Resurrection (2025)

This week I finally managed to get myself to watch Bi Gan’s Resurrection (2025) which I have wanted to see for a while but for one reason or another I didn’t get round to. Why did I want to see it? I couldn’t tell you. I hadn’t seen a trailer for it, nor read the synopsis. All I knew was that it was long and in Mandarin. If anything got me in the cinema it was the poster, showing you the power of marketing. But again, I went into a film completely blind, and once again it was much the better experience because of it.

I will admit right off the bat that I am not entirely sure what this film is about. And I don’t think that is a negative of the film. It is narratively complex and non-linear, effectively an anthology film, so in terms of a throughline of a narrative there really isn’t one. There is a narrative anchor that the stories we are seeing are the dying dreams of a character, but how that character is introduced is so dreamlike it isn’t necessarily made clear that even that was real. But that isn’t the point of this film. It is not meant to be a clear narrative film but instead is a homage to film and film history. And besides all of that, when a film is this well crafted, I don’t need a super strong narrative to keep me invested. This film is beautifully shot with every scene being meticulously throughout to involve every inch of the screen to create the image. Lighting, mise-en-scene, cinematography, they all work in tandem here to create an unforgettable visual film. The first section of the film, which takes on the style of silent German expressionists films, and the final section which is done all in one shot are the highlights, but each section is strong in its own way and it allows for the film to flow really well. It is long and it does feel long, although that may be a me thing as I feel like all anthologies feel long. But it didn’t really bother me because I was so swept up by the artistry of it all that I didn’t much care how long I was there for. I feel like the film won’t be for everyone, but my god was it for me.