Movie Review: Long Day's Journey Into Night

Long Day's Journey Into Night **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Gan Bi.

Written by: Gan Bi.

Starring: Wei Tang (Wan Qiwen / Kaizhen), Jue Huang (Luo Hongwu), Sylvia Chang (Wildcat's Mom / Red-hair Woman), Hong-Chi Lee (Wildcat), Yongzhong Chen (Zuo Hongyuan), Feiyang Luo Wildcat - Childhood), Meihuizi Zeng (Pager), Chun-hao Tuan (Ex-husband of Wan Qiwen), Yanmin Bi (Woman Prisoner). 

 

Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan’s brilliant Long Day’s Journey Into Night is clear a noir film – it is such a noir film, that it even rains sometimes when it’s indoors. The visuals are pure noir – and the setup seems to be as well. It follows Luo (Jue Huang) on a journey to find the woman he loves – he thinks her name is Wan Qiwen, and perhaps later it’s Kaizhen, he’s not too sure. He knew her once, they were lovers, they went to the movies. There is a gun involved, perhaps a murder, and then she disappeared. He has been searching for her ever since – and he keeps meeting people who knew her too – or maybe they did – but she’s gone now, where they aren’t quite sure.

 

For 70 minutes or so, we wander alongside Luo as he searches for her, or remembers her. Like his stunning debut film Kaili Blues, Long Day’s Journey Into Night is part memory, part fantasy, part reality – and Bi Gan doesn’t have the normal signposts to delineate which is which. You just have to kind of figure out which is which – or perhaps not. It’s not always clear that Luo knows which is which either. And then after those 70 minutes, Luo sits down in a dilapidated movie theater that seems to about to fall down, in a town where everything looks like that, and puts on a pair of glasses – and finally the title of the movie splashes across the screen. This is our indication that it’s now time to put on the 3-D glasses we were given when we walked into the theater. What follows is a mesmerizing 59-minute single take shot in stunning 3-D. It continues to follow Luo – who has to make his way up from a mine to the town in order to see that night’s karaoke competition – where he thinks Wan Qiwen will be playing. First, he has to beat a 12-year-old at Ping Pong, the take a scooter journey to a large pulley system, which he will ride to descend into town. He gets sidetracked though at the local pool hall by Kaizhen (who, like Wan Qiwen is played by Wei Tang, and may be the same person – or may not – she has certainly been made to look different). He will spend most of the rest of the movie with her – trying to convince her to sing a song for him, even though she says she has a boyfriend. But they seem to have some sort of connection, don’t they?

 

So, yes, Long Day Journey’s Into Night (an odd title to be sure, given the famed Eugene O’Neal play of the same name that has absolutely nothing to do with this movie) is a noir film, but not a typical one. In his mind, Luo has made out this woman he searches for to be everything – the thing that could make his world make sense again. We get a few details of his life – he used to run a casino, but he doesn’t work anymore, he returns home to have who we assume is his stepmother say that his father left her the family restaurant – and Luo the beat up old van. He doesn’t fight her over it – just asks her not to change the name of the place, which was his mother’s - and takes the van. He needs the van anyway to slowly creep around Kaili – to follow the woman around when he sees her.

 

The majority of the attention the movie has received is because of that dazzling, brilliant 59-minute shot that ends the movie. That attention is deserved – it is such a meticulously planned shot, that has to cover a lot of ground, and always seems perfectly timed. Bi Gan didn’t shoot it in 3-D, but converted it afterwards – but it’s still the best use of 3-D I’ve seen in a film in years. It gives depth to the image, doesn’t use it for a gimmick. There are only a few filmmakers – Jean-Luc Godard probably the last one with Goodbye to Language 3-D – who seem to be trying to do something with 3-D technology which isn’t just a way to charge audiences another couple of bucks at the box office to see a film that simply ends up being darker than if you just watched it projected in 2-D (seriously, how many 3-D films have who seen where it actually mattered? Avatar, Hugo, Life of Pi, Goodbye to Language 3-D and now this are the only live action films I can think of). The 59-minute take is mesmerizing and brilliant – and far more ambitious than the already awe-inspiring 40 minute take near the end of Bi Gan’s Kaili Blues.

 

But the rest of the film is as brilliant visually as that shot – just in a different way. Bi Gan embraces those noir visual clichés, but takes them to a different level. This is a dark film about memory, love and loss –and visually, one of the most distinctive films of the year. Kaili Blues felt like the bastard love child of Lynch, Tarkovsky and Weerasethakul – all filtered through a unique sensibility. This is the next logical step for him – and it’s a mesmerizing film. See it on the big screen, no matter what you have to do to see it. That last shot will lose some of its power if you don’t. Regardless though, the film certainly confirms Bi Gan as one of the best young filmmakers in the world right now.