Long Day's Journey Into Night
Across Asia • 2h 18m
Directed by Bi Gan • Drama • With Wei Tang, Jue Huang, Sylvia Chang • 2019 • 140 minutes
Bi Gan follows up his knockout debut, Kaili Blues, with this noir-tinged stunner about a lost soul (Jue Huang) on a quest to find a missing woman from his past (Wei Tang, Lust, Caution). Following leads across Guizhou province, he crosses paths with a series of colorful characters, among them a prickly hairdresser played by Taiwanese superstar Sylvia Chang. When the search leads him to a dingy movie theater, the film launches into an hour-long, gravity-defying 3D sequence shot that plunges its protagonist—and us—into a labyrinthine cityscape. China's biggest arthouse hit of all time, the film took in more than $40 million dollars in its opening weekend at the domestic box office.
"A moody crypto-noir that veers midway into Tibetan Book of the Dead territory." —J. Hoberman, Artforum
"It is a film about obsessive love, lost love, and that Dantesque dark wood in which, in middle-age, you can suddenly find yourself, with a longing for the past and a creeping dread of the future." —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“Critic’s Pick! Intoxicating. Feels like dreaming with your eyes open.” —Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
Up Next in Across Asia
-
Casting Blossoms to the Sky
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • Drama • With Yasuko Matsuyuki, Masahiro Takashima, Natsuki Harada, • 2012 • 160 minutes
In 2011, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a Japanese village that underwent destruction during both World War II and the 2004 Chūetsu earthquakes, and is now notable for the f...
-
Blue Island
Directed by CHAN Tze Woon • Documentary • 2022 • 98 minutes
BLUE ISLAND documents three people who engaged in rebellions when they were young. Through reconstructing these events, the film dramatizes their scarred memories and experiences by using four young people who participated in the 2019 A...
-
White Sun
Directed by Deepak Rauniyar • Drama • With Dayahang Rai, Asha Magrati, Rabindra Singh Baniya • 2016 • 89 minutes
Gorgeously lensed, WHITE SUN sensitively explores the damage done to the fabric of Nepalese society by the decade-long civil war between the Maoists and Nepal’s monarchical government...