Bi Gan—a Chinese filmmaker, poet and photographer—is already considered an auteur at 35, with his hypnotic Long Day’s Journey Into Night previously selected for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. With Resurrection, he’s created another visual and technical astonishment, weaving through different eras of cinema in five chapters with each corresponding to one of the five human senses. Despite that structure, the film isn’t driven by a conventional narrative that you can easily decipher. Instead, it leans closer to an immersive celebration of cinema history. So whilst many of us entered the Astor Theatre with enough confidence and caffeine to follow Bi’s Resurrection, most of us failed to do so.

The sepia-toned opening title cards narrate a future where humans find that the cure to immortality is to avoid dreaming. Those who secretly continue to dream are called “Fantasmers” and are hunted for that very reason, for their dreams distort space and time. This premise mostly serves as a loose frame for Bi’s kaleidoscope of cinematic movements that swallows you whole quickly thereafter.

The early chapters feel like witnessing the birth of film—visually reminiscent of the Cinema of Attractions, German Expressionism, and Classical Hollywood. Visual tricks from Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon, the Fantasmer’s resemblances to Nosferatu’s titular character and the mechanical whimsy of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times are all there. With so many homages packed into mere minutes, Bi reintroduces the visual language of those eras not as nostalgia, but as a complete resurrection (pun intended), reawakening excitement for film as a medium to modern audiences. I’d been watching My Liberation Notes on my laptop for the past 2 weeks, and it feels as if Bi knew that this was how most of us were consuming media with the way he constructs his universe. During these chapters, I felt like I was watching a movie for the very first time.

As the Fantasmer travels through time, so does the film’s style. It passes through noir elements and later breathtaking scenes of traditional Chinese architecture that have a similar cool-toned colour palette and, less so, shamanistic themes to those in The Wailing. Later chapters, which feature Bi’s signature long takes, feel dreamier and evoke textures of Wong Kar Wai’s filmography. And with the Fantasmer even finding himself in gory clashes with a mob—scenes that echo A Bittersweet Life—cinematically, Resurrection feels like it has almost everything.

Despite cramming in everything and running nearly three hours, the film stays magnetic throughout. I felt like I was moving with it—wherever Bi was taking me.

The last work I saw that explored the five human senses was a random episode of Adventure Time—“Five Short Graybles.” What’s striking is that both Bi and Adventure Time’s Pendleton Ward share similar thematic preoccupations: surrealism, space, time, existentialism, metaphysics, all packaged in a palatable and approachable fantasy. Both creators approach the most abstract questions and subjects through oblique, fragmented dream logic rather than direct philosophical discourse. I think that’s why, even at 2 hours and 40 minutes, I stayed wide awake and completely absorbed; with the sheer amount of history Bi pays homage to, the runtime felt necessary.

I believe that part of my disorientation with Resurrection comes from perspective—I grew up mostly watching Western cinema. Aside from a few Asian films—and an unexplainable year in childhood where the only thing I watched was a pirated copy of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on the family PC—most of my film exposure has been Western. Bi’s world is rooted in something fundamentally different. And he acknowledges this in interviews, emphasising that the audience’s focus should be on the aesthetics of the film and the experience of being in a cinema.

It’s no surprise that Resurrection emerges as another triumph for Bi. It’s an enchanting phantasmagoria with a star-studded cast including Jackson Yee and Shu Qi, and it flies the viewer through a century of cinematic evolution. Just thinking about the logistical nightmare of this film’s production gives me secondhand stress.

MIFF, like many other film festivals, is always a great opportunity to visit experimental works that demand absolute mental focus and withhold certainty, but are nevertheless beautiful and validating to just feel. Resurrection is one of the most holistic, full-fledged examples of just that.