Criterion Premieres: Resurrection

[Ribs]

With his ravishing third feature, visionary director Bi Gan takes his deepest plunge yet into the realm of pure dreamscape. In a world where humans have forsaken dreams in exchange for immortality, a dreaming monster (Jackson Yee) embarks on a shape-shifting odyssey through illusion, beauty, and terror that takes him across a century of cinema and to the end of time. Unfolding in five dazzlingly imagined chapters that encompass everything from silent-era expressionism to film noir to a delirious vampire love story shot in one of Bi’s signature long takes, Resurrection is a work of breathtaking imagination in which cinema is the ultimate portal to the unconscious mind.

INCLUDES
Meet the Filmmakers: Bi Gan, a Criterion Channel original interview
Trailer
Notes by film critic Siddhant Adlakha

Janus Films has acquired Bi Gan’s Resurrection

[yoloswegmaster]

Janus Films has acquired Bi Gan’s Resurrection

Will open in the U.S. on December 12, plus a teaser. Is this also the premiere of a new Janus logo?

[Matt]

The logo just seems to have a gradient effect like the other on-screen text.

[brundlefly]

Janus Films has acquired Bi Gan’s Resurrection

Will open in the U.S. on December 12, plus a teaser. Is this also the premiere of a new Janus logo?

Trailer.

[Lowry_Sam]

Janus Films has acquired Bi Gan’s Resurrection

Just received an email from Criterion to buy advanced tickets with the link listing possible choices and my local venue on top. Has anyone seen this for another (Janus) feature’s theatrical distribution before?

[Matt]

Yes, I remember getting one for The Shrouds and maybe one or two since then.

[domino harvey]

Quick search of my email shows ticket emails for Peter Hujar’s Day, Cloud, Caught by the Waves, and Misericorde in the last few months

[hearthesilence]

Bi Gan is in NYC this week during a whirlwind tour promoting this film. I went to the IFC screening last night and after his Q&A ended after 10 pm, they rushed him over to Asia Society for another Q&A.

I have some reservations about it, but it's obviously a stylistic tour de force, every bit as dazzling as his other films. While portions of his work may bring others to mind (for example, the opening to Resurrection quickly brought to mind Guy Maddin), he's pretty fearless about diving into visually ambitious ideas outside of his comfort zone, which seems to expand by leaps and bounds with every film.

[DarkImbecile]

I absolutely adored this — simultaneously playful and earnest, a buffet of genre and style that's referential without being derivative and reverential of the medium without forgetting to deliver on the narrative and aesthetic fronts. Each segment indulges a different sensory angle, era, genre, and mix of directorial influences and references (Lang, Wong, Tarkovsky, Bogdanovich, Welles, Aldrich, Weine, Lynch, and on and on), while the surreal sci-fi framing narrative ultimately arrives at what feels like a profound funerary celebration for the entire art form.

Even more impressive than Bi's signature long takes — and the primary example in this film is indeed impressive — is the deft hand he brings to less showy but no less striking sequences requiring totally different moods and filmmaking modes. Deploying a similar versatility is star Jackson Yee, who delivers such a shift in energy between sections that I had to check the credits to make sure I was right that he was in fact inhabiting each central character.

My favorite segments were

Spoiler

the perfectly contrasting "Taste" and "Olfactory" segments, the former of which is doing a riff on the icy metaphysical musings of '60s Tarkovsky and Bergman and the latter of which centers around an orphan and a scam artist working together to fake supernatural card reading. By themselves, either of these would be among the best films I saw last year.

Sincerely excited to have the opportunity to revisit and share such a rich and genuinely fun expression of love for film and those who love to submit to its narcotic influence. In such a good film year, this pretty easily takes my top spot.