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Thread about Blade Runner 2049, and why I think it might be my favourite film of all time. I am no great cinephile or critic, so forgive me if these observations are a bit simplistic:
Blade Runner is fundamentally a film about self-identity. It's sequel, Blade Runner 2049, on the other hand is a film about our relationships with others.
Gosling plays K, a replicant blade runner (cop who hunts replicants), who is totally alienated from the world
Gosling plays K, a replicant blade runner (cop who hunts replicants), who is totally alienated from the world
Why shouldn't he be? After all he is more or less a slave. But even worse than this, all of his relationships are fake. He obeys his boss because he is bred for obedience, his neighbours hate him, and his only meaningful relationship is with a hologram, Joi
Blade Runner 2049's LA is more advanced than the original's. In it, Gosling's character, K, can have anything he wants, except real connection with other people. Joi is so lifelike that we forget that she's just a hologram, sold to satisfy K's need for company
But, just as we see the ongoing environmental degradation of the world, and some of its history, BR2049 shows us that this was not a binary process: our alienation from each other, and dependence on commercial or technological relationships is an ongoing process
In BR2049's Las Vegas, the nightclub performers have been replaced by holograms of the Greats: Elvis and Frank Sinatra. This is just another step on the road: Once you sang songs with friends, then singers started selling records, then it's holograms...
One of the most emotional scenes, for me, is when K watches a hologram of Frank Sinatra singing "One for My Baby".
In the song, Sinatra sings as a sad young man, who tells the bartender about his misery after a breakup.
In the song, Sinatra sings as a sad young man, who tells the bartender about his misery after a breakup.
The tragedy of the song is that Sinatra has no one else to speak to about his melancholy but the bartender, who is paid to listen. K's position is worse: he can't even find a real human to listen to his woes
K is further removed from authentic connection because he cannot see the great singer live, he can only view the hologram.
But this is similar to the earlier scene, where K plays Sinatra on the sound system in his apartment. Is the viewer that different from K?
But this is similar to the earlier scene, where K plays Sinatra on the sound system in his apartment. Is the viewer that different from K?
The film's climax comes when Joi "dies" and K encounters an advert for her. The face of his love looks back at him, set to the default settings. Joi's slogan says it all: "Everything you want to hear". Nothing she says to K is real, she never really loved him
Further theme is K's discovery that he is special (1st replicant to be born, a miracle!). Joi gives K a name: Joe. But K later discovers he's just another replicant. And, staring at the advert, he realises even his name was just the default setting in the hologram's programming
In the end, K goes into the finale to fight for something bigger than himself, and to reunite Deckard with someone who IS real.
As he lies in the snow, K finally comes to terms with what @0x49fa98 calls "the colossal and abyssal apathy of the universe towards [men]."
![In the end, K goes into the finale to fight for something bigger than himself, and to reunite Deckard with someone who IS real.As he lies in the snow, K finally comes to terms with what @0x49fa98 calls "the colossal and abyssal apathy of the universe towards [men]."](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eqbk227XMAIv2rC.jpg "In the end, K goes into the finale to fight for something bigger than himself, and to reunite Deckard with someone who IS real.As he lies in the snow, K finally comes to terms with what @0x49fa98 calls \"the colossal and abyssal apathy of the universe towards [men].\"")
As he lies in the snow, K finally comes to terms with what @0x49fa98 calls "the colossal and abyssal apathy of the universe towards [men]."
In short, this is an epic film about a vast, indifferent world, and one man's inability to find authentic connection, love or meaning within it. Despite the futuristic setting and the replicant protagonist, this is a film about the modern world https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1057382189845766144?s=20
Additional note: The film is absolutely beautiful, just Google "Blade Runner 2049 beautiful shots", but this shot, of Madam's death, stood out for me. It's reminiscent of Nighthawks, that famous painting of the cold, lonely American night life.
