Dull Blade
According to “director” Denis Villeneuve, in the year 2049 women will still be objectified as nubile, pliant toys for men. And men will still wonder why life has no meaning. An old trope—AIs searching for their own identity and searching for a way to become more human than human—is sold out by this lukewarm attempt. Let’s be clear, there are only a few great myths. Stories that can be told over and over again, as long as fresh meaning, insight, or at least enjoyment is injected into them. The minute a corporate committee in search of ticket sales gets a hold of a great narrative, it can be killed before it ever comes to life. Warning: if you loved the original Blade Runner, do not destroy the power of its memory by seeing this castrato of a sequel.
My response to the current dystopic sci-fi flick Blade Runner 2049—which poses as a “sequel” without advancing much beyond the director’s ego—is: “what were they thinking?” Other than the astonishing landscapes of ruined industrial cities and a few tricks of the holographic trade, BR 2049 offers little in the way of breathtaking imagery and nothing in the way of characters, narrative, or freshness. How could so much advance hype add up to so little payoff I wondered as I contemplated walking out after two hours—with another 45 minutes still to go!
Greatly to my shame, I actually stayed and watched the interminable conclusion play out like some pathetic outtake of the original Star Trek series. To understand the full extent of my indignation, let me back up and attempt to sketch out what director Villeneuve (winner of this season’s Darren Aronofsky Narcissism Award) had set out for us.
The film opens as our protagonist—a replicant (android) hunter for the LAPD named K (Ryan Gosling)—sets out to hunt down a long-lost android working a grub farm in the California of the future. Oh, in 2049 there are a new breed of replicants with indefinite lifespans, i.e. time on their hands to ponder their quiet desperation. K is one of them.
K’s airborne vehicle soars over a stunning vista of wall-to-wall industrial farms as far as the eye can see. Pale grey under a dark grey sky. He finds his prey, but he also finds the beginning of a mystery—a monumental lifeless tree, beneath which is buried a box containing skeletal remains. In search of the identity attached to those bones, K is shown through the harrowingly sterile halls of the LAPD archives by a vicious surveillance honcho played by Sylvia Hoeks. Uh-oh. K has stumbled on a mystery that the elites do NOT want known, and Hoeks’ character plants several watchers on his tail. K’s quest points to a meeting with the former blade runner, now missing for 30 years: Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford).
Meanwhile, his own secret investigation lead K to a brilliant scientist with unusual powers of memory, who unlocks a mystery involving a carved toy horse. (No, it doesn’t make any more sense even if you had seen the film.) Replicants, as all students of the original Ridley Scott masterpiece know, are never sure whether their “memories” are their own, or whether they’ve simply been implanted to help give them a reassuring sense of identity. [Great. An overly-long film about immortal androids with identity issues. That was old three generations ago when Carel Capek coined the word “robot” in his drama RUR.]
While this need to find out more about the identity of the skeletal remains pushes him into forbidden corridors, K begins to form something like a genuine attachment for his holographic girlfriend (played with cloying compassion and a gooey barbie doll smile by Ana der Armas). The third woman in his life is the always watchable Robin Wright, as a very badass LAPD boss with her own authority issues. Wright’s presence, swearing and drinking as tough as any noir cop, gives energy to every minute she’s on screen. She has a soft spot for K, allowing him time and access to areas he shouldn’t be probing, all of which is watched carefully by the diabolical, if robotic Hoeks character.
Now at this point, oh say halfway through the film, a better director (armed with MUCH better screenwriters) would have set up some soul-nudging questions. Are all of these people androids? If so, do they know they are? Even if they no longer have the familiar 4 year life spans we recall from the earlier film, long life doesn’t guarantee a sense of humanity. And then there’s the potentially juicy cliché of whether some long-lost android actually did give birth—another existential nugget upon which we might have been invited to chew. I would rather have been offered a gravel crostini. More flavor and emotional traction.
See that’s the deal: Blade Runner 2049 fails on almost every front. There are no stunning techno innovations (just incessant and repetitive CGI overload) nor is there a plot filled with engaging characters (merely robotic performances by allegedly human actors). There is only the weakly-motivated hunt for Rick Deckard which doesn’t even get underway until the beginning of the film’s third hour.
Like many directors without their own story to tell (Ridley Scott had already made his film), Villeneuve began to grow restless after he had recycled all of the silicone bodies, sharp objects, atmospheric lighting, and visual quotes from the original film. He then did what any intellectually bankrupt director does—he began aggressively borrowing from other cultural sources. “Neo, you’re the One,” can practically be overheard in several Big Moments, e.g. where for no reason at all we find Jared Leto babbling Metaphysics 101 platitudes as a blind apocalyptic guru. He also likes to disembowel naked women, but that’s another story.
But wait! We enter an industrial post-nuclear wasteland which is now an orphanage where children retrofit computer parts for a Fagin in fingerless mittens and battered tweed coat. Ed Burtynsky meets Charles Dickens. Now it’s the story of Christ’s nativity, now the digital nymphet turns out to be the squeeze with a heart of gold. Suddenly it’s a holographic carnival of Vegas acts inside the Overlook Hotel in the Shining.
By the time the grizzled-but-ripped Harrison Ford does show up, we are out of popcorn and out of patience.
Ryan Gosling might be a likeable enough lad when tucked inside a small, independent film playing opposite a strong woman who can act, but left all alone—for hours!—in Blade Runner 2049, Gosling resorts to his one facial expression, kicks, punches, and shoots a lot of people, and does plenty of bleeding himself. Unfortunately we just don’t care very much.
Villeneuve badly needed an editor. The film might have been able to stretch to two hours (with a better script), but it kept on going, with self-indulgent glamour shots slowing down to a crawl simply to fill up the space. Last Year at Marienbad resembles a high speed YouTube promo by comparison. Could this lethargy be due to the committee in charge consulting too many focus groups? Cinematic paralysis sets in during the film’s final half hour.
Full disclosure: My criticisms are partly the laments of someone who loved and studied the original Blade Runner. But even without that background, any filmgoer would have to ask: what’s the point?
There is another way to look at this film, and that’s across the current ugliness of the mainstream Hollywood film industry itself. In this post-Harvey Weinstein era, it’s hard to stomach the blatantly coarse, cheap, and exploitive characterizations of women. Women, albeit android ones, are reduced to their bodily facades. Shots of gratuitous nudity amount to softcore without a cause. No emotional connection, simply cohabitation. Equally repellant is the amount of brutal violence—by both male and female characters—without any plot justification. How many times do we need to watch people being kicked in the face again and again? [Was this film being aimed at the “ideal” 15-year-old male audience? If so, It was aiming at an audience that wasn’t there.]
Finally—and this is the film’s fatal weakness in a nutshell—Blade Runner 2049 gives credibility to an old truism in film and television: you can tell how empty of plot, acting, or invention a film is by how punishingly loud the soundtrack. In Villeneuve’s film, wildly-amplified electronic soundscapes attempt to push us toward some sort of auditory coitus. An onslaught of high-key heavy metal sound design, with a few actors thrown in. Next week, when the film drops into to the web streaming market, watch it in your own home: with the sound off. You’ll be asleep in no time.
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With Ryan Gosling, Sylvia Hoeks, Ana de Armas, and Harrison Ford. Written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. 163 minutes.
Yes, I would like two scoops of that! Somehow the brilliant pink scoop of gelato echoed the architecture of the northern Italian city. It tasted Italian, and so does the memory of that afternoon that returns every time I encounter sweet-tart amarena gelato. Italian foods are about enjoyment of the moment— robust, supple, happy flavors without trickiness and frills. For that, there is French cuisine!
Assuming that you have either seen this, or don’t plan to stream/rent later on, I will reveal the way the film’s set-up.
A knock at the door brings two strangers into their lives (sounds like a modernist theater piece)—a chain-smoking physician with a fatal disease (Ed Harris) and his sultry, hard-drinking wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). These two inject humor and horror in equal proportions into the dull lives of our Couple. Ack! Things begin going wrong, very wrong. The couple’s sons show up, have a violent fight, and one is killed by the other. (I think you can see where this is going.).
Fans of the Poet start showing up — immediately! Somehow they have heard of his new poem. They need to bask in his genius. And he, like any artist worth his ego, needs to be adored. The Wife, now heavily pregnant, is pretty much shoved aside as his followers grow in numbers. Soon they fill the house, all wanting an autograph, and then much more. (More sardonic comedy than serious “message” if you can stomach the horrifying images.)
So it’s an environmental cautionary tale! Okay, another take might be, that Aronofsky is sending up the whole idea of artistic genius, noting that Art is simply a huge case of narcissism, and the cult of the Artist is ultimately a destructive hobby. (This is NOT a new theory, btw.)
Also, there was something else new—the curtain remained up for a full 20 minutes during the first intermission so that audience could watch some of the fascinating work of moving, altering, and rearranging the key elements of the set. As stage crew—there are 57 working on this production—began altering the stage elements, two production directors explained some of the behind-the-scenes operations to the audience, most of whom stayed to watch. For some of us, this breaks the spell, but for others—who enjoy this sort of backstage revelation seen in the Metropolitan Opera HD simulcasts—it provided an invitation to learn more, and want to see more of live opera.
While the gorgeous Martina Serafin looked every inch an imperious princess—imagined by Puccini as an imperial icon of ice and fire—she, much as Nina Stemme in last year’s Met production—had difficulty, especially in the impossibly high and relentess second act aria— her voice struggling with a distracting vibrato as she attempted to maintain the difficult passages. While she regained her vocal beauty in the final scenes (except when she utterly missed the final highest pitches), she seemed to lack the clarity and unforced beauty of soprano Toni Marie Palmertree, who as the luckless Liu was given much the better music to sing. The irony, for me, was that I had come to this particular performance of Turandot specifically to hear Serafin, whom I’d heard as a fabulous Tosca (opposite no less than Jonas Kaufmann) in Vienna in May.
On the adjacent wall, Viola’s larger-than-lifesize figures strain against time and space in hyper slow motion, re-imagining the meeting (the piece is called The Greeting) among Mary, Elizabeth, and a third woman. Gracefully surging skirts, arms reaching out, hands about to clasp, faces registering surprise, delight, and puzzlement, Viola’s work—which takes time to unfold— forces us deep into and beneath the minds of his subjects.
The slowed-down movements and gestures cast digital congianti onto the image painted by Bronzino’s teacher in the early 16th century. Movement inflects stillness with layers of temporal depth. Absolutely stunning. Viola’s forensic probing of an emotion-drenched moment retrieves fresh sensations we can almost taste.
The Pontormo is triumphant, its colors brilliant as if freshly painted. A commanding palette of draped robes challenges the crimson dress worn Viola’s Mary, the magenta shawl of Elizabeth.The two works now share a secret, at once timeless and yet produced across and through time; they murmur of the same epic event. They are in league with each other. Sono insieme.
So it was with great anticipation that I took a break from operas in Vienna last month, hopped a plane across the alps, and headed for the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Curated with insight and largesse by Viola’s longtime collaborator and wife Kira Perov, with Arturo Galansino, the retrospective—Electronic Renaissance—honors the years Viola spent as a student and pioneer videographer in Florence. Indeed, the city opened its doors to Viola’s work, displaying pieces in multiiple sites from the Museo del Duomo to the entire Palazzo Strozzi.
Like many of you, I had seen several of Viola’s pieces years ago at The Getty, and was familiar with his technique of hyper attenuated movement. The smallest blink of an eye, or grasp of a hand—actually happening in seconds—is stretched and lengthened into many minutes. The gestures seems to develop and bloom as we watch. Time itself unfolds through Viola’s unblinking camera, and an unseen symbolic power is revealed.
The Emergence, based upon an enigmatic and solumn 15th century work by Masolino is the exhibition’s signature work, and one in which Viola documents the naked Christ figure, emerging (as in a resurrection) and also ascending from a watery death, tenderly wrapped by two women (his mother Mary and the Magdalen, as the new testament tells it).
Displaying over a period of 15 minutes, the work uses its fascinating beauty (we are always wondering how it was made, noticing the arduousness of the actors’ movements) to enunciate a mysterious truth. We are watching a familiar moment, a primal moment we know in our bodies. Yet that moment has no name. It is deeper than naming. Viola knows that. The piece is nothing short of profound, kept watch over by the original Masolino alterpiece.
Dinner of pappardelle and wild boar ragu, chased with Chianti Classico. Next morning I saw more Viola pieces at the Museo del Opera del Duomo, and was ensnared in the tragic mirroring of Donatello‘s carved wood Magdalen—a work of numbing sorrow with Viola’s Acceptance—a lifesize video of a wailing nude woman inundated with torrents of water. The carved wooden animal hides covering the Magdalen were exactly echoed by the roiling flood, a stream of slow-motion tears. Stunned, I headed back for a second viewing of the Palazzo Strozzi show. Ten dollars was never better spent.
And here I walked into my own epiphany. I moved from darkened room to darkened room on Viola’s shamanic journey. The exhibition had cast a hypnotic spell, into which I, the seeker, descended deeper and deeper until I came to the room with a piece I had known about for many years—Catherine’s Room. Five panels showing the stages of a life, the time of life (youth, middle-age, etc.) symbolized by the view of a tree outside Catherin’e window. In her youth, the tree is beginning to bloom. As she grows into maturity, the tree is seen awash with green leaves, the sun high in the sky. As she grows older, the sky outside grows darker, the tree’s leaves fall. In the final panel, we watch as she makes her bed and lies down in it pulling up the covers. The window is dark, night has fallen.
Each panel is also a video piece, so we can watch each image unfold in slow-motion time. And we can take it all in at once, embrace the entire polyptych as a whole.