Charles, did you catch the Nabokov?? From the New Yorker review:
"Hence the two scenes in which, after a mission, he is interrogated not by a superior but by a computer that stares at him, with an unblinking lens, and performs a āPost-Trauma Baseline Test.ā K must respond to certain words and phrases: āCells,ā āInterlinked,ā āA Tall White Fountain Played.ā The first time he takes the test, he passes. Later in the film, he fails.
What the hell is going on here, and what does it tell us about the relation of āBlade Runner 2049ā to the original? Decode the test, and you realize that the computer is quoting verse:
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
The lines come from Nabokovās āPale Fire,ā a novel that wraps a poem inside a commentary. The mixture is rich in murder and madness, and you can go crazy, too, piecing together the components of the book; what matters is that each gorges on the other, and so it is with the two parts of āBlade Runner.ā
From the late great Pauline Kael's 1982 New Yorker review:
A title informs us that weāre in Los Angeles in the year 2019, and then Scott plunges us into a hellish, claustrophobic city that has become a cross between Newark and old Singapore. The skies are polluted, and thereās a continual drenching rainfall. The air is so rotten that itās dark outside, yet when weāre inside, the brightest lights are on the outside, from the giant searchlights scanning the city and shining in. A huge, squat pyramidal skyscraper (the new architecture appears to be Mayan and Egyptian in inspiration)....
Holy fuck is this the dumbest goddamn review I've ever once laid eyes on. I don't expect or really care if people enjoyed the movie, but for the record I'll say I did. What I CAN NOT abide however is someone forcing a bizarre political vision on a movie... and then being upset it didn't meet that vision for some reason. You sound like some fucking fat-dadbod screaming about how Winnie the Pooh sucks because the Hundred Acre Wood has no defined currency and is therefore a marxist enclave-- IE you chose to miss the point and yet are somehow acting smug and superior. What a brave visionary you are! (and since you dont seem to be able to pick up on any form of subtext: that is sarcasm)
@6: Forcing Marxist ideas on art that has nothing to say on the topic is pretty much Mudede's only schtick. He also made a movie once, decades ago, so apparently that's all the credentials needed for him to retain his position as the resident film snob.
Their other reviewers are not as inclined to such self-indulgent pseudo-intellectual navel gazing, if that helps.
If only there was a āsolid foundationā like something written by Philip K. Dick... maybe then weād have gotten an actual review of the movie? Itās a shame drivel like this ends up muddying scores on aggregate review sites.
"Hence the two scenes in which, after a mission, he is interrogated not by a superior but by a computer that stares at him, with an unblinking lens, and performs a āPost-Trauma Baseline Test.ā K must respond to certain words and phrases: āCells,ā āInterlinked,ā āA Tall White Fountain Played.ā The first time he takes the test, he passes. Later in the film, he fails.
What the hell is going on here, and what does it tell us about the relation of āBlade Runner 2049ā to the original? Decode the test, and you realize that the computer is quoting verse:
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
The lines come from Nabokovās āPale Fire,ā a novel that wraps a poem inside a commentary. The mixture is rich in murder and madness, and you can go crazy, too, piecing together the components of the book; what matters is that each gorges on the other, and so it is with the two parts of āBlade Runner.ā
cool
A title informs us that weāre in Los Angeles in the year 2019, and then Scott plunges us into a hellish, claustrophobic city that has become a cross between Newark and old Singapore. The skies are polluted, and thereās a continual drenching rainfall. The air is so rotten that itās dark outside, yet when weāre inside, the brightest lights are on the outside, from the giant searchlights scanning the city and shining in. A huge, squat pyramidal skyscraper (the new architecture appears to be Mayan and Egyptian in inspiration)....
Their other reviewers are not as inclined to such self-indulgent pseudo-intellectual navel gazing, if that helps.