Largo viaje hacia la noche

"Since we were discovered, I've often worried about those going into space. They must be so tired if they can't lean in any position." +++ "How can you just give people sparklers?" - "What can't I?" - "Sparklers are a symbol of impermanence." - "And we're not impermanent?" +++ "Have you counted the stars in the sky? They are like little birds swooping down like paratroopers forever through my chest." +++ A film like this is a typical example of a work that one viewing is not enough to fully understand. It is certainly a unique cinematic experience, but one that may not suit everyone. However, I will gladly recommend this mysterious Chinese story with a love and detective plot, pleasantly spiced up with dreamlike poetry and ethereally beautiful music, to all the more thoughtful individuals. (80%) (18.02.2022)

"I fell asleep in the cinema and when I woke up, there was no one there and it was dark everywhere." Gan Bi is a rare case of young, unpolished talent that can still faithfully portray youthful resentment, melancholy, fatality and need for escape of the almost obsolete cynicism typical of the most self-important battered art filmmakers (especially European ones). As such, his characters are a combination of adult weariness and childlike naivety, and thus find fulfilment only through dream logic as opposed to what is for them far more surreal and incomprehensible, namely reality. The film is in fact an act of resistance to awareness, understandable for a sensitive young filmmaker living under technocratic despotism. While that may make the whole thing seem like an overly obvious cinephilic soak (direct quotes from Tarkovsky and the same plot concept as Lynch's Mulholland Drive), all is forgiven in the second half, which is the realization of a dream so familiar that it is impossible to gird yourself against it. And because of that alone, this film should be required viewing from three in the morning. Incidentally, if you have that one film on the tip of your tongue while watching that you’re reminded of but can't put your finger on, it's Trier's first feature, Element of Crime, which also used neo-noir to portray a heavy-handed love of Tarkovsky and was made by a twenty-eight year old hottie fascinated with exploring the limits of camera movement. (03.09.2019)