Bladerunner - 2049

Denis Villeneuve's Bladerunner - 2049 (2017) is an immense, bombastic, science fiction film that is gloriously spectacular but, ultimately, hollow.  The film feels superfluous -- despite a plot that frantically flails about in all directions, the movie doesn't explore any territory that wasn't previously, and more effectively, represented in the predecessor film.  A case in point is the earlier film's use of Los Angeles' Bradbury Building for the tenement where the bladerunner, a sort of assassin, lives -- 2049 is replete with dank, bizarre locations, some of them fantastically beautiful, but shows us nothing as utterly strange and evocative as the interior atrium of that building.  The Bradbury Building was like the belly of the beast, almost gastric in its ambience, a cast-iron maw in which the characters were trapped like Jonah in the guts of the whale.  There's a lot of wonderful stuff in 2049 but nothing as sublimely effective as the old (and real) Bradbury Building.  Thus, one is continuously afflicted with the notion that we've seen this stuff before and better in the previous 1982 movie. 

Like the earlier film, 2049 is a sci-fi adaptation of classic film noir -- patterned, accordingly, on The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep (or, for that matter, the Coen brothers' Big Lebowski).  A world-weary gumshoe on routine assignment happens onto a criminal enterprise that is bigger, and more terrible, than anyone expected.  As the detective follows leads, his investigation penetrates into larger and darker spheres of corruption -- by tugging at one string on the edge of the tapestry of criminality, the detective inadvertently sets the whole world in motion.  This plot requires an isolated and virtuous hero, incorruptible in a rotten world, who travels from place to place interviewing suspects and witnesses -- gradually, the larger picture is revealed (for instance, the felonious source of LA's water in Chinatown) and the powers-that-be try to cover up the investigation by murdering the investigator.  It's an old plot, dating back to Oedipus Rex, a story that is directly invoked (together with Pinocchio)in Bladerunner -- 2049.   In recent history, the form was perfected by Raymond Chandler in his novels and, then, adapted into films -- stories of this kind involve much deception, savagely swift reversals of fortune, and a fair amount of mayhem; one characteristic of this plotting is that there are always loose ends, elements of the story that don't adequately fit together -- I think both Howard Hawks and William Faulkner (director and writer, respectively, of The Big Sleep) admitted there was at least one murder in the story for which they couldn't account and didn't know who had committed or why.  Therefore, even when plotting is very carefully designed, stories of this sort are difficult to untangle.  But in 2049, the plot is completely jerry-rigged, nothing more than a string on which to hang spectacular set-pieces -- here, the plot exists for the purpose of allowing Villeneuve and company to contrive ever more grandiose and dystopian visions; that is, the plot is adjunct to the imagery; the story exists to justify the dystopian landscapes.  (In super-hero movies, there is a similar phenomenon -- that is, the plot is designed as a framework from which to suspend, more or less, arbitrarily sequences involving expensive special effects.)  This is made very clear by one of the film's innumerable (and problematic) plot contrivances -- all important data preceding a certain year has been lost in a black-out.  This means that the hero has to rely upon personal interviews with eccentric witnesses as opposed to simply doing his research with court records and archival information.  But this plot contrivance is over-powerful and, so, the film admits certain exceptions to the black-out rule -- in other words, no documentary evidence is available before a certain year, except when the story requires such evidence to be available; in that case, some crystals exist with something like micro-fiche embedded in them and they can be read and, therefore, supply a basis for further plot developments.  Other plot contrivances are equally questionable -- why is Las Vegas a post-nuclear irradiated wasteland?  And if it is so deadly there that the place is wholly deserted, then how is it that Harrison Ford (the original 1982 protagonist, Rick Deckard) lives there.  A number of important sequences are impenetrable -- is the film's corporate villain, Niander Wallace (of the Wallace Corporation) blind? why do his eyes appear to be cloudy?  What are the small flying modules that accompany him -- are they some sort of vision equipment?  What is the plug in his neck for?  Why does he slaughter the comely and nubile replicant that drops alarmingly from an amniotic sac, born, apparently, to be immediately and pointlessly killed?  (This material resonates with the original film in which the founder of the Tyrell firm, the first manufacturer of replicants, was suffering from some kind of obscure disease).  What is the  huge wall that surrounds LA?  Is it a sea-wall?  If so, how do the characters end up outside the sea-wall for the final duel?  The list of plot uncertainties or flat-out inconsistencies can be multiplied indefinitely -- this is not necessarily a problem in a classic film noir; no one can understand the plot anyway, but when the audience gets the sense that the plot is completely arbitrary and that the rules can be waived at any time for any reason, a sort of radical disappointment arises and we become disengaged from the film's narrative at, even, the most basic level.  I have no doubt that the millions of dollars spent on 2049 probably insure answers, albeit unsatisfactory ones, to most of the questions that I have posed -- and, indeed, the answers are probably lurking in plain sight in some respects, but I don't think an ordinary viewer will be able to decipher much of what is happening in this film.  We can see stuff occurring and it is often brilliantly staged and indelibly imagined, but its all sound and fury and when you think back over the plot, big chunks of it don't make any sense.  Furthermore, the film cheats:  it doesn't just use indirection, which is, I think, acceptable -- the movie employs outright deceit.  The most noteworthy example is a sequence in which the hero finds a wooden horse hidden in a furnace in a vast junkyard.  This discovery warrants in the hero, Replicant K (played by the totally inexpressive Ryan Gosling). the conclusion that he is himself the quest of his search -- it's the central scene in the Oedipus Rex plot:  the detective finds himself and his own unremembered past at the center of the labyrinth.  The sequence is impressively mounted and shot very, very lugubriously -- everything occurs as if in slow-motion.  Furthermore, there is thunderously portentous music on the soundtrack to underline this sequence.  This is the central revelation in the film, the moment when the hero is revealed to be himself the holy grail for which he is searching.  But an hour later -- the film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long -- we learn that the music, the portentous staging, the reverent stillness and grandiose torpor of the scene was all a lie.  The hero is not the holy figure for which he is searching.  What is deceitful about this sequence it that it is not merely the hero who is deluded.  Rather the film uses all of its resources -- spectacular photography, Rembrandt-lighting, and a thunderous and operatic musical score to impress upon us something that is untrue.  It's okay to show a  hero who is deluded; it's similarly okay to create an ambiguity about what a scene means; but it feels like a betrayal for the movie to deploy every one of its vast resources to unambiguously make a point that is later, rather arbitrarily, withdrawn -- after this spectacular scene, a sequence that is stretched out almost beyond endurance, the film says:  "Oh, never mind."

In some respects, 2049 resembles Children of Men, a similarly dystopian film with a similarly gynecological plot.  K goes to a maggot farm ("protein") to retire -- this means kill -- a replicant.  Unlike Harrison Ford in the first film, the terminally morose K knows full well that he is replicant (that is, a robot although cloaked in flesh and blood).  Ryan Gosling can't act and doesn't try to act.  He looks like a very sad and confused chimpanzee, a hurt look of puzzled bewilderment always on his face.  The maggot-farmer replicant is killed after a suitably violent hand-to-hand fight -- the film is full of brutal mano y mano battles.  The maggot-farmer says a few enigmatic things before and while dying and this leads K to discover that a skeleton has been buried under a tree on the farm.  The skeleton is a female replicant who has died in child-birth.  Since replicants are grown in test-tubes and born fully adult, this is a shocking development and suggests that the robots, who are stronger, more agile, smarter, and better-looking than their human counterparts may not be long content with their role as slaves.  Replicants who can reproduce will rebel and take over the world -- although the planet seems so badly damaged it's probably not worth the fuss.  K goes off in search of the replicant who was "born" as opposed to cultured and this leads to the intricate chain of events that comprises the film's narration.  Central to the plot is a key point that was also integral to the first film -- replicants have false memories implanting in them so that they believe that they have had a childhood and adolescence.  This is supposed to stabilize their psyches.  The film is full of all sorts of baroque flourishes but most of them are merely decorative -- this is epitomized by the opening sequence.  In the brutal fight between K and the maggot-farmer, there is a big pot sitting on the stove, steam pouring out of its sides, and bright blue gas flames heating whatever is within that pot.  The pot is a crucial ornamental element in this scene but no one is dowsed with boiling water and we never find out what is being heated -- K looks under the lid but the camera doesn't show us what he sees.  (Presumably the maggot farmer is heating up some plump grubs for a noon repast, but the grubs look so fat and delectable that they seem to be ready-to-eat live -- I know that any Mexican peasant worth his salt would simply toss the wriggling larvae in his mouth and enjoy the treat.)  The way the boiling pot is shown in this first episode alerts the viewer that most of the ornamental or decorative elements of the story will be inconsequential from a narrative point of view -- and this is a correct foreshadowing of how the film will operate.

Of course, what I characterize as the ornamental elements of the plot are non pareil.  The bad guys hold court in a travertine skyscraper that seems to be combination of Louis Kahn's Salk institute and a pharaoh's tomb -- the place is lit by rippling light as if reflected off water; it's totally impractical and gives you a headache to watch but is a spectacular effect.  The cityscapes, although they are only a few notches above what you can see in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (the ultimate source for all films about a dystopian future -- and is there any other kind?), are jaw-dropping.  Harrison Ford is hanging out in the ruins of Las Vegas -- these sets are also stunning.  In one scene, Ford and Gosling have a completely pointless gun battle -- five minutes later they are drinking whiskey together like old friends.  The gun battle gives Villeneuve and his engineers a chance to configure a variation of the shoot-out in the house of mirrors in Orson Welles' Lady from Shanghai.  Here the combatants shoot at one another while holograms of show-girls and musicians -- chief among them Elvis (although Liberace is there too) -- cavort on the stage where the two men are fighting.  It's fantastic and completely meaningless -- there's no need for the two men to fight; they turn out to be on the same side.  At one point, a naked giantess -- she's also a hologram -- asks K if he is "okay"; we know the poor guy has about four holes in his replicant guts that you could push your fist through and his face is caked with blood, one ear half torn off.  "No," you want to say, "he is not okay."  Several memorable scenes include snowfall -- although the CGI operators don't get this right:  falling snow accumulates, of course, on your hair and beard, although it melts on your skin.  This falling snow is a CGI flurry that doesn't really accumulate anywhere at all.  The hero's girlfriend is his sentient house -- I'm not kidding -- and, in one scene, K hires a prostitute to inhabit the hologram of the sentient house so that he can make love to her.  This is also a spectacular scene with the real girl morphing unpredictably into the hologram of the house computer -- caresses involve multiple mouths and four arms.  It's an awesome spectacle in its own way, although we don't really know what's happening. The entire film is immensely beautiful although in a desolate sort of way. 

Unfortunately, the original movie is superior in all respects.  In one scene clipped from the 1982 film, Sean Young playing Rachel as the ultimate noir dame appears out of glistening, metallic darkness -- it's an indelible erotic image, like Rita Hayworth wiggling out of her gloves in Gilda and its better than just about all the other imagery in the new film.  The wonderful and bizarre references to William Blake don't make it into the new film; there's nothing that comes close to matching Rutger Hauer's aria on "tears in the rain", certainly one of the most memorable speeches in film history.  Furthermore, the replicants in the 1982 movie were ineffably strange -- particularly "Priss", the somersaulting, childish "pleasure model" played by Daryl Hannah.  (Indeed, an important aspect of the original film was the strange family formed by the replicants and their touching concern for one another). The original film was far more brusque and elliptical, requiring the audience to be active in piecing together the plot.  2049 is overly explicit and tedious.  The imagery is so beautiful that the story continuously bows and curtsies to it -- if someone is required to cross a street, Villeneuve doesn't use any sort of editing for curtail the shot; instead, we see the person cross the street in real time -- presumably so that we can enjoy the spectacular characteristics of the shot.  At one stage, a character tells K to sit down.  We get a reverse shot of K sitting down, a totemic view that is like an emperor position himself on a throne, slow, deliberate, an action accorded a sacramental dignity like a benediction even though it's just a guy sitting down -- throughout the movie there is a fatal grandiosity. 

You should see the movie because of its pictorial beauty.  Other critics tell you to see the movie on the largest screen possible.  Following this dictum, I saw the film at the Wehrenberg Theater in Rochester in an IMAX format.  The screen was huge and the pictures were stunning but the soundtrack was so grotesquely loud that it spoiled the whole experience.  During the fist fights, punches sounded like howitzers fired and the music was like an avalanche.  When someone opened a door, or worse shut it, the racket was deafening.   I winced every time K got out of his car-shaped aerial cruiser -- I knew he was going to slam shut the door and expected a sound like a gun fired close to my ear.