Image courtesy of Bac Films
Long-take shots have become gimmicky these days, with many artsy films or even blockbusters claiming long takes that are actually smaller scenes edited together with clever cuts hidden behind the camera going through a dark room or moving up against a character’s back, thus causing the screen to go black. Action films, like John Wick Chapter 4, use long takes to immerse the viewer in the grittiness of the action and the exhaustion characters may feel from unbroken sequences.
Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018) is famous for its 59-minute long-take shot, which has nearly no chance to creatively hide an edit. A film with such an achievement could easily be lumped in with those using the long take as a gimmick. Instead, it uses the long take as a culmination of the film’s themes that weave together in a surprisingly realistic dream sequence.
Private eye Luo Hongwu (Jue Huang) returns to his hometown, Guizhou, to try to track down a woman he fell in love with twenty years ago. The film’s dream-like narrative is filled with flashbacks of Luo’s summer spent with Wan Qiwen (Tang Wei), whose brilliantly emerald dress is the only indicator of the flashback.
The film’s slow pace is meant to enable the viewer to take in the exquisite composition and cinematography. Casual viewers could easily lose interest in the disjointed narrative, but active ones can grasp the spare plot details and visual rhetoric that all become part of Luo’s later dream. This dream sequence, seemingly filmed with no special effects, is where Long Day’s use of the long-take elevates it high above films that use it as a gimmick. The sequence weaves in the plot points and visuals from the first half of the film into such a beautiful melange that the long take becomes a meditation on lost love and the what’s real/what’s a dream dynamic.
Early dialogue from Luo set up the themes about what’s real and what’s a dream. And with Luo not having seen Wan in twenty years, his memories of her begin to become more dreamlike. He questions the usual assortment of colorful characters in typical noir fashion, but these forward-moving scenes become less cohesive as the story continues.
The questioning takes Luo to a run-down theater to wait until some karaoke competition starts, and his next possible source of info about Wan will be performing. In the theater, Luo falls asleep and seemingly begins to dream.
The long-take is an awe-inspiring technical achievement in that the camera follows Luo through the ruins of an old prison on the side of a mountain. The ruins now house various people, game rooms, bazaars, a huge karaoke stage, and a labyrinthine mix of alleys, stairs, and burned-out houses. During the sequence, Luo rides on the back of a scooter and also sits in a swing/chair lift that takes him down from the top part of the mountain and down into the bazaar. And the camera follows right along behind him, even at one point seeming to take flight through another part of the ruins during a sequence that delves into magical realism.
These 59 minutes are a place where reality and dreams seem to mix. Realistic camera work and dialogue about ‘the way out of the dream’ blend every element of the film, including Luo and Wan’s relationship, previous plot points, and themes.
The film as a whole is surprisingly cohesive and a reward for patient, attentive viewers.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is streaming on Kanopy.
- EB