The long take, the unbroken tracking shot, “the oner” — whatever you want to call it, filmmakers agree that it’s one of the most difficult technical achievements in cinema. It’s a feat of creativity, but also great coordination and choreography when a single, tiny mistake can ruin a shot.
Some famous examples: the casino scene of Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas; more recently, the action sequences in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and the entirety of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman. Even a recent episode of The Studio titled “The Oner” — which captures the difficulty of filming a long, unbroken shot — was itself presented as a oner. Seth Rogen’s character calls it “the ultimate cinematic achievement; it’s the perfect marriage of artistry and technicality.” (He then name-checks the three movies I just did, maybe a sign that the continuous single take is something only a certain kind of film bro cares about.)
Yet none of these examples compare to the work of Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan, who is responsible for the most ambitious and impressive long take of the year. His new sci-fi film Resurrection — a labyrinthine expedition through 20th-century China — is capped by an extraordinary 30-minute tracking shot, one that was actually accomplished as a single take. (For comparison, the longest cut in Sam Mendes’ war film 1917 is nine minutes long, each segment stitched together to make the film appear contiguous.) Taking the viewer from nighttime to daybreak, Bi’s oner trails its characters from a violent gang fight on the docks through rainy alleyways to a raucous karaoke bar before returning to the port, where the romance between two leads takes an unexpected, monstrous turn at sea. The effect is dazzling, destabilizing, and unlike anything else you’ll see on screen this year.
What Bi has achieved with Resurrection is an extraordinary technical accomplishment, but also familiar territory for him. His debut feature Kaili Blues culminated in a 41-minute trek up, down, and across the rural mountain town of Dangmai; his last film, Long Day’s Journey into Night, ended with a dreamlike, unbroken 59-minute long take shot in 3D.
Though he spoke through a Mandarin interpreter, Bi, only 36 years old, was extremely talkative and maybe even a bit sly. The long shot might be a tremendous effort of collaboration and coordination across cinematographers, set designers, and a horde of extras, but for Bi, it’s kind of his thing. He’s gotten pretty good at it. He told The Verge how he pulls it off.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
The Verge: You’re strongly associated with the long take. What effect does the long shot have on the viewer?
Bi Gan: For me, I really think about long takes and its impact on the audience. By using long takes, the audience will understand time much better. Because of the fact that when you are watching this in the long duration and because of the mise en scène, that might actually force you to stop thinking about using the kind of jump cuts or fragmented way of telling a story. Now, you are experiencing time in real time, along with the camera.
And when something is a single take, do you want viewers to notice that it’s one long shot?
It doesn’t really matter whether or not they notice that it is a long take, but I do think that most of the audience will. They know that this point of view somehow is moving along with you. The most important is for them to understand time, somehow being uninterrupted because of the long take. but also that time is being compressed in such a way that you experience it as it evolves.
You even play with time in the long take in this film when you use time lapse. Were you trying to warp the experience of time?
In my first film, Kaili Blues, you have three different tenses within that particular long take: something happening in the past, in the present, in the future, but all included in that one long take. Whereas going into my second film, Long Day’s Journey into Night, I really wanted to somehow use this particular long take in such a compressed way to talk about memories. It’s also done in 3D. That brings out something very unique about memories, how some things are very fragmented. But because of the use of the long take, it becomes more holistic and concrete than our actual fragmented memories.
Moving on to Resurrection, I just think that this is the best way to depict that one particular day, which is the last day of the 20th century, going into the 21st century, where two characters elope and then become vampires. One long take for that is because that is the best vehicle to tell that particular story.
Courtesy of Janus Films
Did you know you wanted one of the film’s vignettes to be a long take when you were writing the script, or did you figure that out later?
This particular chapter came first because it’s actually an adaptation of one of my novels titled UFO, which is about two lovers eloping. I do think that when you translate from a written novel to a film, then you need to find the best film language for it.
At first, I was still trying to figure out what would be the best way to sort of make those words come alive in a visual way. It is not until during the shooting process that I had a discussion with my [director of photography] Dong Jingsong and with [production designer] Liu Qiang that we asked, How are we going to do this?
Dong showed me this particular painting by Mark Rothko, an abstract painting with the red colors, with a little bit of other colors. And somehow, the kind of combination of particular colors inspired me to start thinking about using one long, uninterrupted take as a way to tell a story.
We really take this type of film language in a very careful way. We didn’t want to just do it carelessly.
Do you worry that whenever anyone sees one of your films in the future, they’ll expect a long take?
That’s okay, because, you know, I’m not really bound by any rules. You can tell from the films I make.
This movie is in conversation with so much film history. Staying on the long take, are there other filmmakers who do it that you are influenced by?
In terms of this idea of this is very much about a film about films, it’s just on the surface. That is the way that I enter the subject matter of what happened in the 20th century in China.
In terms of the influence from other filmmakers or other films about long takes, I don’t really think that I was informed by them that much. For me, starting with Kaili Blues, the reason why I choose to use a long take was very much on a philosophical level. That was the best way to somehow present, philosophically, what I want to express in that particular film. As a rule, I tend to try to subvert a lot of preconceived notions or concepts about films. So I don’t really see myself as either paying homage or being informed or influenced by other filmmakers’ long takes.
When you start planning out a long take and you’re blocking it, like, what does that even look like? How do you do it?
In terms of the script itself, it’s very much action-based because that’s the only way that you can actually pull this off. One of the biggest challenges for us is to find the right location and space for this story to happen. That’s the start. I was discussing with the art directors how to scout a space that would be the best setting to tell this type of story. We were lucky enough with the team of directors and assistant directors that they looked around and finally found this particular ideal location with railroads, docks, and ports, and then the karaoke bar and the hospital.
Then it’s a constant interaction and collaboration between the teams focusing on the scripts, and then the teams focusing on the sets, and then the teams focusing on technical rehearsals. They have to constantly be working together and evolve in such a way to actually finally make this happen and make it a reality.
The DP and the cinematographer involve the art directors and how we somehow have to work closely and make a lot of adjustments. If during the technical rehearsals, I notice a certain type of technical difficulty that needs to be overcome, then we discuss the possibility of changing or adjusting the script. And then we do another technical rehearsal, and then, finally, finding out that that is the best way to bring everything together.
And then we’ll bring the actors down and do actual rehearsals.
How long is the rehearsal period?
From the moment that art directors are finding space to the actual rehearsals, it took a month.
We could only rehearse at night, and then during the day, the actors and actresses would do some other practices, such as learning to operate a boat and how to sing karaoke.
Are they actually driving the boat?
We also have a lot of extras involved for this particular long take. So as a director, I will give them some context — that this is the last night of 1999, and then they will be operating in certain spaces, such as barber shops or karaoke bars. And then based on that, I will ask them to really do character development themselves to think about, “Who you are at this moment of time, in the space, and how would you serve the role as an extra for this particular take?”
In Resurrection, is it all one take or is it stitched together?
In terms of stitching it together, as long as you feel that it is one take, it’s a good thing. And there’s nothing wrong with it. But for my case, for this particular take, it is actually one uninterrupted take.
I was looking for the seams but I couldn’t find anything.
How many times did you have to film it?
Just three? That’s impressive.
Resurrection is in select theaters now.