#diqiu zuihou de yewan

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Long Day's Journey Into Night (Bi Gan, 2018).

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Long Day's Journey into Night (2018)

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#653 #Diqiu zuihou de yewan (Long Day’s Journey Into Night)

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Diqiu zuihou de yewan/Long Day's Journey into Night (2019)

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2018: Long Day's Journey Into Night

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Movie-log 

168. Diqiu zuihou de yewan / Long day's journey into night

Gan Bi -- 2018 | China | 8.5

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Long Day’s Journey into Night

(If you haven’t seen Long Day’s Journey into Night, this essay is spoiler-free up to a point, so read on! But you should check out the movie.)

I love Long Day's Journey into Night. It's the kind of film that comes along every once in a while that is just a perfect execution of what it's trying to do, and what it's trying to show you. You could go on and on about the dynamic and incredible camerawork, the emotionally-charged performances, and the stunning visual language of the film all before even diving into the second half, which expands on what the film has set up tenfold.

The film takes place in the Chinese province of Guizhou, where a man named Luo returns for his father's funeral. While there, wandering around places and people from his past, he begins to search for a mysterious woman from his past named Wan, who he spent a summer with at the turn of the millennium. Throughout this journey, we're introduced to characters and locales that played a role in both their lives, interspersed with flashbacks to their summer together. Roughly an hour or so is dedicated to this before the film technically begins. (There’s literally a title card 70 minutes in.)

On its surface, it's a film about trying to find someone from your past. But as the film's climactic sequence builds it becomes a melting pot of memory, regret, and redemption. All these themes mix and intertwine to create a bombastic and stunning hour-long one take that is both visually and thematically unbelievable. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, but I genuinely can't stop thinking about this film.

(This is where it's gonna start to get spoilery, so please go watch this movie. If I haven't sold you on it already, just look up some more screenshots or something. Also it’s free on Kanopy so you have no reason not to watch it.)

What I think I love so much about the final sequence of this movie (and let's just call it what it is, the dream sequence), is that, like an actual dream, everything is imbued with meaning and context from your life and from your day. (As Ki-woo would say in Parasite, "This is so metaphorical!") Everything has some bigger meaning: the slot machine features a wild pomelo prize, harkening back to the first night Luo and Wan shared together and she asked for a wild pomelo. The strange child challenges Luo to a game of ping pong, referencing what he was going to teach his child (and later he suggests that the child be nicknamed Wildcat, referencing his childhood friend who was murdered, making this character a cerebral manifestation of Wildcat and the son he never had). And the whole dream is physically locked around this karaoke party, that of course being a reference to Zuo's bizarre fondness for karaoke.

All of this is what dreams are made of, and to see that so beautifully realized in a film is absolutely remarkable. But even if you remove those brilliant themes and nods to the first half of the film, I think it stands on its own as a visual tour de force. One long camera shot follows Luo through a motorcycle ride, a zipline trip, and a slow and beautiful descent of what appears to be at least a couple hundred feet. All while being filmed in 3D, despite the 3D version apparently not being available anywhere online. (If you find it, please tell me.)

And this incredible camerawork, coupled with the immaculate set design give you a terrific sense of space. The way the staircases and alleyways weave together like a maze around the karaoke party. The way the child's home is open to both a mineshaft and a road, and that road just happens to have a working zipline down to a pithy little bar. And the way the backstage has a staircase winding down to the room that spins when you cast the spell, it's all so incredibly dreamlike. I've never seen a film so perfectly capture this hazy, mystical sense of space that dreams have. Not Inception, not Solaris, not even Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

This eventually climaxes into an ending that I'm sure many will find unsatisfying: Luo and Kaizhen (the dream manifestation of Wan) descend into the basement, the room begins to spin, and they kiss. The camera goes back up, and the sparkler burns indefinitely, giving us no resolution for the real Luo and the real Wan. But what I love so much about this ending is that no ending in reality would ever be satisfying. Luo and Wan would meet, but from the journey Luo makes to find her it's clear she's changed, and there's no reality where them meeting would give him any sense of closure. Instead, he gets to live in his dream world and undo all his mistakes, change all his regrets, and save the girl. Even if it's just for as long as the dream lives on, and the sparkler burns, those fleeting minutes can feel like a lifetime.

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Long Day's Journey into Night

Long Day's Journey into Night    [trailer]

A man went back to Guizhou, found the tracks of a mysterious woman. He recalls the summer he spent with her twenty years ago.

Gorgeously shot film noir, with a virtuoso, one hour, uncut plan sequence at the end.

What does it all mean? A elliptical dream story? Old memories? I honestly don't know. But I think this is one of those movies that you more have to "feel" than understand.

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

[genevieveetguy]

Dreams rise up and I wonder if my body is made of hydrogen. And then my memories would be made of stone.

Long Day's Journey Into Night (Diqiu zuihou de yewan), Bi Gan (2018)

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梦就是忘了的记忆

"Dreams are forgotten memories" Diqiu zuihou de yewan (2018) directed by Gan Bi

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Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018)

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My top 10 films of 2019

1. Gisaengchung / Parasite – Bong Joon Ho

2. Marriage story – Noah Baumbach

3. Ahlat agaci / The wild pear tree – Nuri Bilge Ceylan

4. Jiang hu er nü / Ash Is purest white – Zhangke Jia

5. The farewell – Lulu Wang

6. Dylda / Beanpole – Kantemir Balagov

7. Diqiu zuihou de yewan / Long day’s journey into night – Gan Bi

8. The souvenir – Joanna Hogg

9. The Irishman – Martin Scorsese

10. High life – Claire Denis

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Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018)