Long before three-quarters of an hour had passed watching this one I was really struggling. Nothing had engaged me on any level and I could not really understand what was meant to be so good about this film. But then something pretty great happened – a 40 minute single shot which tracked various characters over huge distances and which was technically quite brilliant. I found myself actually pretty mesmerised by the sheer audacity of this single take. I would cautiously say that this shot is worth the price of admission alone, I say 'cautiously' because I really didn't like anything else about this movie at all! I am seriously thinking I maybe did not connect with events on account of a cultural gap of some kind because I did experience a pretty severe disconnect with this one, the 40 minute long take notwithstanding. It seemed to be about a man in search of a relative and it does have some nice photography from China's Guizhou Province. But if this one has a chapter index on its DVD release, I would maybe just suggest you jump directly to the extended take and just watch that. That may be sacrilege to some but I figure it is enough for me; in any case, I think this sequence of cinematic wizardry is what this film will ultimately be remembered for. A word often associated with this film is 'poetic' but I suspect if it was a poem it would be one of those annoying ones which doesn't rhyme.
Review of Kaili Blues
Kaili Blues
(2015)
Loved the extended tracking shot, didn't much care for anything else
6 December 2017