A worthy masterful sequel to the original masterpiece!

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2018)

It was the long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction classic, "Blade Runner" that grabbed me unlike any other film in 2017. As I accumulated four theatrical sojourns watching "Blade Runner 2049" I found a deeper and richer experience with each viewing, one that, to me, even surpassed the original as serious art. The reason for this was undoubtedly due to Scott entrusting the renowned Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve (who had made "Incendies", "Prisoners", "Sicario" and the previous year's "Arrival") when making his version to honor the original film's world and philosophical themes while laying claim to his own poetic vision and personal style.
Taking place 30 years after Deckard and Rachael had emerged from the elevator to leave the smog and overpopulation of 2019 Los Angeles, this new film follows a recent model replicant (with a normal human lifespan) called 'K' (played perfectly by an appropriately imperturbable Ryan Gosling) as he investigates a growing uprising when he unearths the remains of a once-pregnant replicant, something that leads him not only into mysterious territory in which he discovers the now reclusive Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford in one of his most nuanced performances), but also leads him through a journey into his own identity. Darker and more sparse than the original, "Blade Runner 2049" dives into a more nihilistic milieu where the earth's digital and technological systems have been wiped out from an ecological disaster known as the Blackout, and the air and water have become toxic, plants and animals have gone extinct, and there has been mass migration to urban centers with the rich moving to off-world colonies. Even sunlight is only visible through thick layers of smog and clouds, and various cities like San Diego have become large garbage disposal areas. Villeneuve, now at the peak of his directorial powers, moves us inexorably throughout this elaborately-detailed world for a full 164 minutes, something for which the film's cynical detractors have criticized, but I praise him for having the courage to allow its story to develop in a carefully measured fashion, taking the time to allow its willing and patient viewers to be engulfed into its world view. I liken it to turning over one's self to the listening of a Wagner opera like "Parsifal" in which time seems to stop as one is encompassed completely by another place, another time -- and after its long viewing I seemed to awaken as if having submitted to a dream, emerging somewhat reborn and more enlightened with knowledge of the human experience. And that is what this and the original film are really about. Underneath its marvelously detailed science fiction trappings with its state-of-the-art production design and special effects (often eschewing CGI for authentically-constructed sets and realistic miniatures), and heightened to a level of unmatched beauty by the cinematography of Roger Deakins, the film is really a thoughtful meditation on what makes us human.