Zi

As shot by his frequent collaborator, the cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, and cut together by Kogonada himself, Zi blurs the lines between tone poem and hangout movie, letting both merge together to become something unexpectedly moving.

Zi is fascinating, at times even rapturous.

If you’re hooked, which I wasn’t, or haunted by it, which I was, that will likely have less to do with an acute emotional connection to these characters than with the overflowing rewards of watching someone rediscover the sound of their own voice, and hear a way forward into the future in its echoes.

If the film weren’t so arresting to look at, it could often be absorbed with eyes closed: If its larger message is elusive, Zi advocates for taking the world in at your own sensory pace.

While not fully engaging on a narrative level, the project at least demonstrates Kogonada hasn’t lost his filmmaking mojo, crafting a movie that may seem more personal to him than most viewers.

Even though zi isn’t quite the powerhouse of independent cinema that films like Columbus and After Yang were, it does feel like the work that Kogonada needed to do in order to right his sails and figure out where to go next.

The customary warmth and gentleness of Kogonada’s approach and the corresponding delicacy of the three actors makes you keep wishing Zi would build more substance, more lingering poignancy instead of wafting along on its cloud of melancholy with characters that lack dimension. But it only acquires life intermittently.