Long Day's Journey into Night (Diqiu zuihou de yewan, 2018)

US Kino Lorber 2 disc 2019 Blu-ray edition, region A



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

 

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