Another fantastic film from the new Chinese talented artmovie sensation
Bi Gan. For once you have to believe the blurbs
on the sleeve spoting out praise, but the hyperbole is true - Bi Gan
is a MAJOR new talent in the world cinema.
Mysterious, fascinating and hypnotic etc. etc. and with an already famous
long take shot in 3D. I loved it almost as much
as "Kaili Blues" and this film also has got trains, poetry,
rain, watches and tunnels, maybe Bi Gan elements ? It also has a
mystical zone where people, memories and time starts to mix up, like
in a dream. Like in his "Kaili Blues" the past and present
takes place at the same time, or like the Dreamtime of the Aboriginal
people.
The long dreamlike ending scene shot in 3D and in one long take is already
famous, and i haven't seen it as i don't have a
3D TV, but this Blu-ray has a 3D disc and a 2D disc.
Above: From the Booklet, Huang Jue and Tang Wei
The film starts with a male voice narrating something
poetic about his dreams, just as in "Kaili Blues" with the
poet jailbird
Chen Zhang. Then the narrator tells us that he's returned to Kaili when
his father died, but that everything started earlier
when his friend was found dead in a mine shaft. The killer was Zuo (Chen
Yongzhong, main protagonist in "Kaili Blues".
Luo Hong Wu (Huang Jue) wants to revenge his friend and starts looking
for Zuo by stalking his girlfriend Wan Qiwen
(Tang Wei) and they become lovers. But sooner or later Zuo will return
and Wan Qiwen wants Luo Hong Wu to kill him.
This sounds like a pretty straight film noir but this
film is not told in chronological order and it shifts between Now and
Then, 17 years earlier, and you can watch Luo's greying hair to get
when the scene is taking place.
When Luo Hong Wu's looking for Wan Qiwen 17 years later he falls asleep
in a cinema, and when he wakes up he finds
himself to be in a mysterious maze where he, in a mineshaft, meets 12
year old ping pong boy, a female billiards saloon
directress and an angry red-haired woman. This in the long one-take
scene and the settings have a dreamlike unreal
quality to it (and Bi Gan in the extras interview says that this 3D
scene didn't have alot of built sets but used the real
Kaili - Guizhou surroundings, amazing as everything looks like a studio
to me).
The film is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen ratio with
a mandarin audio 7.1 surround, 5.1 surround or 2.0 stereo with
english subtitles, region A.
Extras: Interview 2019 with Bi Gan (10 minutes, mandarin with subs),
interview 2019 with actor Huang Jue (9 minutes,
mandarin with subs), short making of Featurette (1 min 40 sec), US and
Chinese trailer, Booklet with interview