Angels In The Rain

I've talked before about Blade Runner.

The world it shows us is an uncomfortable one, because it is one we see ourselves entering, as if powerless to stop it. Not in the precise grain of the story - but the world, the ambience, the setting and surrounding, and the theme. Disposable people that just want to live a little, hunted, persecuted, not allowed.The authority figures, each of them morally corrupt and generally awful, including our so-called protagonist. Corporate logos shining in the sky over the bright towers, that we aren't allowed to live in. A life in the stars that you can't have.

I just got back from Blade Runner 2049.

It's not as good as the first film, let me just get that out of the way. In my opinion Blade Runner was the best film ever made. Saying 2049 isn't as good isn't an insult of any kind - but there will be people whose demand is that it be that film. That it put the lightning back in the bottle, and nothing can do that.

It was wonderful. It filled you up while you watched it, like you weren't being told a story, you were being put into a world that already existed whole-cloth and you just weren't aware of it.

It conveyed concepts to you with deftness, though it didn't feel rushed. Far from it. It didn't convey you from point to point to point like a bus. It walked you through, like a good museum guide. It let you take things in. It let you absorb, and see, and think. It let you experience what was going on.

Just watching it was an experience. Just seeing the frames flow together one after the other, hearing the sound effects, the score. Just experiencing each individual shot, and each transition. My god. There were a couple, just a couple, that made me deep-inhale loud enough that I probably upset the people I was watching it with.

I just wanna compliment Ryan Gosling a minute.

His performance is...let's say, understated. His face, though. His fucking face. It's heartbreaking. He pulls these microexpressions - like sometimes it is subtle and sometimes it's like a volcano. It is deeply upsetting, more than once, to see the man in question feel the way he does.

Yet again, we're shown our own world, turned back on us through a lens of science fiction. It's moved forward though - in the original, Los Angeles was dying, the poor majority left in the ruin while everyone that was well enough fled offworld. In 2049, that end has happened. The triage has been carried out - and we're a big red X.

The story...

That, I'm not going to talk about. I want you to watch it and find out.

Suffice to say I will be going to see it again, and soon.