Technical Masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (7 August 2018)

Oscar Nominations:
Cinematography (Roger Deakins) - Winner
Visual Effects (Nelson/Nefzer/Lambert/Hoover) - Winner
Production Design (Gassner/Querzola)
Sound Editing (Mancini/Green)
Sound Mixing (Bartlett/Hemphill/Ruth)
Blade Runner 2049 is a technical masterpiece! And the Oscar awards reward that excellence with five nominations in the visual and aural arts and two wins, in Cinematography and Visual Effects. It is a long movie (2 hrs, 43 min) but the immersive experience in this dystopian world keeps your focus and rewards your attention.
Surprisingly, this was the first win for Roger Deakins after 14 nominations for cinematography for movies ranging from Shawshank Redemption and Fargo to Skyfall, Prisoners, and Sicario. Deakins has a unique talent for using camera angles and filters to create a distinct feel for each film. The dark shadows of Prisoners help convey the underlying fear while the long, unbroken drone shots in Sicario brought out the unbroken tension. In this movie, he manages to sustain the damp bleakness of perpetual rain in Los Angeles and the yellow-poisoned air of Las Vegas - futures that seem possible but not pleasant.
Blade Runner also took the Oscar for Visual Effects. The visual effects team previously worked on films like Benjamin Button, Captain America, Beauty and the Beast, Armageddon, and Superman Returns. The visual effects run the gamut from CGI to actual stunt work, but in all cases the realism supplied gives the film a remarkable consistency and credibility. These aren't effects purely to stun the senses, but rather they help tell the story in a future world that is already tough to imagine.
The production design team has received previous Oscar nominations for movies like Bugsy, Road to Perdition, Into the Woods, and Golden Compass. In Blade Runner 2049 they have created a world that is consistent in its details and striking in its rich texture. The sound editors won the award last year for Mad Max : Fury Road, and received previous nominations for Fifth Element and one of the Star Trek Movies. Previous nominations for the sound mixers include Life of Pi and the Martian. The point here is that the teams working on the technical aspects of this movie are long on credentials, and their work shows in a very overwhelming movie.
As is usually the case, even with very good science fiction movies, Blade Runner did not receive any nominations in the directing, writing, or acting categories. And that is unfortunate. Dennis Villenueve, the director, also directed Arrival, another very good sci-fi flick. He also did the two excellent movies, Sicario and Prisoners, both of which manage to create a terrific tension in the audience. In Blade Runner 2049, he manages to sustain a complex story over a considerable length of time and still tie all the loose ends up.
Speaking of story, one of the writers, Hampton Fancher, also participated in the original Blade Runner movie from nearly thirty years ago. He has managed to maintain consistency between these two efforts and address some of the big questions that were left from the original movie (i.e. is the Blade Runner (Harrison Ford) a replicant or not?). His cowriter, Michael Green, was also nominated for Logan, however, I didn't like that movie and blame the writer for most of its plodding disinterest.
Ryan Gosling plays the main character, K, and he is just perfect in this role. Harrison Ford comes back to play an older version of his original character, Deckard, and brings with it some of the wisdom that comes with old age. Clearly the story is about these two men and the discoveries they make about each other, and themselves.
However I think some of the most interesting characters are women. Robin Wright plays a terrific chief of detectives and K's boss. Sylvia Hoeks (Luv) is the main villain and battles both Deckard and 'K' with super-human abilities. Ana De Armas is a fresh, face and plays Joi, K's love interest who isn't exactly real. And Mackenzie Davis is a hooker who, in one of the most intriguing scenes in the movie, merges with Joi. Carla Juri, as Ana, plays a very important figure with some special characteristics, essential to the main story line. In all these cases, the women are playing supporting roles, but the movie is much more interesting because of them.
Blade Runner 2049 is a complex story and the viewer has to pay attention to keep from getting lost. But because it is also such a technical tour de force, that is easy to do. The visual world created here demands that you open your senses and the story line rewards you for doing so.