Long Day's Journey Into Night
Kino Lorber | Release Date: April 12, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
88
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 23, 2019
There is such artistry and audacity in this new film by the 30-year-old Chinese director Bi Gan. Long Day’s Journey Into Night, a hallucinatory experience whose sinuous camera movements take you on a long journey into memory and fear and a night full of dreams. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrJun 5, 2019
Languorous and enigmatic, “Long Day’s Journey” is the very definition of art cinema, and it will baffle and possibly enrage casual filmgoers expecting such niceties as plot. It is a movie not to be followed but steeped in and ultimately surrendered to. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsApr 11, 2019
Long Day's Journey Into Night forces viewers to be simultaneously hyper-aware and un-self-conscious about the fact that they are watching a movie that, in several scenes, is presented in real time. Read full review
100
The New York TimesGlenn KennyApr 11, 2019
Its various components defy logical arrangement both as viewed and in retrospect. What they build up to is even more seductive than anything that led up to it — a moment of breathtaking romanticism that’s as intoxicating as it is unexpected. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 18, 2018
A sense of disorientation is a wholly appropriate response to a movie in which the past is both irretrievable and unshakable. But even at its most openly baffling, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” never loses its seductive pull. Read full review
100
IndieWireEric KohnMay 18, 2018
The unexpected love child of Wong Kar-wai and Andrei Tarkovsky, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” transforms from a lush, slow-burn pastiche to an audacious filmmaking gamble while maintaining the pictorial sophistication of its earlier section. It’s both languorous and eye-popping at once. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJordan RuimyMay 18, 2018
While Long Day’s plot seems an afterthought, the experience is all that matters: the audience gathers all the clues, rummage through them to soak up the atmosphere and enter a world unlike any seen before. Make no mistake about it, Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a flat-out masterpiece. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMay 18, 2018
Bi’s film is ultimately akin to the early image we see of Wildcat’s body being wheeled on a mine cart and pushed gently into the abyss, taking us on a slow and steady rollercoaster ride through memory, melancholy and movie magic. Read full review
90
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 18, 2018
Those who have the patience to go with its ravishing flow will find ample rewards, as Long Day’s Journey is a beautiful, smoulderingly romantic film. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMay 9, 2019
Bi, not yet 30, has made a movie that feels like a visual sigh and, yes, a dream. It’s a reminder of just how expansive the cinema’s boundaries remain. Read full review
88
TheWrapTodd GilchristApr 23, 2019
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a mesmerizing hallucination of a film, a journey through one man’s memories for a truth that may not exist. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzApr 18, 2019
Puzzling out the reality and meaning of Long Day’s Journey into Night’s second half is as involving and absorbing an experience as watching the thing itself. And by the time Luo makes his way to what seems like the end of his journey, it is hard to not similarly feel transformed, or at the very least shaken. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyApr 10, 2019
Though his symbolism sometimes errs on the side of obviousness, Bi shows an uncommon knack for recreating and exploring the space of a dream—its transforming identities and places, the unreality made more transportive by the 3D format’s underutilized potential for creating dramatic space, matched by the mutations of the camerawork from close-up to tracking shot to crane shot and back again. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyJan 22, 2020
Forget the big brand space opera: here’s the season’s pre-eminent work of event cinema. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeDec 29, 2019
It’s dazzling, baffling and staggeringly ambitious. Read full review
80
CineVueZoe MargolisDec 29, 2019
Throughout Long Day’s Journey into Night, there is reference to a spell which makes a house spin, and in many ways, the technical accomplishment (cinematographer David Chizallet) of the second half puts the viewer under a spell of joy: this smooth-flowing dreaminess combined with the mystery of the first half makes for a sensuous, visually stunning, eerie tale, and it is compelling viewing. Read full review
80
The AtlanticDavid SimsApr 12, 2019
A gorgeous and impossible puzzle of a movie. Read full review
80
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 12, 2019
The movie pulls you in through the sheer immersive force of its filmmaking. In Long Day’s Journey, the search is everything with meaning as elusive and haunting as a dream. Read full review
75
Film ThreatAlan NgJan 15, 2020
In the end, while I did struggle to follow its central narrative, Bi Gan has my admiration as a filmmaker, though I was hoping it would be a little more profound as it was artful in the end. He connects with you from an emotional standpoint Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonMay 1, 2019
Visually, Bi is already a master. There are amazing shots that recall Tarkovsky (especially “Stalker,” an acknowledged influence), or early Wong Kar-Wai. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneSep 24, 2018
Somehow, Bi Gan’s film is self-aware and fluid as its own viewing experience, yet inextricable from its loud-and-clear influences. Read full review
75
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaMay 19, 2018
Although Long Day’s Journey is a far more polished work than Kaili Blues, it also feels a lot more calculated, often sacrificing emotional impact for ostentation. Read full review
60
VarietyMaggie LeeMay 19, 2018
Plunging viewers into an extended dream sequence in the name of abstract motifs such as memory, time, and space, the film is a lush plotless mood-piece swimming in artsy references and ostentatious technical exercises, with a star (Tang Wei, “Lust, Caution”) as decoration. Read full review
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