Bi Gan’s Resurrection is difficult to write about. I’ll describe its plot.

When humanity discovers that the whole cause of mortality is dreaming, we give up dreaming to live forever.

But some of us are still committed to dreaming, and these few are known as deliriants. The film follows one deliriant who is introduced crouched in a horrible cell, weeping and eating flowers dropped through a trapdoor by cavalier attendants.

This dreamer, played by Jackson Yee, dies. And his death constitutes the entire action of the movie’s narrative frame. But in his last few moments, he experiences the passing of 100 years over the course of 4 dreams. Shu Qi plays an unnamed woman who narrates the film and uses the long-lost language of cinema to allow him to have this final experience.

Each dream presents a basically coherent, independent narrative. Thematic threads and Jackson Yee link the stories, but each of them baffles in its own special way.