Grasping the blade
Denis Villeneuve says his entire career has been leading to this film — but please, no spoilers
Ads for the new sci-fi blockbuster Blade Runner 2049 identify the film as coming “from French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve.”
No big deal, really, although it’s a curious thing. Hollywood usually doesn’t consider the nationality of Canadian filmmakers to be a selling point, much less go a step further by pointing out a francophone one.
Villeneuve says he’s puzzled, too, but he’s taking it as a compliment and an affectionate joke. The quiet Quebecer has impressed Hollywood with a stretch of Oscar-nominated films, from dramatic mystery Incendies in 2010, to last year’s UFO thriller Arrival.
The streak seems likely to continue with his longawaited sequel to Ridley Scott’s classic dystopian thriller Blade Runner, arriving in theatres Friday. Villeneuve has the strength of cinematic vision that is often associated with haughty European auteurs, not humble Canuck moviemakers.
The Montreal director, who turned 50 this week, has also charmed the glitterati with his strong Québécois accent and boyish enthusiasm.
Blade Runner star Harrison Ford recently did a spoton impersonation of Villeneuve during an online interview. He imitated the way the intensely affable Quebecer tells actors, “I love it; I deeply, deeply love it!” when he gets a take he’s satisfied with.
“My accent is something that brings a lot of smiles on faces on sets and my French background is something that brings a lot of warm jokes,” Villeneuve says from Montreal.
“So I’m used to that, and I also think there’s definitely (thoughts of ) a European sensibility. By that I mean I was raised with (books by) European authors, with European references. That’s why if a studio were to offer me a Marvel hero comic-book adaptation, I don’t have the culture to bring that to the screen, because my references are from Europe and European authors.”
Whatever they call him, there’s no doubt that Villeneuve is Hollywood’s most in-demand Canadian filmmaker of the moment. His next project is another sci-fi blockbuster, a big-budget reboot of author Frank Herbert’s epic Dune, and last month the trades were ablaze with news that Villeneuve will also tackle a new version of Cleopatra.
“All the projects I’m involved with are long-term,” Villeneuve says, reluctant to get into specifics. “I need to take a break. I’ve made five movies in six years. I have no distance with the work I did; I was just always in the present time.”
What he really wants to talk about is Blade Runner 2049. It’s a true passion project for a property, originally adapted from author Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, that he’s been fascinated with since he saw Blade Runner as a teenager in his hometown of Trois-Rivières, Que. at a time when he was contemplating a life as a scientist.
The original 1982 Blade Runner is set in the Los Angeles of 2019, amid constant rain caused by climate disruption and perpetual fear that bioengineered “replicants,” created as off-world slave workers, would invade Earth and attack humans. Ford, movie lovers will recall, plays LAPD “blade runner” Rick Deckard, tasked with hunting down and violently “retiring” rogue replicants. The new film is set 30 years later, with Canada’s Ryan Gosling playing a new blade runner faced with an even greater replicant problem — as well as holographic creations that are also amazingly lifelike.
Villeneuve feels as though his entire career has been leading up to making Blade Runner 2049, right back to his existential romance August 32nd on Earth, his 1998 feature debut. His films have often turned on revelations of character and the uncovering of profound mysteries, hence his affinity for Blade Runner 2049, where the truth is bone deep.
“It has a lot of layers, a lot of poetry, a lot of strong ideas, a lot of strong references that I loved,” he says. “It’s always moving for me to receive screenplays, and I read a lot of them . . . Sometimes there’s one of them that comes out of nowhere and that talks to me in a very intimate way. Blade Runner 2049 was one of them. When I read the screenplay, I said, ‘OK, that’s very strange, I feel home.’
“It’s the movie that is in continuity with what I’ve done before, in continuity with my obsessions. It was written by someone else but it feels so close to me, and that’s why I felt that strangely I could direct this movie.”
The challenge of making a Blade Runner sequel certainly daunted him at first, as it had other directors, Ridley Scott among them. The film had a rough start upon its release — critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel famously panned it — but it has since acquired cult status as a sci-fi landmark, endlessly imitated in pop culture, in part because of Scott’s repeated tweaks. Scott got to make his definitive version of the film just 10 years ago, with the 2007 release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut, making it one of those movies that ardent fans — and Ford — have previously considered untouchable.
Villeneuve wanted to know where the story went from its intriguing finale in 1982. He had the blessing of Scott (who signed on as a producer) to hunt for it, in a screenplay by returning screenwriter Hampton Fancher and Logan’s Michael Green that explores the explosive aftermath of the original tale.
“It’s a complex story that reminds me strangely of the book that Philip K. Dick wrote,” Villeneuve says. “The inner paranoia was of course something, inner paranoia inspired by the first Blade Runner, but it’s also close to the spirit of the Philip K. Dick book. I think the book was more a reference for me than Ridley because Ridley didn’t like the book. He never finished it.”
The other attraction of the story was the big emphasis it put on dreams, which in the world of Blade Runner can be either real or manufactured, often without the dreamer being able to tell an authentic one from a fake. Villeneuve’s stories have often unfolded like dreams — or nightmares.
“Unfortunately, it must say dark things about me!” he says with a hearty laugh, adding that “I think, when you make a movie, you explore your own shadow and try to make something good out of it and try to make some stories that are universal and move other people — but I’m not self-analyzing myself!” Villeneuve seems uncommonly protective of his new film, going so far as to have a statement from him read to critics prior to preview screenings, asking them to “preserve the experience for the audience” by not revealing major plot points. After the screening, a longer note was read out listing the plot points that could be considered spoilers.
“I think that it’s great for an audi- ence to experience the movie as (critics) did, which is that you have no preconceived idea. I think that for me, myself as a cinephile, I love to receive a movie being almost a virgin, knowing as little as possible. There’s a hunger among bloggers right now to be the first one to spoil everything, and that’s sad a little bit because it diminishes the pleasure of the audience.” He’s also very concerned about how journalists describe his decision, very late in the process, to replace the score by his favourite composer Jóhann Jóhannsson with one by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer more in keeping with the eerie electronic music of the original Blade Runner, scored by Vangelis.
“I’m a big fan of Jóhann Jóhannsson, and he’s a very strong composer, but I felt at one point, and it came from the movie, that I needed a score that would be closer to Vangelis, a sound design that was coming closer to the first movie . . . (Wallfisch and Zimmer) were totally willing to go in that direction.”
Villeneuve did not change his mind about working again with cinematographer Roger Deakins, who previously shot Sicario and Prisoners for him. Deakins’ work in Blade Runner 2049 is sure to earn him yet another Oscar nomination. Villeneuve says he deeply, deeply loves the orange hue that Deakins brought to the scenes of Ryan Gosling visiting a ruined Las Vegas, which is being swallowed up by the encroaching desert.
“I had an image in my mind, I wanted something and Roger came with very pure, old-fashioned strong ideas to do this all on camera and for me it was mind-blowing. It was my favourite set of all time, with never-ending orange mist.”
Orange has never previously been associated with Blade Runner; neither had Denis Villeneuve. But as the holographic Elvis croons in Blade Runner 2049: “Some things were meant to be.” Peter Howell is the Star’s movie critic. His column usually runs Fridays.