Long Day's Journey Into Night
Directed by: Bi Gan
Written by: Bi Gan
Starring: Jue Huang, Wei Tang, Sylvia Chang, Yongzhong Chen, Chun-hao Tuan
Drama/Mystery - 133 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 April 2019
Written by: Bi Gan
Starring: Jue Huang, Wei Tang, Sylvia Chang, Yongzhong Chen, Chun-hao Tuan
Drama/Mystery - 133 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 April 2019
You know who you are. The idea of an arthouse film about memory, loss, and something called a 59-minute long single take either excites you or drives you away in horror. There was a cascade of backlash in China upon Long Day’s Journey Into Night’s release. The preview, set to a sci-fi synth soundtrack, shows romance, a film noir mystery, and spurts of violence. That is false advertising. Titled Last Evening on Earth in China, advertisements urged couples to spend New Year’s Eve night with their significant other and ring in the new year with a special kiss while the film was specially timed to end at the stroke of midnight. Couples were furious. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is slow, extremely deliberate, and methodical - it is the opposite of a date movie for the young.
These experiences drive a wedge between high-brow cinema acolytes and audiences more in tune with mainstream fare. All agree the publicity was misleading, but when droves of people walk out, fall asleep, and take to social media to vent against being hoodwinked, that is not the time for those of us who enjoy this type of cerebral work and study to admonish those seeking middle of the road entertainment. If you ever want regular audiences to cross over and attempt another arthouse picture, do you think condescending insults will bring them back any faster? The marketing department made director Bi Gan an impressive amount of money on the film’s opening day, but the second day’s plummet and subsequent outrage should infuriate all of us.
These experiences drive a wedge between high-brow cinema acolytes and audiences more in tune with mainstream fare. All agree the publicity was misleading, but when droves of people walk out, fall asleep, and take to social media to vent against being hoodwinked, that is not the time for those of us who enjoy this type of cerebral work and study to admonish those seeking middle of the road entertainment. If you ever want regular audiences to cross over and attempt another arthouse picture, do you think condescending insults will bring them back any faster? The marketing department made director Bi Gan an impressive amount of money on the film’s opening day, but the second day’s plummet and subsequent outrage should infuriate all of us.
Now, it is that much harder to examine the cinematic merits of the movie and discuss the director’s intentions and success or failure in realizing them. Bi Gan created a very challenging movie. Moving past that, it is also in Chinese and set in a humid, southern mid-tier city which would go a long way to understanding the atmosphere for those unfamiliar with Chinese geography. Even more murky, a significant portion of the film may be dream...or not. There are scenes in the present day of a man searching for a former love, choppy flashback scenes designed to be vague, like memories are, and obscure the truth, and then the film abruptly transitions to an hour long single take, in 3D, which is both as impressive and random as it sounds.
Luo Hongwu (Jue Huang) is a prototypical film noir protagonist. He paces slowly in the rain at night underneath glaring neon lights, he retraces his footsteps from many years ago, and he agonizes over the dame who got away. Operating on the slimmest of leads, Luo’s quest takes him from seedy motels to a women’s prison, and eventually to a 3D cinema where he dons the glasses and either falls asleep or proceeds into a waking fever dream. Luo is looking for Wan Qiwen (Wei Tang), a femme fatale used to getting the men in her life to do things they would not normally do. Even though all the prerequisites are on hand, it feels a bit of stretch to pigeonhole the film as a film noir. It is too slow and there is no voiceover to break up the long silences - experimental is a more apt description.
What will make even arthouse aficionados remain in their seats and absorb the confusion is twofold. First, the idea of a 59-minute long single take is madness. Directors do not do these sorts of things. To put it into perspective, the average shot length nowadays is around five and a half seconds; action films routinely shorten this to around two seconds. This is the only reason many people will seek out the film, just for the opportunity to witness the audacity. Second, the cinematography is borderline poetic, even during the film’s first half before the single take. The credits list three cinematographers which is most likely why the film’s visual palette feels so fluid and fresh. A cinematographer’s visual style is like a fingerprint, stand far enough away and fingerprints all look the same - lean in and no two are alike.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is challenging and will most likely earn a more understanding audience outside of the country it was made in due to all the bad blood it spurred upon its release. The bisecting of the film from love lorn film noir into single take experiment feels like slamming into a cinematic pothole. There are two separate films in the package, but they both work. Bi Gan is brave to attempt a feat like this and I wonder how much of it was to satisfy a creative need and how much was it for purposeful notoriety. Like much arthouse cinema, the film defies easy categorization and will truly appeal to a thin slice of the movie-going public, but for those few, Long Day’s Journey Into Night is pure catnip.
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