Episode 267: LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (2018) with Natalie Marlin

With special guest Natalie Marlin (@NataliesNotInIt)!

Bi Gan’s lovelorn neo-noir follows Luo (Huang Jue) as he pursues Wan (Tang Wei), the woman he fell in love with years before. Luo weaves in and out of half-recalled memories to trace Wan’s whereabouts, only brushing shoulders with reality as he dodges his own past in pursuit of the fading memory of love through decades of lost time.

Famous for its non-linear structure, ethereal pacing, and the 59-minute long-take dream sequence that closes the film, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT uniquely mixes the concrete drive of emotion with the fleeting nature of memory. In this episode, we talk about how the first half sets up the second, the protagonist’s intentional unreliability as narrator, the mechanical and narrative achievement of its dreamy long-take ending, and have a little fun picking out the first-act callbacks in the second half of the movie.

“Lost in the Dream” by Natalie Marlin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/02/13/lost-in-the-dream/

Find Natalie…

On Twitter and Bluesky at @NataliesNotInIt
On Letterboxd at @framingthepic
On Trylove Episode 162: THE THIRD MAN (1949), Episode 182: CHESS OF THE WIND (1979), Episode 197: RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985), Episode 210: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015), Episode 239: MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001), Episode 249: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)

#NoirFestival #DCP

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Opening” (开场) by Lim Giong and Chih-Yuan Hsu from the LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 267: LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (2018)

3:50 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

5:01 - Tang Wei pretty

6:00 - Why Natalie keeps coming back to this movie

14:59 - The “trap” of the second half

24:03 - The power and rhythm of the first half

41:06 - Abstraction and looking at Luo through a noir lens

47:02 - Everything is always about to happen

55:56 - Luo, Zuo, and dualism

59:43 - The cathartic 59-minute long-shot dream sequence

1:08:22 - Luo reconstructing a version of himself in the subconscious

1:12:42 - Cyclical loop-closing

1:32:55 - LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT Ending Explained

1:42:26 - The Junk Drawer