Smart, somber sci-fi feels a little too real
‘Blade Runner 2049’ makes us wonder just a bit if replicants, humans aren’t all that different
In “Blade Runner 2049,” there’s a sequence inside an old casino, where holographs of long-dead performers can be seen with the press of a button. There’s Elvis singing in his white jumpsuit. There’s a brief flash of Marilyn and another of Liberace. There’s a song by Sinatra. And seeing these people, a forlorn feeling sets in. These are emblems of a simpler time, when everyone understood what it meant to be human. There’s no such understanding in the world of 2049. In this sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, it’s impossible to tell one kind of mechanical human
being — that is, “replicant” — from another kind, and equally impossible to tell a replicant from a human being. And this brings up all kinds of existential questions that make “Frankenstein” seem like a cheery fairy tale: Is there really much of a difference, after all? Maybe replicants are like humans and have a soul. Or maybe humans are like replicants, and everything’s mechanistic, and the whole notion of the soul is just fantasy.
The task of science fiction is often to threaten us with the prospect of essential human values not prevailing into the future — and then, sometimes, to assure us that they will. “Blade Runner 2049” offers no such assurance. It takes modern-day anxieties and blows them out, presenting a world in which life is less than cheap. It’s not even life.
Ryan Gosling, with that look he has, is ideally cast here as K, a replicant LAPD officer whose job is to track down and kill older-model replicants. What’s the look? Complete self-confidence and absolute confusion, the eyes of someone who knows exactly what to do and yet has no idea what any of it means. K’s confusion runs even deeper when he comes across evidence suggesting that a miracle took place some years back: A human woman and a replicant man apparently had children together, something that was supposed to be impossible.
This discovery is the propelling incident of the movie. For K’s boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), it represents a threat to the principalities of creation and to the structures of civil society. But for Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), the diabolical creator of replicants, and to his evil assistant, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), it represents an opportunity. If replicants can reproduce on their own, they can populate distant planets and completely supplant humanity.
In this way, K finds himself at the center of the conflict. He is assigned to find and kill the hybrid replicant/human offspring, but everybody is tracking him, trying to help or interfere, and meanwhile he is coping with his own doubts. That’s a modest amount of story, but it turns out to be enough to embroider a series of scenes that play like somber ruminations on the nature of existence and the future of life on Earth. Yes, this is a movie that takes itself very seriously, but it saves itself by taking its subject even more seriously.
Eventually, Harrison Ford shows up as Deckard, the hero of the 1982 movie, and it’s always good to see him, even if he never looks happy to see anybody. Given the state of the world (not just 2049’s, but ours), Ford’s incurable grumpiness seems like a refreshing and healthy alternative to despair. The entrance of Ford signals the coming of some genuine action sequences, but for the most part, “Blade Runner 2049” is quiet, thoughtful science fiction, nothing like a summer blockbuster, but more like “Arrival,” from the same director, Denis Villeneuve.
Villeneuve keeps the emphasis on the performances. He casts fairly unknown actors and gives them a chance to make strong impressions, sometimes in a single scene. The Swiss actress Carla Juri has only one long scene (and a bit of another), as a sheltered scientist who specializes in the creation and implantation of false, happy memories, but she remains vivid throughout, as lasting as one of the scientist’s fake-happy creations.
“Blade Runner 2049” is long and slow. It’s never boring, but it’s a little too mired in one sustained note of sadness to break out as a great experience or to stand out as a great movie. Still, there are some remarkable scenes: A large plastic bag breaks, and a brand new replicant, a fully grown woman, drops onto a platform, dripping with slime, in what looks like a gross parody of human birth. And we think, like Peggy Lee, is that all there is? Is that all there is to being born and being alive?
“Blade Runner 2049” leaves us with such thoughts, the kind that Mary Shelley was writing about two centuries ago. The difference here is that with artificial intelligence breathing down our collective neck, it’s beginning to feel personal.