Filmic Techniques in Kaili Blues: Dream Sequences, Sound, and Lighting in Bi Gan's Cinema
Overview
This essay analyses the cinematic techniques employed by director Bi Gan in the film Kaili Blues, focusing on dream sequences, sound design, and lighting. The paper examines how these techniques create a surrealist narrative space that conveys emotional depth and cultural identity, while also exploring the film's auteurist qualities and engagement with Buddhist philosophy and social realism.
What this essay covers
- Introduction to dream sequences and surrealist poetry as narrative device
- Analysis of sound and lighting techniques, including lushen pipe music and colored lighting
- Discussion of auteurism, Miao cultural representation, and philosophical themes from the Diamond Sutra
Preview
Kaili Blues
Name of Student
Institution Affiliated
Kaili Blues Filmic Techniques
The film director, Bi Gan, uses a cinematic dream technique at the beginning of the film. In this section of the plot, Chen falls asleep, and we hear surrealist poetry being read in a flatly expressive voice. This leads him to a dream sequence. This technique is used in the opening of the film to offer a brief interlude from the main story. In Kaili Blues, this technique creates a more original form of realism where the audience receives the emotions, connections, routes, and channels of feelings throughout the film. During the implementation of this filming technique, Bi Gan uses sound and images into direct contact with a vividly imagined dream world. The dream world is full of detail, biography, and community. The use of distinctive music is used to signify the beginning and the end of the dream sequence. This is seen when Chen goes to search for his friend Airen; the viewer begins to hear lushen pipe music that leads to a subplot where Chen Guanylin, her dead son and a fabled “Wildman” aunting the film’s margin. During this time, he imagines his dead wife and his nephew (who is ten years older). The dream acts as a discrete environment in which the main character, Chen, will exist and interact differently as they would in the real world. This allows Chen to portray his observations and desires without braking from the objective viewpoint of the director (Kraicer, 2020).