I did not notice there was a post for this. It actually released in a arthouse theater near me a few months back. I have seen two of the previous three films by that director. I don't remember what Kaili Blues was about, but it's is mostly deambulations filmed in very long takes first in motorcycle in the countryside and then in a small city built on both side of a river, mesmerizing stuff but from a formal standpoint, not a narrative standpoint. Then he made Long Day's Journey into Night, which is a movie in two parts, the first being a kind of neo-noir with a detective looking for a missing woman with flashbacks of his interactions with her or something of that nature, and at some point he goes into a 3D movie theater, so we, in the audience, also put on 3D glasses and follow a 59 minutes long dream-like and super performative single take (we are talking super intricate trajectory in a gigantic set, involving different means of transportations and many "if you mess it we have to start it all over" moments, like a billiard trick-shot 10 minutes in, etc).
So yeah, pretty weird stuff from this guy. Somehow, this film is even more cray-cray. I guess it's a kind of omnibus, with multiple (no so) short chapters around themes related to the Buddhist senses all that within a frame story that is a weird poetic / sci-fi / BS thing around dreams with it all being a kind of metaphor for Cinema. It is absolute garbage non-sense. I mean you have all this first part that is a inspired by pre and early cinema, silent, square format, fake 18 fps... it was a big "wtf am I doing here" moment. Weirdly, it does not get much better, but because of the very long run time, you come to ... not to enjoy, but at least respect the scale and originality of the project. One of the later chapter also brings back what I enjoyed in the previous Bi Gan films, so a very long single take, meandering in a city at night until dawn, following a young couple that tries to escape said city. Does that segment by itself redeem the whole thing? Nah... it is memorable though. I guess that's a bit of a similar review than Radu Jude's Dracula even if both are very very different films.
