Resurrection
In a future where humanity has traded the faculty of dreaming for the promise of eternity, the few who still produce inner images are branded as delusional—individuals deemed unstable because they carry visions no longer tolerated by a rational and immortal world. A woman—gifted with the ability to traverse the illusions of others—is tasked with entering the mind of a young “dreamer,” the last person capable of generating oneiric landscapes. In her attempt to reconstruct his consciousness and senses, she herself slips into a series of territories suspended between memory, lost eras and possible worlds, where the cinematic image continually regenerates and destroys itself.
The journey culminates in a dilemma: return to reality or remain with the boy who, through dreams, rises again in a thousand forms. Yet the closer she comes to the truth, the thinner the line between deception and lucidity becomes, until it reveals that, in order to save him, she must first deceive herself.
The journey culminates in a dilemma: return to reality or remain with the boy who, through dreams, rises again in a thousand forms. Yet the closer she comes to the truth, the thinner the line between deception and lucidity becomes, until it reveals that, in order to save him, she must first deceive herself.
Those who dream by day know many things that escape those who dream only by night.
— Edgar Allan Poe
— Edgar Allan Poe
Resurrection stages a future that has amputated its most creative dimension: the dream. In pursuit of eternity—a smooth, endless survival devoid of flaws—human beings have sacrificed their capacity to imagine. There are no more spontaneous visions, no nocturnal symbols, no cracks through which the unconscious might seep. Those who still dream are isolated, labeled as delirious: not bearers of meaning, but defects in the system, biological errors that recall an ancient vulnerability.
Within this landscape of collective anesthesia, Bi Gan’s work becomes an inquiry into the territories that consciousness tries to expel: desire, fear, memory returning like an unwanted echo. The woman who crosses the mind of the young dreamer undertakes a journey that is not only mental but anthropological: every dream is an archive of epochs, every incarnation of the boy a variation on the theme of lost identity. And in these fragmented worlds, an ancient truth resurfaces: the more one fears something, the more one desires it. The need for absolute control over the future generates an irresistible attraction to the unforeseen, to whatever escapes the immortal logic of the system.
Bi Gan constructs a film that continuously dialogues with the history of cinema: from the iconography of the silent era (its most moving and enchanting section) to expressionist lighting games, from hypnotic long takes to the geometries of the digital image. Yet he does more than pay homage. The film asks whether cinematic imagery can still survive in a world where no one dreams anymore—or whether it is destined to crumble. Dreaming, after all, is the fuel of cinema: without inner visions, without imagination, what remains of moving images?
The film thus becomes a rite of resurrection: the visions of the “delirious” bring back to life a cinema on the verge of extinction. But this rebirth is fragile, intermittent, full of fractures. Each dream sequence seems to offer, alongside its homage, the possibility of cinema’s own catastrophe. It is as if Bi Gan were questioning the future of art and of seeing itself: can cinema continue to exist when society no longer tolerates the dream?
The film opens and closes with two moments of pure, elevated cinema: images carved into perception, precise and magnetic, capable of giving the viewer the sense of confronting something rare and necessary.
The central section, however, expands into more uncertain, at times labyrinthine paths: the narrative splinters, metaphors multiply, coherence frays. It is a fascinating but more cryptic and uneven portion, one that requires patient viewing. The overall effect is that of a work that excels at its edges and willingly loses itself in the middle—as if disorientation were part of the journey but, at the same time, compromised the compactness of the whole.
The central section, however, expands into more uncertain, at times labyrinthine paths: the narrative splinters, metaphors multiply, coherence frays. It is a fascinating but more cryptic and uneven portion, one that requires patient viewing. The overall effect is that of a work that excels at its edges and willingly loses itself in the middle—as if disorientation were part of the journey but, at the same time, compromised the compactness of the whole.
Among the most revealing episodes stands that of the young card player, where a line destined to resonate is spoken: to deceive others, one must first deceive oneself.
It is a key to the entire film.
It is a key to the entire film.
The woman must convince herself of a truth in order to communicate it to the dreamer; the immortal world must believe in its own perfection to condemn dreamers; the viewer is asked to suspend judgment and let the images pass through them. Deception is not only an outward gesture but an inner process—a form of self-illusion that makes the very existence of Bi Gan’s world possible.
Aristotle held that art functions only if the spectator willingly accepts illusion.
Resurrection probes the relationship between memory, identity and images. It is a film that celebrates the power of the dream while staging its erasure. A philosophical journey where eternity, without imagination, becomes a desert, and where cinema—like the dream—lives only as long as someone is willing to lose themselves in its visions, even at the cost of deceiving themselves slightly.
Resurrection probes the relationship between memory, identity and images. It is a film that celebrates the power of the dream while staging its erasure. A philosophical journey where eternity, without imagination, becomes a desert, and where cinema—like the dream—lives only as long as someone is willing to lose themselves in its visions, even at the cost of deceiving themselves slightly.
The impossible but plausible is preferable to the possible but implausible.
— Aristotle
— Aristotle