ESSAY-BLADE RUNNER 2049: A FILM THAT, MORE THAN ANY OTHER FILM I'VE EVER SEEN, NEEDS A SECOND VIEWING

WARNING! HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, ARE THERE SPOILERS HERE! DON'T READ THIS IS YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW A HUGE, HUGE PLOT POINT OF THIS FILM!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! I'M GOING TO SKIP MANY SPACES SO THAT YOU DON'T ACCIDENTALLY READ IT!

READY? 
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LAST WARNING!
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Harrison Ford is not Ryan Gosling’s father.

There. We got that out of the way. In the first viewing of “Blade Runner 2049,” this is a big secret. Ryan Gosling plays a replicant named K who executes other replicants, and finds out that Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) had a child with Rachel (Sean Young), the replicant/love interest from the original “Blade Runner.” Because K knows he's a replicant--and therefore knows that his memories are implanted--he completely questions who he is when he finds physical evidence that a childhood memory may be real...which would mean that K is actually human.

Yes, there’s a good deal of the movie devoted to how the notion of replicants reproducing would change the world. That, however, is secondary to the main plot point: K thinks that he’s the child, and it completely changes the way he views his life.

And if you watch the film a second time, you now know, all along, that K is not Deckard’s child; Deckard’s child is a young woman named Ana Stelline (Carla Juri), who creates memories that are then implanted into the minds of replicants. She lives a lonely life, as her immune system doesn’t work, and she must live in a large sterile chamber, with nothing but the holographic experiences she creates for the replicants to keep her company.

And yes, she tells K…the memory is real. It’s not his memory, however…it belongs to Stelline.

If you’re seen the film already, you know all of this.

Good. Now watch it a second time, and really enjoy how good it is.

I found “Blade Runner 2049” to be slow and ponderous when I first saw it, and yes, some of it does drag. It’s almost three hours long, and there are many minutes—particularly interminable scenes involving Jared Leto as Niander Wallace, the blind president of the corporation that makes replicants—that would have been better left on the cutting room floor.

Yet on a second viewing, the film becomes an almost mystical meditation on loneliness, and what it is to be human.

We watch the film again, and see K, for a time, think he’s human (well, at least half human). We see the betrayal he feels, the feeling that he has been fooled all this time, slotted into the lonely life of a fully artificial human. He has been hated by other humans, and despised by the androids that he terminates. We have seen him in his apartment, with a holographic companion named Joi (Ana De Armas) as his only friend, his only company…a moving counterpart to the illusion of the human experience that Stalline lives, imprisoned in her germ free chamber.

And we know, throughout, that we’re watching someone who’s suffering, and will go on to suffer again. Before the reveal—in which K finds out that his belief that he was a true human are false—we see him rage against the lie of a life that he believes he’s been led to live. And throughout this all, we know that this rage is a waste of time…he is, after all, exactly what he’s been led to believe he is, all along.
This whole delusion—which, with a second viewing, we now know is a delusion—reaches a kind of tragic crescendo when K goes to Stelline (again, Deckard’s real daughter) to validate the veracity of that childhood memory.

Yes, she says, tears in her eyes, it’s real, and we see Gosling rage against what he believes is almost unimaginable cruelty that he has therefore suffered for his whole life (To live his life as a replicant! To live his life killing what he has thought are fellow beings! To live his life hated by all! To live a life that is no life at all!). We see the Stelline cry, and assume, on the first viewing, that she is crying for him.

With a second viewing, though, we see her cry, and we know that she cries because she knows it is her own memory. And when we see Ryan Gosling rage, we realize that all of this rage, this whole wellspring of feeling is for nothing. No, he’s not a half-human who’s been duped into thinking he’s a replicant…he’s been a replicant all along, bereft of humanity, bereft of a real life.

Yet there is the end, in which K reunites Deckard with his daughter. On the second viewing, in a scene beautifully played by Ryan Gosling (who’s truly great in this film), we see him lie back on a flight of steps, responsible for this reunion, and he reaches out and lets the snow fall on his hands. We then see Stelline’s daughter do the same thing in the holographic chamber in which she creates memories, but that snow, like Ryan K’s hope of having human blood, is an illusion.

There they are, this artificial being living a finally living a human life, while a human (half human, anyway), who lives a fully artificial life, feels that most human of connections, the bond between a child and a parent. We see K outside, a small smile playing on his face, and as we do, and see that, finally, K knows what it is to be human.

Yes, it’s an affecting moment at the end of the first viewing. At the end of the second viewing, however, in which we know what to look for, know what we’re seeing, and therefore can just focus on that main thread—what it is to be human, what it is to hold on to a false dream of humanity, what it is to have that false dream snatched away, and, finally, what it is to feel human anyway—it takes an a quality of near mystical beauty.

I’ve never before seen a film that improves so much with a second viewing, where I knew all of the secrets and reveals, and could therefore watch it with the added context of that knowledge. On its second viewing, “Blade Runner 2049” becomes what I failed to see it for the first time: a truly great film.

POSTSCRIPT:
After writing this, I read an excellent essay by Matthew Hartman called "A Fun Fan Theory About 'Blade Runner 2049.'" He offers a wonderful take on the role of memory maker Ana Stelline, and how she may have specifically implanted the memory that so haunts K so that he is motivated to find Deckard...which means that she's basically pulling the strings, all so that she can be reunited with her father. It has made me want to see the film yet again, and you can read Hartman's essay by clicking here...and you should.