Masterful Chinese director Bi Gan returns with a film that entrances with its daring and beauty as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2025.
★★★☆☆ 3/5
From Cannes to London, Bi Gan’s latest feature, Resurrection, is another grand tribute to the art of cinema.
Set in an undefined time, the film opens with a woman (played by Shu Qi) who encounters a Nosferatu-like dream-eating creature the Fantasmer (played by Jackson Yee). Moved by his tragic existence, she decides to put a projector inside his body. Then it began a century-long journey cinematic dreams.
Dreams have always been central to Bi Gan’s cinematic universe. Yet in Resurrection, his exploration of dreams reaches a new level of ambition. The film unfolds through six dreams, each corresponds to an era in film history, filled with references and visual homages. Only by the third story did I realise that all the six parts also corresponded to the six roots/senses in Buddhism.
Visually, Resurrection continues to showcase Bi Gan’s talent in cinematography. Especially the long take during the chase sequence at the end of the film is truly breathtaking. The camera first trails closely behind the protagonist, then breaks away, drifting through space as if guided by its own subconscious. The smooth shifts between first-person and third-person perspectives creates an immersive fever dream for the audience.
However, beyond its visual splendour, the film left me with some disappointment in storytelling. Metacinema is more than a common theme in recent years. Not only among European filmmakers but also in Chinese filmmaking. Resurrection inevitably reminds me of Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides from last year, another “love letter to film” structured through evolving image formats. Yet Bi’s use of time and the six roots concept feels neither innovative nor profound enough to sustain the film’s weighty structure. The connections among the six stories are vague and somehow they are quite similar to me. Yee repeatedly plays the role of an ill-fated, beautiful man trapped in self-consciously enigmatic plots. Each of the stories is so unoriginally to each other it makes me wonder if it makes any difference if we replace any of the stories.
As a long-time Bi Gan fan, I’ve always appreciated how he uses poetic images to engage emotion. Even though Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey Into Night both had loose storytellings, I could still somehow resonate strongly through his visuals and lines. However, in Resurrection, despite a bigger budget, bigger cast, and a bigger vision, Bi seems to be repeating his old self but this time it makes me wonder if he can really tell a good story.
That being said, Resurrection still shows Bi Gan’s great ambition and his deep passion for cinema. And I’m still curious to see what kind of world Bi Gan will bring us into next.
