“Resurrection” Movie Review: To Burn, Anyway

“What can one person do but two people can’t?”

“Dream.”

I knew the 2025 film “Resurrection” (狂野时代) would be elusive the second I walked out of Amherst Cinema and into the cold air, boots gliding over tanghulu-textured ice. The snow had stopped falling, but I wished it hadn’t so that I could bury myself in my thoughts a little longer. But the wind hit my uncovered face, the oxygen slipped from my lungs, and I realized that I had stopped dreaming.

“Resurrection” is a love letter to the evolution of cinematography, the ephemerality of storytelling, and the raw incoherence of life. Structured like an anthology film and set in a futuristic dreamscape, humanity achieves immortality on one condition: They can’t dream. We follow the last moments before the death of one rebel dreamer, called the “Deliriant” or “迷魂者,” as he travels through four different dream worlds, spanning a century in his mind.

Being Bi Gan’s third film after the 2015 “Kaili Blues” (路边野餐) and the 2018 “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (地球最后的夜晚), “Resurrection” follows Gan’s directorial style of creating fantastical, atmospheric worlds. Jackson Yee, known for being a member of the boy group TFBoys, stars as the Deliriant and takes on a different identity in each dream, ranging from a conflicted father-figure conman to an untethered young man looking for love to a hunted vessel with a beautiful voice. His acting morphs unhesitatingly into each role, tailored to the genre of each dream. Of which, “Resurrection” leans into, with practice and precision.

Opening with a silent film that mimics those of German expressionist cinema, “Resurrection” takes the opportunity to explore the genres of film noir, Buddhist fable, neorealism, and underworld romance. The Deliriant’s dreams are situated in the years 1900 to 2000, as we follow the evolution of a century of competing cinematic visions. The characters don’t utter a single word of dialogue in the first twenty minutes, as all exposition occurs through paper-like text cards that yellow at the edges. I was worried it would be like this for the whole film, but I stayed in the theater that Tuesday night, the week before midterms, waiting for the first line of spoken dialogue to hit like the first sip of water after a day of fasting.

Through a massive runtime that spans two hours and 39 minutes, this movie makes you earn everything you get. Gan trains the audience’s patience with a firm hold on precision over the dials of the five senses and the mind.

The dreams may move forward in time through the cultures of the twentieth century, but on a smaller temporal scale, the main setting of each dream functions to tell the story of a day in reverse. The first dream, being a film noir, is told on a rainy night. Without giving any more spoilers, the three subsequent dreams take place at twilight, during multiple sunny afternoons, and then at sunrise. “Resurrection” does not grant sunlight so easily; we are given momentary solace after being deprived of direct sunlight for a solid 70 minutes, until it is stripped from us again and we are dropped into the darkness of pre-dawn – not that I am complaining. I love a movie that knows what it wants the audience to feel. I felt a deep-seated ache as I watched the film, scooting closer to the edge of my seat.

“Resurrection” is a movie that is best watched in theaters, but a home speaker system or padded headphones in a dark room can also suffice. Some of its most gripping moments are controlled by sound. Loud, cluttered echoes of the world, whether from people chatting in a parlor or anxiety in a character’s head, are abruptly cut off with ringing silence and a suspended close-up shot. We are forced to reckon with what the character has just done. I knew I was a world away, but I was convinced and terrified at my own culpability and agency. If I were him, would I have done the same? I could only hear my thoughts fade away as we moved onto the next dream.

Beyond sight and sound, the plot also deals intimately with the senses of taste, smell, and touch, but you will have to watch the movie yourself to find that out.

My high school acting teacher once told us that whenever a character tells a story in a play, they are actually referencing the play's overall narrative. This exact technique of using framed narratives as vessels of information foreshadowing drives coherence in a seemingly ambiguous, metaphorical anthology film. Instead of easy-to-follow tales that mimic the hero’s journey, we are taken through unadulterated, expansive explorations of characters and their aspirations. We never find out all the details of what or why something happens, as the Deliriant moves quickly through ephemeral lifetimes in each dream, literally dying to move onto the next, but we find closure nonetheless through the parallels between elements and the poetry of it all.

That is why I like to think of “Resurrection” as pure art. It is not bound by structure; it osmoses beyond borders. It is creation in the highest form; it is a movie that I will never be able to watch again.

Perhaps because the dream worlds are so intimate and gorgeous, the exposition for the actual futuristic society feels weak in comparison. We learn that there is a woman whose job is to hunt down Deliriants, but we don’t see the rest of the dystopian infrastructure that runs this system. However, I can understand this as a thematic choice to prioritize dreams over reality. Form follows function, and these omissions of detail compel us to forget the outside world.

What it means to “dream” is up for interpretation, and we never learn the specifics of why or how immortality is achieved. Instead, “Resurrection” compares dreaming to fire. We humans are like candles, the movie claims, with wax that could stand forever if never used. But what is the point in being candles if we are never lit?

The greatest reminder of “Resurrection” is our own mortality. Whether we run from the snow-dipped mountaintops to the back alleyways of rain-streaked Chongqing, we can never escape our own consequences. “Resurrection” gives me a great fear of death, but so does it reignite my conviction to live a life of mistakes and keep dreaming anyway.

Dreaming is nothing without death. Immortality is nothing without love. So, I stumbled back to my dorm that Tuesday night, the week before midterms, thinking about what I loved and feared losing. So few films can channel life and let it go with a gentle hand. I only watch movies to fall in love. I am in love, I am in love. I am so afraid.