Debate X NZIFF #9: Resurrection

DEBATE X NZIFF | REVIEW | WEB EXCLUSIVE

Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickylaitheokperson | Contributing Columnist

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The white-rimmed, void-black blip in the right-corner of the screen in the middle of an old film is nicknamed – mostly thanks to Tyler Durden – a ‘cigarette burn’, cueing to the projectionist that a changeover to the next reel is soon due. Old celluloid burns on its own too, sometimes – it’s the heat. ‘Resurrection’ begins with a hole burning through the frame, revealing an audience from the 1910’s staring right back at us, presumably bewildered at the faces they can see. Bi Gan’s maximalist opus here is a causatum of Chinese history exhaled through the heavy dust and tobacco plumes of cinema. So much time has passed — it’s been 123 years since Georges Méliès sent his Animatograph on a trip to the moon; only 56 years since we got photographs from an actual trip to the moon. Each chapter here balletically evokes one of the five human senses, then concludes with a flashback to a cluster of wax candles melting, as if to set each of those filmic eras free of their provinces. An overnight timelapse; a make-up artist applying a latex mask to their actor; faces from previous chapters reflected in the windows of others – I can’t contain how many sights there are to see here. It is tempting from a myopic Western eye to see the boundlessness – and the astounding production value – of ‘Resurrection’ of Bi’s film as a testament to the opaqueness of his vision; so abstract and unpolitical that it freely navigates the censors of the Chinese film industry, doling him the yuan in mounds! But in truth, Bi’s fangs still bite – the power of liberty in dreaming for a freer world should not be bouncing off a closed mind. You don’t need to have a fricative grasp on what’s happening to feel it – and that moral isn’t limited to these 160 minutes. Think about the people on the other side of the Earth, kindred enough to be your reflections by sheer chance, that you don’t know exist. A+.