Resurrection (2025)
Seen at the National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Gallery:
The motion picture itself is a kind of rebellion against the ephemral nature of life. Everything that lives ultimately dies and is erased. A film is an attempt to capture a microcosm, to construct an ideal simulacrum of life and render it available for repeated future viewings.
This movie is a celebration of cinema's rebellion against transcience & a meditation on the beauty of impermanent things.
I don't typically enjoy anthologies. I would rather have one fully fleshed out idea than several half-baked ones. And each of the five stories here could have been their own movie.
What makes Resurrection unique is the clear central theme & persistent character of the delieriant. It is him dying & being reborn until the end of time, experiencing countless transient moments. Some of them are truly horrific, whereas others are full of indescribable joy.
Somehow Bi Gan has done the unthinkable. In a 2 1/2 hour runtime, he has crafted an amazing silent short, a supernatural crime noir, a meditative Buddhist ghost story, a charming adopted son crime drama, and a vampire romance. All within the context of a sci-fi dystopia.
Typically, these kinds of films can come off as incredibly disjointed. That was my problem with Coogler's Sinners - too many good ideas packed into one story. Bi Gan could certainly have turned Resurrection into a series of films. Yet, there is a kind of emotional coherence & plot muddiness that makes this work.
Resurrection is also full of some of the best cinematography the medium has ever known. It is as if Bi Gan was able to distill some of the greatest shots in cinema history & give himself a canvas to weave them all together. Whether the shocking image of a Chinese detective in '60s clothing cutting open a covert operative only to catch aflame from the mystical dimension underneath his skin to a haunted Buddhist temple in the early morning being speckled by snow to the image of an estranged daughter's final burnt letter floating out of a box into the wind or a vampire crime overlord singing karaoke as his goons beat a man almost to death. Each of these pistáches is brought together in this kalodeiscopic tapestry of cinematic excellence.
In the end, Bi Gan pays his respects to the audience themselves. Casting us as beings of pure light in the cathedral of art, as each moviegoer fades into nothingness.
An absolutely singular ode to the always fading beauty of life & cinema.
Related long-form writing: Resurrection (2025): Cinema Against the Ephemeral.
Originally published on Letterboxd. Browse all film reviews.