Not every film needs to be complex in order to impress; nor is “impressiveness” a virtue one must always necessarily achieve in order to create successful art. By “impressiveness” I suppose I mean something like “bigness” or “grandiosity” or some baroque plot convolution(s) that leave a viewer struggling to put the pieces of the story in their correct order. Certainly there are many great films that operate in an almost puzzle-like manner (think of the austerely cryptic quality of Last Year at Marienbad, or Memento’s dove-tailing plot structure) but one would be remiss to forget the undeniable pleasures—and merits—of a simple story, simply told, whose only bells and whistles are certain subtleties that can be so slight one is liable to miss them on first viewing.

I was struck by this dichotomy very recently after seeing two movies, one right after the other: Bi Gan’s Resurrection (2025) and Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008). Resurrection, epic in most senses of the word, bowls one over with complex film-craft illusion and a narrative so bizarre (at least to this Westerner) it borders on alienating; and though its visual language intrigues—touching the sublime, at times—Resurrection’s indulgence of unconventionality can veer into the downright silly, or is even sacrificed for the sake of some mawkish emotional beat. (A film that handles similar meta-themes and likewise explores the visual potentialities of cinema to the nth degree, but, in my view, does so far more efficiently, is Tarsem Singh’s The Fall.) […]