This Bi Gan guy .... i just heard about him and saw his films and i'm writing this in April 2022 .... wow! What a talent. Born in 1989
he's a young director and with Kaili Blues he made his debut feature film, and he has been showered with film prizes since then.
IMDB says he's also a poet and a photographer and you can tell when watching this film.

"Kaili Blues" is a hauntingly beautiful art drama, but i didn't notice the floating aspect of time in the film until afterwards, "what the
fuck was that" what did i see ? Past and present is finally interchangeable and unclear, not relevant.
Watching this beautiful artmovie put me in the same state as watching Tarkovskiy's "Solaris" or Wong Kar Wai's "Days of Being Wild".
There were no artful pretensions or unneccessary syrupy music thundering on the soundtrack - Just Perfect. Wondrous. Dreamlike,
or "Mesmerizing" as a blurb on the bluray sleeve proclaims, and rightfully so. Yes, both this film and Bi Gan's next film "Long Days
Journey into Night" can certainly qualify as modern Chinese Cinematic Masterpieces.

Gan Bi was born in Kaili City and with surroundings where the Miao and the Dong ethnic minority people lives. I can't remember ever
seeing a film from this part of China before, and cinematographer Wang Tianxing does a great work capturing the wet lush green of
the surroundings, the mountains, that almost seems to swallow the city in it's greenness. Also, he makes some of the very run-down
locations in the city look beautiful, and almost sensually so.

The Story, or something like that:

Chen Sheng (Chen Yongzhong) is a poet, works as a doctor and he's also been in jail, and we sometimes can hear him narrate
some of the poems (that he once published in a book, probably this poetry could be by Bi Gan and it's fine).
He dreams a lot and he tells the old lady doctor (Zhao Daqing) he works with at their clinic about them. He goes on a journey looking
for his 10 year old nephew Wei Wei who his rotten half-brother has sold to pay off his gambling debts. But he also looks for the past
and he experiences it in the present, going to the Dangmei River, meeting a young woman, Yang Yang (Guo Yue) with a stubborn
suitor. There's a train tunnel that maybe causes this enigma with people, happenings and time getting mixed up ?

The second part of this movie turns into a fascinating and beautiful roadmovie with places and people he meets along the river
Dangmei. Poor people, living in worn old houses but still lush looking, almost as pieces of art, amazingly shot by Wang Tianxing.
Chen is travelling through tha Miao people country and is enigmatically looking for musicians from Miao that can play the
Lusheng Pipes.

The film is presented in widescreen (not stated on sleeve) and with mandarin DTS-HD MA 2.0 with english subtitles, region ? A or All
Extras: a 2012 Bi Gan short film "The Poet and the Singer" (22 minutes, black & white), a theatrical trailer and other artmovie trailers.
The Short film takes place in the same landscape and with Chen Yongzhong as one of two gangsters about to kill a young man