Variety
Director Bi Gan's dreamy pseudo-noir "Long Day's Journey Into Night" defied the odds stacked against arthouse fare at the Chinese box office to take in a whopping $37.9 million on its opening day Monday. That total beat even superhero blockbuster "Venom" in both pre-sales and first-day mainland box-office tallies.
But the film is unlikely to maintain much momentum amid a backlash from viewers who felt they were tricked by misleading promotion into watching an incomprehensible highbrow flick, with one disenchanted audience member telling tongue-clucking elitists "to go eat s—."
The movie's first-day haul – achieved via cleverly marketed special screenings scheduled to end at the stroke of midnight and the dawn of the new year – marks the strongest-ever China opening for a local arthouse film. The $37.9 million score includes more than $15 million in pre-sales. But the film earned just $1.5 million on its second day (Tuesday), according to data and ticketing platform Maoyan. By early afternoon Wednesday, "Journey" had sunk to sixth place at the box office.
User reviews from across the country wrote of moviegoers falling asleep within the first 20 minutes or walking out en masse. About 75% of all Maoyan users who left comments angrily blasted the film with ratings of 1 or 2 out of 10, for a dismal aggregate of 2.8. "The worst movie in history! Tricksters, thieves! I'm indignant – it's a total bomb, the worst trash of all trash!" wrote one user in a common refrain, as the hashtag "Can't Understand 'Long Day's Journey Into Night" trended on social media.
"Journey" debuted at Cannes in May (as did "Ash Is Purest White") and is the rising young auteur's second feature. It tells the story of a man who returns home after more than a decade away and searches to reconnect with an old love. The film also switches from 2D into 3D midway through before concluding in an ambitious 59-minute dream sequence shot in a single take.
The success of Bi's sophomore outing has been thanks to a viral marketing campaign that billed the film as a couples-friendly romance. Playing off the Chinese title, "The Last Night on Earth," opening night screenings were scheduled to begin at 9:50 p.m. so that the last minute of the film, in which stars Tang Wei and Huang Jue lock lips, would fall at the first stroke of 2019. The event was sold as the ideal date to ring in the new year, with couples encouraged to attend in order to share their own "cross-year kiss."
The campaign spread for weeks on Weibo, Wechat and other apps, with even the official state broadcaster CGTN asking: "How will you spend your last night of 2018? Watching 'Last Night on Earth' or eating a big meal?" It did especially well on popular short video app Douyin (Tik Tok in the U.S.), which in China tends to be favored by a slice of the public generally more fond of "Transformers"-type shoot-'em-up films than abstract, Tarkovskian meditations.
Midnight screenings for opening night sold out across China in pre-sales, even with tickets going for RMB300 ($44) a pair in some cities. Thanks to Douyin's reach, nearly half of those who indicated that they wanted to see the film on Maoyan hailed from third- and fourth-tier cities, with only 17% from first-tier metropolises – the opposite of the usual breakdown in China for arthouse films, according to Wechat account Yuledujiaoshou, or "Entertainment Unicorn." "From the 'literary youth' to the ordinary teens, all were duped by the magic of the 'cross-year kiss'," it said, using a popular term for artistically inclined hipsters.
Meanwhile, there has been an unusual class element in the backlash from the Douyin crowd, with "average Joe" viewers railing against the film's more sophisticated target audience.
"It's so hard to be a common person: You spend your own hard-earned money to go to the movie, and when it puts you to sleep, the 'literary youth' still turn around and scold you, saying, 'This kind of dream was never meant for you Douyin users,'" wrote one Weibo commentator. Another put it bluntly: "Those who say that the film had artistic meanings that we're just unable to understand them, please go eat s—."
The Guardian
Word of mouth proved so negative that takings fell to $1.5m on the film's second day of release. Gan, 29, defended the campaign for his second feature, explaining he hoped many audience members would feel their cinematic horizons had been expanded. "My colleagues promoting it didn't steal or rob — they just used their own abilities and knowledge to do their task," he said. "I don't think they've done anything wrong.
"I myself am from a fourth, fifth-tier city. Are you saying that people there should only watch those kinds of [blockbuster] films? I've never believed that, although I don't necessarily think that they'll like my movie."
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