A perfect sci-fi movie for an imperfect audience. You may have heard Blade Runner 2049 is not a big hit. Like its predecessor from 1982, it's long, slowly paced, thematically inconclusive and very few people are seeing it in theaters.`` I don't think mainstream audiences quite know what to do with a film like this in a world of spoon-fed Marvel Cinematic Universes and annual Star Wars movies. But like the pending robot uprising teased near the end, this film no longer cares what the humans think. It exists to it's own purpose. And audience or not, it's an incredible achievement I have no doubt it will reach the same cult status and sub-cultural respect of its forebear. Eventually. "Is it real?" Ryan Gosling's robotic robot-hunter Officer K asks of the dog belonging to Harrison Ford's returning Rick Deckard when they finally meet somewhere in a post apocalyptic Las Vegas late in the films Second Act. Harrison Ford says, "I don't know, ask him." This is the movie. Being real doesn't entirely matter. Humans are secondary characters in this story, and all the main players are either "artificial" replicants or holograms or simply unclear. Replicants bleed, feel pain, emotion, and even though they're told they can't disobey or lie, they ultimately decide to do some of that too. In Ryan Gosling's first appearance as Officer K, we find him sleeping. Actually, we meet him waking up while en route, and I think that's not without symbolic significance. The entire plot is him "waking up" while trying to "get somewhere". Besides sleeping, we see him show caution, curiosity, amusement, and distress before Dave Bautista (from Gardians of the Galaxy fame; get this guy some more roles, please!) throws him through a wall and stabs him to reveal the truth. All these human traits -- more than Harrison Ford ever displayed in the entire original film -- are a red herring. We aren't meant to realize the difference between humans and replicants at a glance, or even upon inspection. If the original portrayed this by making all the humans flat, lifeless and depressed, this new film does the opposite, making the replicants emotional, energetic and passionate. Officer K is a blade runner. He hunts replicants, in this case the older models who aren't built with his limited life-span and obedience regulations. His first mission to take out Dave Bautista reveals clues pointing toward the unthinkable: a live robot birth, decades earlier, somewhere between the two films. Officer K must find and destroy this child. He must destroy all evidence it ever existed. Something to do with keeping the balance in society or some other vague but ominous implications. Jared Leto plays the billionaire Niander Wallace, owner and manufacturer of all the obedient replicants who, despite having all but replaced humanity as it is, needs more. So many more that he needs the secret to reproduction in order to achieve the quantities he desires. He sends his assassin secretary to follow Officer K and acquire the child for their own purposes. The clues take them all over the greater Los Angeles city of the future which extends as far as the San Diego Garbage District, irradiated Las Vegas, and into the twilight years of Harrison Ford's career, which seems to have circled back on itself lately to where it began (Indian Jones and the Quest for Medicare starts filming next year I believe). Viewers have been debating whether Harrison Ford's 1982 neo-noir robot-hunter loosely inspired from Philip K Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was in fact a robot himself since the Director started re-editing the film's ending. Repeatedly. The clue, if you can call it that, lies in the origami unicorn. But there are no unicorns in this new installment and we already know Officer K is a replicant. We know he has a holographic girlfriend named Joi and that the two pretend to live a normal, human home-life together. The question isn't whether they are "real" or human, the question is whether being manufactured or programmed precludes them from still being real. It's clear in the performances of both Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas that these characters are very real, and very feeling, despite what they're told of themselves. As the depth and complexity of their affection grows throughout the film, I found this to be the closest the franchise has come to realizing the original thematic significance of Dick's under-appreciated novel. Do androids dream of the electric equivalent of what humans dream of? Electric sheep instead of sheep? Digital love with a hologram, instead of human love? Its precisely this examination which leads to the most visually enchanting and unforgettably resonant scenes in the movie (indeed in any movie I've seen in a while) when Joi brings home a replicant sex-bot to try to please Officer K and proceeds to merge her holo-image imperfectly over the surface of the other until the two become a blur of interposed fingers and eyes. Their love story exists in spite of its logic, ultimately proving both the inevitability of their pre-programming while simultaneously subverting it through a brilliantly nuanced and focused performance out of Gosling. It's heartbreaking to watch him stare up into a giant, blue, holographic simulacra of her near the end and realize the truth -- or has he always known? But now she's gone. The film is captivating at every turn, and like Director Denis Villeneuve's previous work, the underdog sci-fi hit of 2016 The Arrival, every camera shot, every angle, is created for complete immersion. No wasted cuts. No jumping around. Just visually arresting storytelling that will put his name quickly in the company of David Fincher, Christopher Nolan and Alfonso Cuaron. I'm sure the three hour runtime will keep certain viewers at bay but it does not have a wasted second. I recommend it late at night in a fit of insomnia, or when you're alone in the dark hopped up on cold medicine. It will absorb you. I haven't been this psychologically sucked-in since I saw Apocalypse Now the whole way through for the first time on a bottle of Nyquill home sick from school. It's haunting. Compelling. If it seems slow its because of the frantic ADHD pacing of modern action flicks which have altered our expectations of normal. This is a film for cinephiles with attention- spans, not casual movie goers munching on popcorn and sneaking off to the bathroom between scenes. But rest assured, it's never boring. The Music helps with this. Hans Zimmer teams with Benjamin Wallfisch to echo all the most memorable elements of the original by Greek composer Vangelis, while expanding and updating it beautifully into an ethereal storm of atmospheric ambiance. Like Zimmer's work on pretty much all his films, the score doesn't resemble music so much as it does pure sound. Energy. Mood. It's as synth-heavy and loosely jazz-noir as its Vangelis predecessor, but also as post-modern and subliminal as Zimmer's other work on the Dark Knight or Dunkirk. It will lull you into a trance of rapt attention and put you on the edge of your seat as Villeneuve tours us across shiny landscapes of silver solar farms, rust red garbage districts or radioactive sin cities devoid of life. It's all in the eyes. The original obsessed over the windows to the soul. They were the primary focus of the Voight-Kampff test, as well as the gruesome murder of replicant designer Tyrell. By the time of this film, Tyrell Corp has been bought by Jared Leto's Niander Wallace, who is blind, and almost as creepy as his Joker portrayal last year. All replicants have their serial numbers imprinted on their eyes, which are harvested as proof of a kill. It's a nice nod to the original film, but Villeneuve doesn't let it hold him back from innovation. He replaces the Voight-Kampff with a kind of word pattern repetition test which determines if Officer K is functioning within obedience parameters. I like this update because of the rushed manner in which it forces the listener to repeat key words under pressure. Imagine an anxiety-attack equivelant of Simon-Says, it resembles a form of indoctrination by bullying. This could be further evidence that their obedience-programming is only self-inflicted, adding to the symbolic value that all replicants are in fact like all good robot stories or zombie stories or even vampire stories: analogous to regular people in an irregular society. We follow our social programming because we are told we have no choice, but like all good modernist Hollywood cinema, we must learn to find our agency and choose to overcome our societal programming. Are our dreams and wants and loves and fears so different from those of a robot, and does that make them any less valid? I also liked the cameo from Edward James Almos (still making origami) and the original PKD blaster, even though the new one is cool too. And the film pulls a Rogue One on us and brings back a youthful Rachel, Deckard's replicant love interest from the original. Minus the green eyes. And sure there are other callbacks too, like the clear plastic umbrellas, the pyramidal Tyrell-Corp facilities and giant ads for Atari, but I enjoy Villeneuve's updates. Instead of a Chinese-infused neo-noir mish-mash, we now see all kinds of international influences. Signs are written in Russian Cyrillic or Hindi or Korean, to say nothing of the Japanese Tokyo-inspired neon advertisements. It's too bad no one from these cultures got a role in a film that borrows so heavily from their aesthetics. I could go on about the precise realism of the special effects, the world building hidden within Officer K's investigation, the zooming techniques, the holograms, the drones and flying cars, the Future Las Vegas, the Christology of the final climax, or the unexpected physicality of a 75-year-old Harrison Ford, but suffice to say the film is layered with treats and details that will reward your rapt attention. Conclusion: Blade Runner 2049 is a masterpiece of storytelling in a slow-burn style long forgotten by the mainstream, but just as potent and absorbing as ever. I don't know how popular it will be, but I do know that among those who actually sit through it, it will be held in the highest regard of cult favorites. The quality of the filmmaking is unparalleled. You don't need to see or even be all that familiar with the original for this film to work on every level. I watched it with folks who knew nothing of the original or had only passing and vague memories and we all felt speechless as we walked out. I've always felt that I liked the idea of the original more than the actual viewing; it was never quite entertaining to me on a visceral level, and it only reminded me how much I preferred the Philip K Dick novel. I also found its ending too horrific and graphic to fully enjoy actually watching it. 2049 far exceeds its predecessor on every level, and feels truer to the spirit of Dick's themes even as it moves further from the premise. I can't praise it enough.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Captain's Blog
|