Long Days Journey Into Night.
Directed by Gan Bi
Starring Jue Huang, Wei Tang, Sylvia Chang, Hong-Chi Lee, Yongzhong Chen, Feiyang Luo. In Mandarin with subtitles. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from New Wave films. The release date has just been put back April 13th. 138 mins
Critics and real people often complain about something being style over substance, but sometimes that's a pretty good deal. He may only be 30 years old and making his second feature, but Gan Bi style is already something so potent that it delivers more than most other director's substance can. 2019 was a dismal year for cinema but then right at the end, in time for Christmas, this spark of inspiration arrived. For all those that are jaded and despondent, that thirst for magic and devil-may-care cinematic invention to prevail, it was a thrilling glimpse of the medium's possibilities; a blissful reminder of why we bother.
He's trying on any number of big boy's pants in this film. Though the film's stomping ground is the harsh, work-in-progress terrain of ruthlessly industrialising modern China, the area usually patrolled by Zhangke Jia, the film's look is a seamless amalgam of just about every arthouse director who has ever made a visually stunning, narratively challenging film. They are all in here somewhere but I think two influences edge out everybody else. From Wong Kar-Wai, he takes the languid, sensual approach to film noir archetypes. From Tarkovsky, he takes a taste for water-based compositions. Possibly the best example of how these two are fused is a moment when the protagonist screws in a lightbulb in a room where rainwater is pouring down through the ceiling.
So confident is the style that at times it almost looks as if this cheeky upstart is having a pop at the canonical greats. He claims to have been inspired to become a filmmaker by Tarkovsky's Stalker and there is one scene, where the vibrations of a train move a glass across the surface of a cafe table that seems to be a parody of its final scene.
There is a narrative of sorts: a man (Jue Huang) returning to his home town of Kaili in search of the mysterious femme fatale (Wei Tang, from Ang Lee's Lust, Caution) who had once (tried to) persuade(d) him to commit a murder for her. The first part of the movie slips from one-time frame to another and from the conscious and the unconscious but rarely bothers to alert audiences to the change. The look is sumptuous, almost absurdly so, though the locations are often half derelict. It is the kind of filmmaking that takes multiple viewings to puzzle out exactly what is when and when is what, but personally I quickly came to the realisation that I didn't much care, I was happy with whatever he wanted to show me.
The first part is frequently overwhelming, but it is in the second half that the film really breaks free with an audacious 59-minute tracking shot. (In cinemas, this was presented in 3D and you do feel you're missing out seeing on the disc.) Spoiler this, we are told, is a dream sequence but shot on a RED 3D camera, its look is drab, almost gritty, compared to the rest of the film. It is marvellous perverse move to have a dream sequence that is markedly less dreamy than the rest of the film.
The film is enigmatic but the translation seems intent on blurting things out. “Everything about you is a mystery,” “movies are always false... but memories mix truth and lies.” Its English title has been poorly chosen, lazily piggybacking on the Eugene O'Neill work and not even beginning to suggest what wonders it contains (plus it will get confused with Eureka's release of the Sidney Lumet film version of the play.) The literal translation is Last Evenings on Earth, which isn't much cop either but might have been preferable.
Regrettably, this New Wave release is entirely vanilla, a great shame because this is one film whose Making Of I'd love to have explored.
Directed by Gan Bi
Starring Jue Huang, Wei Tang, Sylvia Chang, Hong-Chi Lee, Yongzhong Chen, Feiyang Luo. In Mandarin with subtitles. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from New Wave films. The release date has just been put back April 13th. 138 mins
Critics and real people often complain about something being style over substance, but sometimes that's a pretty good deal. He may only be 30 years old and making his second feature, but Gan Bi style is already something so potent that it delivers more than most other director's substance can. 2019 was a dismal year for cinema but then right at the end, in time for Christmas, this spark of inspiration arrived. For all those that are jaded and despondent, that thirst for magic and devil-may-care cinematic invention to prevail, it was a thrilling glimpse of the medium's possibilities; a blissful reminder of why we bother.
He's trying on any number of big boy's pants in this film. Though the film's stomping ground is the harsh, work-in-progress terrain of ruthlessly industrialising modern China, the area usually patrolled by Zhangke Jia, the film's look is a seamless amalgam of just about every arthouse director who has ever made a visually stunning, narratively challenging film. They are all in here somewhere but I think two influences edge out everybody else. From Wong Kar-Wai, he takes the languid, sensual approach to film noir archetypes. From Tarkovsky, he takes a taste for water-based compositions. Possibly the best example of how these two are fused is a moment when the protagonist screws in a lightbulb in a room where rainwater is pouring down through the ceiling.
So confident is the style that at times it almost looks as if this cheeky upstart is having a pop at the canonical greats. He claims to have been inspired to become a filmmaker by Tarkovsky's Stalker and there is one scene, where the vibrations of a train move a glass across the surface of a cafe table that seems to be a parody of its final scene.
There is a narrative of sorts: a man (Jue Huang) returning to his home town of Kaili in search of the mysterious femme fatale (Wei Tang, from Ang Lee's Lust, Caution) who had once (tried to) persuade(d) him to commit a murder for her. The first part of the movie slips from one-time frame to another and from the conscious and the unconscious but rarely bothers to alert audiences to the change. The look is sumptuous, almost absurdly so, though the locations are often half derelict. It is the kind of filmmaking that takes multiple viewings to puzzle out exactly what is when and when is what, but personally I quickly came to the realisation that I didn't much care, I was happy with whatever he wanted to show me.
The first part is frequently overwhelming, but it is in the second half that the film really breaks free with an audacious 59-minute tracking shot. (In cinemas, this was presented in 3D and you do feel you're missing out seeing on the disc.) Spoiler this, we are told, is a dream sequence but shot on a RED 3D camera, its look is drab, almost gritty, compared to the rest of the film. It is marvellous perverse move to have a dream sequence that is markedly less dreamy than the rest of the film.
The film is enigmatic but the translation seems intent on blurting things out. “Everything about you is a mystery,” “movies are always false... but memories mix truth and lies.” Its English title has been poorly chosen, lazily piggybacking on the Eugene O'Neill work and not even beginning to suggest what wonders it contains (plus it will get confused with Eureka's release of the Sidney Lumet film version of the play.) The literal translation is Last Evenings on Earth, which isn't much cop either but might have been preferable.
Regrettably, this New Wave release is entirely vanilla, a great shame because this is one film whose Making Of I'd love to have explored.
