Kuang ye shi dai

Resurrection was really out there. Parts of it were coherent and there were multiple stories with a literal MacGuffin. Characters literally ask what is in the suitcase. We sort of find out but not really. Parts of it seemed incoherent.

The whole film time shifts sideways a bit too often. Enough in there to have a second look. A giant show-stopping puzzle.

One of my friends saw this before me and said "RESURRECTION is spectacular, especially the long take that almost brings the film to a close, but don't go in expecting a coherent narrative. It's as "meta" as meta gets!"

There is a series of chapters like short stories or dreams. Despite wanting to follow some kind of thread I became lost in the immediate story. It was almost like each new section erased my memory of the previous one.

In the beginning sequence we see a kind of silent movie with various stylistic nods to different film eras. It feels like a virtuoso musician practising scales and party tricks a bit but then it hist a groove and the I got lost in the dream.

But then the next section would break the spell. I wanted to walk out a couple of times but I knew the ending was worth waiting for so I stayed for that. On the walk to the carpark I overheard some others talking about the film. We were all asking ourselves what did we just see? I was reminded of the Taviani brothers Chaos short stories film in particular. But there is a whole cinema library in there. It was very much like we had watched a some kind of magic show.