincarnation motif in it. To paraphrase her statement: ‘all life is suffering, and you reach nirvana when you realize you don’t need to suffer anymore’
Through THAT lens, even hastily and sloppily applied, a whole new meaning takes shape: it is not just the end of one life, but of one soul’s journey through the cycles of reincarnation.
A joy of watching movies with friends is hearing their interpretations of the movie, especially when they pick up on things that I don’t. The same friend who mentioned the Buddhist interpretation also mentioned that Jackson Lee’s accent changes over the vignettes, which was a fascinating observation that made me wonder about how differently this would be received by an audience deeply familiar with both the film and cultural eras that it was drawing on. The other friend, halfway through the movie, leaned over and told me that it’s obvious each vignette focuses on one of the five senses. Again, I am surprised this wasn’t brought up more in other reviews, because it seems pretty obvious in retrospect
It has been said, over and over again, that this is a beautiful movie. I have a bit of an issue with that description — I think this is an accurate description, but I also see it as intended in a backhanded way. The movie is beautiful, and because of that beauty (specifically the constructed artificial beauty of it) it lacks substance. Maybe this is all in my head, but I think there is a yearning for Authenticity that renders the description of beauty, if not an outright insult, then a mark of shallowness. The thing about this is that film is a visual medium, and beauty can cause deep emotional impact.
There are many instances where I was overcome by the visuals in this, the meaning and emotion they conveyed, and this could only be achieved by curating the image in a specific way. So the beauty, to me, is part of the story, part of the strength of it. I also see a line between the visual beauty (again, this being a vehicle that carries emotion to the viewer) and the suffering at play throughout most of the plot.
The experience of watching Resurrection is one I will not forget quickly, in part because it was such an unexpected unfolding delight. I am grateful that there are movies like this that exist in the world.
Marlowe Writes 