Long Day's Journey into Night (Bi Gan)

[Stay Puft]

DI QIU ZUI HOU DE YE WAN / LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
Dir. Bi Gan

https://i.imgur.com/8zQB4FS.jpg

IMDb page (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8185182/)

[Stay Puft]

I saw this at TIFF last year and was hoping to catch it in theatres again but its commercial release disappeared in the blink of an eye. But at the same time, I kinda want to preserve my first viewing, because it was accidentally perfect. I had stumbled into my screening after a long day of work (and a long week of festival going) and was deadly tired. I started to doze off around the middle, almost hilariously timed to the EXACT SAME THING HAPPENING TO THE PROTAGONIST... this movie is about a dude who falls asleep in a movie theatre, which bifurcates the narrative in the most astonishing way (if you haven't read anything about the movie, good, don't, just go see it... but if you have, then you're already aware of the show-stopping sequence that follows).

This is a beguiling, phantasmagoric reverie of love and longing and memory, remaking itself as it goes through a series of neon-soaked filmic echoes. It was probably the most memorable experience I had at the movies last year, or at least at the festival (though the red carpet premiere of High Life was also a highlight).

[PURPLE]

Hard to write about without just opening the dictionary to the “superlatives” section and just photocopying the damn thing.

[Ezee E]

Skip the meandering first-half and just get to the much-discussed hour long unbroken shot.

Even then, it's still a "dream" of sorts, which, when the dream is sort of the idea of the movie, is something that never really works for me. I was also not that impressed with the bloated shot, as much of it is tracking a motorcycle, being a drone, watching one side of a terrible ping-pong match.

There's some that truly love this movie. But most of those people can't even describe what they watched.

[PURPLE]

I like the first half far, far, far more than the second half. The second half is still fascinating, though, as an evolving Antonioni-esque diversion as it reflects and refracts certain elements from the first half. Several of the shots are among the most staggering I have ever seen - several - and some of those are simply interiors with some intricate and beguiling and amazing set design? How? Magic.

I'm one of those that can describe what I watched. But describing is not that interesting...

[Ezee E]

I'm one of those that can describe what I watched. But describing is not that interesting...

Nor is anything about this movie. HAR!

[PURPLE]

Nor is anything about this movie. HAR!I agree! It's not an interesting film. There are so many other, better superlatives for it!

Beguiling! Entrancing! Spectacular! You don't merely take interest in it, you bathe in it.

[Peng]

Kaili Blues and this confirm for me that even if Bi Gan's trademark long takes are a technically stunning and purposeful hook, I comparatively prefer what he has accomplished around them so much more that however engaged I may be by them, those one-ers can't help but be a very slight letdown. Before our protagonist dons that 3D glass, this is shaping up to be my film of the year. The director pushes his elliptical and oneiric aesthetic even further than his debut, with the help of higher budget, making any narrative matter even less (even though a vague shape can be formed from its fragments) and transforming the first half into a spectacularly atmospheric, meditative trance that feels like Wong Kar-Wai adapting a small book of noir poetry. The shift into long take has its own pleasurable and mesmerizing texture, but that first half, in all its rain-dripped room and tactile green dress passages, is pure cinematic marvel, a sensation of being in the center of a languidly spinning house of time and space, memory and dreams. 8.5/10