Blade Runner 2049

One of the ways dystopian future is shown in movies is by way of a sky shot of the world. It is either a dry arid land, or a dilapidated city, or an overcrowded city with significantly poor town planning, with thin alleys etc. The implication is that loss of vegetation, greenery, lakes etc is a measure of dystopia.
Well, this makes me wonder, what if somebody from the 14th century was dropped into today’s world, today’s city, he or she will look at the modern city that we have built, compared to their reference of open lands, spaces, sparse population, a city like Mumbai will be….. dry, arid, dilapidated, overcrowded, poorly planned ! We already live in a dystopian world it seems!
anyways, I digress, back to the movie, one sure thing about the movie is that it stands out in every respect. First and foremost the pace of the movie, slow and reflecting, I guess after the twilight series this is one movie which we find to be really slow paced. Overall it adds to the gravity of the thought, however, if you are used to the fast-paced movies of today, with our 2 min viral video stuff, then the movie will be tiring.
Another great thing about the movie was that it has been shot in IMAX, not adapted to IMAX. I mean what’s the point of going to a screen which has a few feet extra vertically and those extra feet covered by black bands!. Blade Runner is shot in IMAX, gives that full immersive view, especially if you are seated in the 5th row from the screen, plus the slow music adds an immersive experience. The music is not as extensive and looped like Dunkirk, yet it is very much part of the story-line and gives an essence of the pace of the movie.
enough of the aesthetics, it is a big budget film, and aesthetics were bound to be good, the key feature is the theme of the movie, which tries to define, what exactly does it mean to be human, what is the soul and what is reality!. a fascinating conversation I found in the movie was between Joe (Ryan Gosling) and Joi (Ana de Armas), when Joe or K is examining records of human births, and humans who were both are kept in a file, which contains their DNA sequence, and DNA is basically combination of G-A-T-C letters, and chain is formed by the combination of those letters. and Joi says something to the effect that, it is astonishing that humans can be identified by a code of just 4 letters, and rearrangement of those gives us unique humans, to which Joe says, similar to you, you are combination of just 2 ( zero’s and ones: Joi is a computer simulation), more interestingly he adds to it by saying, you are a combination of 2 and yet much better !!. Somehow implying that being better or real might not be just biological. Later on there is massive scene, amidst a lot of action, there is a slight pause, when Joe is walking down a bridge, and he sees an advertisement for Joi (after all Joi is just a simulation, like a computer game, it’s multiple copies are available) and he stops to look at the different Joi, as if wondering what is reality, after all, something which was similar looking, similar built, a computer artificial intelligence (AI), just before getting destroyed had said to Joe, “I love you”, how can one distinguish between the love expressed by an AI
 

 
The character names in the movie are also interesting, Love, she is the one who is experiencing the most pain, sheds the most tears in the movie, is scared, and is the cause of much pain to Joe, every character’s ‘Love interest’ has not survived in the movie and Love herself also does not survive
Most interesting the name of Joe, Joe is also called K-140– some number, Joe is not is the characters real name, the character does not have a name, the character is just a number, because somehow the character is not considered a human, and in the dystopia, non-humans can’t have names, emotions, they are just numbers, to be used when required and eliminated when they become outdated. Interestingly, we can draw a parallel, from this to the Current Aadhaar debate, where a person is being reduced to a number, and cases are coming up wherein the identity of a person is rejected if Aadhaar details do not match!. the interesting analogy here. It somehow shows our inclination towards technology. So far things had numbers, cars had numbers, biscuit boxes had batch numbers, there was a passport number when you changed your passport or driving license the number changed, but now the person will have a number, the system will identify the person not as a name, but as a number!
again, I digressed. Back to the movie, it is one for the patient, who will focus on each and every scene, and more so, the movie is open-ended, the story is open-ended, your interpretation will be open-ended, and it can shoot off an interesting thought journey within you, i.e. if you have the time to indulge in one.
However, if you are that kind of a person then you will definitely relish this movie