Long Day's Journey into Night (, literally "Last evenings on Earth") is a 2018 Chinese drama film directed by Bi Gan. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Despite the film's English-language title, it is unrelated to the 1956 Eugene O'Neill play of the same name. It is notable for its final 59 minutes, which consists of one unbroken long take in 3D.
Plot
In the opening scene, Luo Hongwu (Huang Jue) remarks to a prostitute after intercourse how he is haunted by the memory of a woman who disappeared. The story of his involvement with that woman is then told in a chiefly non-linear, out-of-order series of scenes that resist easy explanation.
Luo's hometown is Kaili, where he and his friend Wildcat grew up. Wildcat was to sell a quantity of apples to the sadistic gangster Zuo Hongyuan (Yongzhong Chen) and enlisted Luo's help, but Luo forgot and Wildcat was later murdered by Zuo for failure to deliver. Luo eventually discovered the apple sale was a means to smuggle a gun.
Luo, himself connected to organized crime as a casino manager, attempts to track down Zuo through his girlfriend Wan Qiwen (Tang Wei). Wan had been a cat burglar and had broken into a home with another woman, but they were distracted by a book with a poetry spell that could make the entire house itself spin. The inhabitants returned unexpectedly causing them to flee with the most valuable item they could grab; when they made it to the woods, the only thing Wan had was a green book with the poem. Luo finds her on a train and their initially brutal meeting turns into passion. The green book enters his possession when she leaves it on a wall; it is unclear if she meant to give it to him or discard it.
Wan convinces Luo to murder Zuo in a movie theatre by shooting him through the back of his seat, and he disposes of the body in an abandoned mine. She disappears afterwards and is never seen again. Luo is able to retrace some of her steps but fails to find her.
Years later, Luo returns to Kaili for his father's funeral. A picture in the clock that used to hang in his father's restaurant has a phone number written on the back, but it is disconnected. He finds Wan's burglary accomplice (Yanmin Bi) in prison for other crimes, who explains the story of the house to him and says that if he has the green book, he must have been very special to her.
Luo's travels take him to a rundown town where he sees her name on a faded poster next to a strip joint. He rebuffs a sex worker who solicits him, only interested in knowing if Wan will be there. The prostitute advises him to wait at the movie theatre until the strip club opens. As the feature at the movie theatre begins, the on-screen audience puts on their 3D glasses, a signal to the real audience to do the same.
The final scene is an unbroken continuous 59-minute sequence in 3D and is ambiguous about whether it represents a dream or reality. Luo finds himself on a railway track in an abandoned mine. The handcart takes him up to a small office, where a preteen boy challenges Luo to a game of ping-pong in return for helping him find his way out. Luo easily bests the boy with a unique spin serve and the boy gives him his paddle in appreciation, which he says enables one to fly. The boy takes him on a scooter out of the mine and places him on a chairlift down to a mountain village. The chairlift exits in a pool hall; the red-jacketed proprietress resembles Wan, but is not her. They spin the paddle and it brings them to the village square where Wan was supposed to be; a traveling karaoke show has arrived in the meantime, transported by a truck that passed Luo's van in an earlier scene. He sees Wildcat's mother (Sylvia Chang), her hair dyed a brilliant red, and forces her faithless lover to take her along. Luo and the proprietress find a ruined home she says was once beautiful. A poem is read and the room spins about them as they kiss.
Cast
Huang Jue as Luo Hongwu
Tang Wei as Wan Qiwen/Kaizhen
Sylvia Chang as Wildcat's Mom/Red-hair Woman
Lee Hong-chi as Wildcat
Chloe Maayan as Pager
Ming Dao as Traffic Police
Production
Director Bi Gan enlisted novelist Chang Ta-Chun as a consultant for the script, noting that Ta-Chun aided in the overall film structure as well as the division of the film into two parts. Of the two parts, Bi noted that "the title of the first part is Memory; that of the second is Poppy, in reference to Paul Celan's poem Poppy and Memory. At some point, I even considered using this as the film's title."