Start the week with a film: ‘Resurrection’ is a visionary, transcendent experience

Bi-Gan’s Resurrection has landed in an age dominated by dumbed-down scripts and fashionably fractured narratives. The acclaimed Chinese director’s third feature proudly stands in opposition to conventional notions about the attention economy. Resurrection is opaque in its storytelling and stately in its pacing. Therein lies its beauty.

Resurrection is out on Prime Video. Although a small screen does absolutely no justice to the film’s grand visuals, viewers can get a fair sense of the achievements of Bi Gan, cinematographer Dong Jingsong and production designer Liu Qiang.

Resurrection is set sometime in the future – or is it a parallel timeline? This is a future without cinema, or a life without political freedom, or an AI-dominated landscape – take your pick.

The movie begins with gnomic text, like in silent cinema, which sets the tone for whatever follows: “In a wild and brutal era, humans have discovered that the secret to eternal life is to no longer dream! People not dreaming is like candles that do not burn, they can exist forever!”

The hold-out dreamers are called deliriants. These shape shifters must be extinguished, since they can send “time into spasms”.

An unnamed woman (Shu Qi) is a member of a deliriant-hunting squad. She locates one such deliriant (Jackson Yee) in an opium...

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