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Interview: Bi Gan on Long Day’s Journey into Night As a Technological Experience

The Chinese filmmaker himself appears not to suffer any pressure to separate the experience of the film from his own visual ideas.

Bi Gan
Photo: Kino Lorber

Even before the hour-long take that makes up its second half, Bi Gan’s shapeshifting noir epic Long Day’s Journey into Night displays the kind of filmmaking prowess that’s better seen than talked about. Nevertheless, it was an honor to speak briefly with the 29-year-old auteur—albeit over the phone, and with the help of an interpreter—about how his life has changed in the wake of his staggering first two features. To discern a single clue into Bi’s notion of cinema—which is influenced by poetry, literature, painting, still photography, and real life—feels like a small victory, and the Chinese filmmaker himself appears not to suffer any pressure to separate the experience of the film from his own visual ideas.

Tell me about the release of Long Day’s Journey into Night in China. On social media, I got the impression the film had been mis-marketed as a romantic comedy, and made a lot of money the first weekend.

China is still not as mature as the United States in terms of how movies are marketed. Even though this is an art film, they still had to present it like a commercial film, and I didn’t think too much about how I wanted to release the film. They were coming up with interesting ways to release it, one of which was spinning it as a romantic film. A lot of couples went to see it and got something else entirely: an art film. There was an uproar. They felt they had been duped into seeing a different type of movie. But even though it was released as a commercial film and made quite a lot of money in its first weekend, I’m very proud of the way it was released. A lot of the audiences had never seen a film like that and may never again. I’m very happy it was their first time seeing that type of movie.

Whether the film made money or not, it’s going to be very difficult for me to find investors for my next project. I make a very specific type of movie and I probably won’t be able to make a more commercial film now that people know who I am, and the vision I want to work with. It doesn’t translate to easy investment, and it doesn’t change the kinds of movies I want to make. I will not be making more linear or commercial films.

My films are released at Cannes, or the New York Film Festival, but it doesn’t make a difference in China. Even though people understand that the films are showing internationally, they don’t really see the importance of it that much. The good news is that within China right now, the investment market is very healthy. If you have a decent script and vision, people may be willing to invest. I’m very lucky because I have a group of people as a base, at least, who have always been interested in my kind of work. But just to be clear, Long Day’s Journey into Night cost so much that I had to look elsewhere for investment.

Weren’t there changes made between Cannes and the film’s North American premiere, at the Toronto International Film Festival?

Normally when I finish a film, I can spend some time breaking it down and deciding the rhythm, but because I needed to make the cut in time for Cannes, the version we had there was the “finished” version. After Cannes, my team and I decided to carefully watch the film again and I wanted to simplify it a little bit more. Even though it was there, I wanted to cut down the dreamlike quality and make it more of a love story between Huang Jue and Tang Wei.

What’s it like being in Kaili now that you’re a world-renowned art-house filmmaker?

At home, they see me as an artist, but they don’t understand how; in their eyes, art is mostly painting. They’re slowly understanding filmmakers can be artists. In Kaili itself, they’re quite proud of the fact I’m from their town. Now, when people see me on the street they recognize me and they tell me they like my films, even though I suspect they don’t like them, or don’t understand them. The next question is always, “When are you going to make something a little bit more commercial?” And the answer is always: “I’m going to try.” [laughs]

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Some colleagues of mine have complained that the film is actually too virtuosic for its own good—like, the camerawork is so dazzling it’s distracting. How conscious do you want the audience to be of the elaborate choreography that goes into a take like this?

Because of the way we all watch movies now, when we walk into a theater we know we’re about to get a technological experience, whether it’s an art-house film or a big-budget Hollywood film. Everyone is aware to some degree of the process of filmmaking. So, with my long scenes, I’m not trying to be meta about the camerawork. I want people to see it as part of the film instead of a distraction or a special moment for the audience. A lot of my friends, when they see the long take, they don’t understand how it was shot, but they understand it’s dreamy. I want the audiences to get lost. I want them to disappear into it.

The shots required so much prep that my thinking became purely technical. Every shot was about getting to the next shot. The stress of shooting those scenes is actually approaching PTSD for me. But now that I can watch it with an audience, I enjoy it.

I saw the film in a couple different contexts, but audiences always laugh at the moment in the theater where the screen goes dark. Everyone puts on the 3D glasses, and the title of the film comes up—over an hour into the movie. Is it supposed to be hilarious?

When I was writing the script, I knew that was going to be a funny moment. Back in the day, when you watched 3D movies, there would be a slate telling people to put on the glasses. As a collective experience I always knew that was gonna be a big laugh.

Translation by Steven Wong

Steve Macfarlane

Steve Macfarlane is a film curator and writer from Seattle, Washington. His writing has appeared in BOMB, Cinema Scope, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications.

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