Denis Villeneuve
Blade Runner 2049

[contains spoilers]

Denis Villeneuve with Blade Runner 2049 signs his first masterpiece, not without small script imperfections, but negligible in the face of the film's imposing content. The choice to want to engage with the 1982 masterpiece openly declaring the intention not to distance itself thematically and visually from the mother work, since the first rumors about the project, was met with great excitement, but also with much suspicion by many fans and non-fans alike.
The trust was mainly based on the names linked to the film in production, Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins, holders of great technique and cinematic knowledge and capable of great narrative and visual introspection. The film exceeded all expectations, acclaimed at the first screenings by many critics, immediately defined as a worthy successor to the unattainable film by Ridley Scott, for some at the same level or even superior. Of course, the bold and daring statements of some electrified critics made many people understandably wince. Blade Runner 2049 does not reach the heights of the first film, but still confirms itself as one of the best films made in Hollywood in years.

The performances of Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, and Sylvia Hoeks reach excellence, but the entire film is punctuated by small roles all perfectly acted and characterized. Similarly, the music by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch is a perfect accompaniment to the images of rare power filmed by Villeneuve. Roger Deakins confirms himself as the undisputed guru of cinematography, and this film is another important piece to insert into the qualitatively superior corpus of his work, constant and always recognizable. Remarkable is the sequence in the hologram room, where agent K passively lets himself be beaten by Deckard to demonstrate his harmlessness, in which the residual images of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe make explicit the meta-cinematic nature of the operation. Blade Runner 2049 expands and assimilates the scenarios created in science fiction films of the last ten years, subjecting them to the universe created by Scott at the beginning of the 80s: objectification of women, ecological and climate issues, humanization of the machine.

Villeneuve, in a continuous game of citations to cinema by contemporary and past authors (Her by Jonze, WALL-E, Offret by Tarkovsky!), with an inevitably focused eye on Hollywood’s strict rules, subjects the elusive nature of the narrative to a cultured and sought-after aesthetic. In an increasingly serial cinema that seems to want to incorporate authorship for its own profit purposes, remakes, sequels, and prequels represent an easy source of profit, justified by the endless interest of the superficial viewer towards pop icons revitalized by the film industry. On the other hand, since its inception, cinema has always found itself voluntarily or involuntarily reflecting on the technologies, trends, and mechanisms that dominate our reality, both positively and negatively. In this sense, BR2049 can be ascribed to the still small group of films that revisit and expand an already existing universe but reflect on its own nature as a "second chapter." BR2049 reflects on the themes already presented in the 82 work, inserts dialogues and images from the previous film, creating a real dialogue between "past" and "future." The same path was undertaken by Lynch without any compromise in the third season of Twin Peaks, achieving unprecedented results.

Replicated replicants, Raechel briefly returns to life under Deckard's frightened and amazed eyes, but almost immediately proves to be an incorrect and false image, and for this reason, is eliminated. Memory assumes the role of the true protagonist of the entire film and despite its artificiality proves to be more honest than any truth, the only salvation in the face of the lucid self-destructive rationality of our era.