The set up for this film is long and not particularly interesting. The protagonist often narrates poetry that I didn't care for, and everything before the long tracking-shot felt boring and not anywhere near as compelling as the film that the director, Bi Gan, would go on to direct (Long Day's Journey into Night).
But everything from that long tracking-shot up to and including the ending (what a final shot!) is something unlike anything I've ever experienced before in film. Like a future or long-past memory being made and enacted in real-time.
We follow a handful of characters as they move about a small town in rural China, the camera switching seamlessly between them in an act of mesmerizing cinematography, no matter how they are travelling or however relevant they may seem to be to the mediocre plot. As this happens, we begin to familiarize ourselves with the location almost to the point that we could map it out, if we had to. You start to feel as though this town is a place you have actually (but only briefly) visited as a tourist who will go on to look back on the time spent there with bittersweet nostalgia. The people, the place. All of it. It has a personality of its own, but calls upon some of your own memories of places and people you remember well, but don't truly know all that well. Just as a tourist would remember but not know the people and places from his transient experiences with them.
Never have I felt so much of a connection to a location in a film, to the point where it practically feels like a real-life experience of my own.
All this might sound very wanky, which is something I was going to accuse the film of being until it reached this part of the film. It won't be the kind of movie that everyone will enjoy, and I'm not even sure I can recommend it.
I'm not entirely sure I understand the film's overall message. And I'm not even quite sure I want to, as it may take away from my very personal journey that it took me on. I probably won't even re-watch this film. Just as you can't relive memories so vividly. That said, just like Bi Gan's more recent film (Long Day's Journey into Night), it clearly plays around with the ideas of memory and dreams. Though I think Kaili Blues is more of a challenge to understand, with all the wanky poetry, cultural differences and references to "wild-men" urban legends.
Some great films can be ruined by a scene, whereas other films such as this, could be elevated from mediocrity to something fresh, exciting and beyond words.
Overall, Long Day's Journey into Night is a far better structured film, with a much more interesting protagonist and plot, but the flawed masterpiece of Kaili Blues manages to achieve something far more significant in its last 55 minutes (that goes by as quickly as a memory of a dream), than most films can hope to achieve in their entirety.
Bi Gan is a director worth the attention.
Kaili Blues - 8/10.
Long Day's Journey into Night - 7/10.
