Starting with the most obvious aspect of the film: it is stunning visually. Every scene is rich with detail and depth, whether with the wide shots or the closer range, and the textural synth-laden soundtrack brings that scenery to life. We're shown powerful settings, highly evocative if not outright thought-provoking, that supply a mighty platform for the scenes and dialogue. In that sense, this is total cinema: the aesthetics play right into the plot, and both these dimensions of picture and sound along with story are interlinked tightly so as to create a climactic experience with a full breadth to it. Each scene tells a part of the story, continuously pervaded by the immersive atmosphere.
The wider shots give out a distinct feeling of immensity, and clearly establish the unsettling quality of the dystopian futuristic world, without resorting to horror or overt means to communicate an apocalyptic edge. They're imposing and given enough color and variety that the film comes across as a painting gallery of sorts with these expansive frames, in a style distinctly expressive while maintaining a quasi-eerie silence and asepticized perfection. The synth tracks lend two things: a deep, smooth low end that brings the ominous energy and the size to go with the colossal futuristic landscapes on display, and definition at the top with shimmering individual synth-pad notes that depict the somewhat absurd universe we're delving deeper into with each scene. The closer shots bring the attention to the human component, the personal, where the emotion dwells; emotion that is found even on the more impassible expressions of the characters, as slight as they often are.
Of course the film isn't all pretty production, and contains a strong message at its core that reveals itself through a skillfully orchestrated series of events, carefully thought out and executed. The big philosophical questions posed are exactly the ones everybody will take away from watching: what constitutes a human being, what/who is real, what does identity mean exactly...
Ryan Gosling does a very good job. His acting is plain and he is between robot and human, as amidst the emptiness of organic lifelessness his face still manages to describe every now and then what can only be identified as intrinsically human. We're given glimpses of humanity through his eyes, and when it happens, it hits right home. It's like any viewer watching this captures a sense of deep, dark loneliness that we've probably all felt at one point or another; only it is here at its most tragic by the very standards of existence. "Do I have a soul ?". As he's told he doesn't have one by his own Lieutenant early in the film ("Madam" as he calls her), he stares long and hard at her, leaving the room with a visible sense of defeat and something akin to frustration or even dejection, instead of simply moving on immediately as a machine would.
The first scene between he and Joi, his holographic girlfriend, is pathetic, in the true sense of the term. It culminates in his touching her face sensually on the building's roof-top, under the pouring rain, and trying to feel her body's warmth, which she is bereft of being a mere fictional image, until she freezes - the way a computer program would. It is striking with solitude and an unbearable feeling of unreality; a feeling found again as Joi later synchronizes with the real girl. She's all of a sudden got four arms, a face that changes every second... it feels like one of these nightmares where the entire world is broken beyond repair, mirroring our own failure to make anything work or come into place as it needs to be, to be "good" in any significant way. He yearns for humanity, but ends up in that same old place, always. Some scenes, where his solitude is felt deepest, are heart-wrenching with sadness and yet, he is but a replicant. "Joe" (Gosling) as he later calls himself seems to be on an island with nothing but himself, and a knowledge that there's more to life than this cold hard existence. He feels a lack of meaning there, that something very important, crucial, is missing, and that he needs to go off-road to find what that thing is.
As a true human being would, he finds his purpose through... sacrifice. Naturally. He cannot be what he wanted so dearly to be: a real human being, with real parents, and that whole story to look forward to. So he decides the thing to do is to stop at nothing to help Deckard (Harrison Ford) find his daughter, which he ultimately achieves, at the expense of his own life. The meaning here is that there's such a thing as the «greater good», a quest that transcends the individual, a goal to strive towards because it is what's best in an objective sense. Protagonist K could've simply called it quits as soon as he found out he wasn't who he thought he was, and gone back to worry about his own life. But he would've returned to an existence without reason or cause, as another number in the machine, and it all would've felt as dull and unreal as it had always been. He wanted to get closer to the truth. It cost him everything, because, simply, that's what the truth costs.
The wider shots give out a distinct feeling of immensity, and clearly establish the unsettling quality of the dystopian futuristic world, without resorting to horror or overt means to communicate an apocalyptic edge. They're imposing and given enough color and variety that the film comes across as a painting gallery of sorts with these expansive frames, in a style distinctly expressive while maintaining a quasi-eerie silence and asepticized perfection. The synth tracks lend two things: a deep, smooth low end that brings the ominous energy and the size to go with the colossal futuristic landscapes on display, and definition at the top with shimmering individual synth-pad notes that depict the somewhat absurd universe we're delving deeper into with each scene. The closer shots bring the attention to the human component, the personal, where the emotion dwells; emotion that is found even on the more impassible expressions of the characters, as slight as they often are.
Of course the film isn't all pretty production, and contains a strong message at its core that reveals itself through a skillfully orchestrated series of events, carefully thought out and executed. The big philosophical questions posed are exactly the ones everybody will take away from watching: what constitutes a human being, what/who is real, what does identity mean exactly...
Ryan Gosling does a very good job. His acting is plain and he is between robot and human, as amidst the emptiness of organic lifelessness his face still manages to describe every now and then what can only be identified as intrinsically human. We're given glimpses of humanity through his eyes, and when it happens, it hits right home. It's like any viewer watching this captures a sense of deep, dark loneliness that we've probably all felt at one point or another; only it is here at its most tragic by the very standards of existence. "Do I have a soul ?". As he's told he doesn't have one by his own Lieutenant early in the film ("Madam" as he calls her), he stares long and hard at her, leaving the room with a visible sense of defeat and something akin to frustration or even dejection, instead of simply moving on immediately as a machine would.
The first scene between he and Joi, his holographic girlfriend, is pathetic, in the true sense of the term. It culminates in his touching her face sensually on the building's roof-top, under the pouring rain, and trying to feel her body's warmth, which she is bereft of being a mere fictional image, until she freezes - the way a computer program would. It is striking with solitude and an unbearable feeling of unreality; a feeling found again as Joi later synchronizes with the real girl. She's all of a sudden got four arms, a face that changes every second... it feels like one of these nightmares where the entire world is broken beyond repair, mirroring our own failure to make anything work or come into place as it needs to be, to be "good" in any significant way. He yearns for humanity, but ends up in that same old place, always. Some scenes, where his solitude is felt deepest, are heart-wrenching with sadness and yet, he is but a replicant. "Joe" (Gosling) as he later calls himself seems to be on an island with nothing but himself, and a knowledge that there's more to life than this cold hard existence. He feels a lack of meaning there, that something very important, crucial, is missing, and that he needs to go off-road to find what that thing is.
As a true human being would, he finds his purpose through... sacrifice. Naturally. He cannot be what he wanted so dearly to be: a real human being, with real parents, and that whole story to look forward to. So he decides the thing to do is to stop at nothing to help Deckard (Harrison Ford) find his daughter, which he ultimately achieves, at the expense of his own life. The meaning here is that there's such a thing as the «greater good», a quest that transcends the individual, a goal to strive towards because it is what's best in an objective sense. Protagonist K could've simply called it quits as soon as he found out he wasn't who he thought he was, and gone back to worry about his own life. But he would've returned to an existence without reason or cause, as another number in the machine, and it all would've felt as dull and unreal as it had always been. He wanted to get closer to the truth. It cost him everything, because, simply, that's what the truth costs.