BLADE RUNNER 2049
The first Blade Runner distinguished itself as one
of the most brilliantly filmed science fiction movies, with stunning sets that
in effect expressed both the advanced technology and the dark hopelessness of
its world, our world, in the near future.
Its simple plot involves the search of an ex-cop known as a Blade Runner,
for four advanced model androids, known as replicants, who escape from their
corporate controllers and seek to extend their limited lifespan, what might be
called a negative version of the manufacturer’s guarantee. In the process of the pursuit and after a
climactic battle with the most gifted of the replicants, it becomes apparent that
the cop, Deckard (Harrison Ford), is himself a replicant facing the same fate
as his quarry.
Updating the
situation to 2049, the new movie once again confronts the familiar situation of
the artificially created human in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future. This time the blade runner is “K” (presumably
an allusion to Kafka), played by a deadpan Ryan Gosling. He works for an irascible police lieutenant
(Robin Wright), apparently tracking down recalcitrant replicants, I guess those
who, like the rest of us, don’t really want to die. The film’s plot moves in a most disjunctive
fashion, introduces characters without much explanation or context, throws in a
quantity of mystical mumbo-jumbo, with a young girl called a Memory Child, some
sort of blind prophet, and a vengeful dominatrix called Luv (go figure). The booming, dissonant soundtrack frequently
overwhelms the dialogue, which also contributes to the general confusion.
Unlike his predecessor Deckard, who
occupied a dark apartment in the storied Bradbury Building, K lives in an
antiseptic domicile with a holographic girlfriend (giant holographs of nude
women populate the rainy city); she makes his drinks and dinner, converses with
him, and in one sequence melds with a “real” woman so they can all have sex, an
act combining the two women in what must be a most satisfying experience. Harrison Ford, who now regularly reappears in
sequels and remakes of his earlier work, returns as a now aged Deckard,
dwelling in the dusty ghost town of Las Vegas.
The original blade runner, who with Sean Young had lit out for the
territory like Huck Finn, now resides in a deserted casino, amply supplied with
booze, accompanied by an alcoholic dog, and entertained with old Sinatra songs. Like several other people in the film, he
promptly beats the hell out of K, but then joins him in something like a
rebellion against the oppressing power structure and the vengeful Luv.
The tacit
premise of both the original and the sequel involves the traditional dilemma of
the artificially created being, from Pinocchio through Frankenstein’s monster
and the robots and androids of so many science fiction movies. They all simply yearn to be human and they
all yearn to possess a soul. In the
original Blade Runner, after the
climactic battle with Ford, Rutger Hauer’s character utters a sad, compelling
coda of farewell, ending with “time to die,” and his soul in the form of a
dove, flies away. Like him, the
replicants of the new movie desire not only a life beyond their artificially
allotted time, but emotions and memories and freedom, their own humanity. Insofar as I understand it, Blade Runner 2049 suggests that some
solution to that oddly human wish exists in the future, in what we know as a
sequel.
