Zhang Xiaoyi

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    BEFORE drenching in the nonlinear narrative of the new independent film “Kaili Blues,” you’d first better know “Goodbye South, Goodbye” (1996) and “Stalker” (1979). The former is the all-time favorite of director Bi Gan, the latter his inspiration.

    The director pays tribute to his inspirations in a few ways. The main character Chen Sheng recites poems from an anthology called “Roadside Picnic,” which is also the title of a science fiction novel from which the film “Stalker” was adapted.

    “Kaili Blues” is similar to “Goodbye South, Goodbye,” as they both follow main characters along motorbike and train rides. Both films feature main characters with a hooligan sort of past.

    What leaves one awed when watching the film is the witty use of magical realism. Time and space is twisted in “Kaili Blues,” enabling past, present and future to overlap. Most characters somehow enact the wish to go back in time, indicated by reappearing clocks and watches in the film, so they can once again meet their beloveds and bid a decent farewell.

    What may perplex viewers is that the film only implies the overlapping of time and space through subtle details. Moreover, these details are mainly presented in a 42-minute hand-held long take, which many audience members complained made them feel dizzy.

    On the other hand, if the viewers are sharp, what they experience may be mind-blowing. They will find that after crossing a river by boat, a girl named Yang Yang seems to end up in a twisted space, where she meets all the characters who are supposed to be on the other side of the river.

    In this space, Chen, after putting on a shirt that belongs to the former lover of an elderly woman who is his colleague at a clinic, gains the characteristics of that lover.

    He warms the hand of a woman with a flashlight, just as his colleague recalled her lover had done for her in the past. Before leaving, Chen even gifts the young woman with a cassette, which his colleague had asked him to take to the lover. Chen magically becomes that lover in this space and encounters the younger version of the woman.

    Chen, on his way to find his nephew Wei Wei, bumps into a young man who likes counting numbers and drawing clocks just like his nephew. The young man might be the future version of Wei Wei.

    Is it true that Chen travels backwards and forwards in time?

    The film actually renders the story as a dream. When Chen was about to wake up, he is standing amidst the water, echoing the scene where he fell asleep and started to dream at the beginning of the film.

    When he leaves the town, or when he wakes up, he rides on a time-machine version of a train, a drawn clock ticking outside the train window. On the train, Chen seems contented, maybe because he had sung a song in this dreamlike town to a young woman, which he regrets he did not do when he first met his late wife in a ballroom.

    Shot in Kaili, Guizhou Province, the director’s hometown, the film is screening in local cinemas.