Coco is one of the most beautiful and heartfelt animated films I’ve ever seen. I try not to be too hyberbolic when I write about things I love, but sometimes, that’s just not gonna happen. I’d been anticipating this movie since it was first announced (six years ago!!) - Pixar and Dia de los Muertos?! Sign me up immediately! And as more details about the project came out, the hype only grew - a story based around music and family, voices by Gael Garcia Bernal and Benjamin Bratt, and some of the most intricate animation the studio has ever attempted.
Well, it didn’t disappoint. And in fact, Coco is full of many beautiful surprises. Beyond the somewhat familiar story of a boy who feels like an outcast and chooses to follow his dreams into a fantastical world, is a much deeper story of sacrifice, regret, memory, and connection. The end result is incredibly moving. The journey is lively and imaginative, full of clever references to Mexican folklore and culture both old and new, which give the filmmakers license to truly run wild with the depiction of the Land of the Dead. It is populated by gorgeous beasts known as spirit guides, stunning architecture, and thousands of uniquely designed skeletons, some of which are cleverly depicted Mexican celebrities.
As colorful and exciting as the world building is, the anchor of this movie is one of Pixar’s most endearing characters, Miguel, an adolescent coming into his own under the watchful eye of his family and the more loosely protective Hector, a skeleton desperate not to be forgotten. it is a joy to watch Miguel learn about compassion, sacrifice, and the depth of his own talent. The relationships he forms and grows within the film feel as real as any live action film, even if the character he’s talking to randomly loses limbs and eyeballs. I dare you not to cry at the sweetness of the finale of this film. It truly is a beautiful blend of traditional storytelling and wild imagination. I can’t wait to see it again.
Audiobook recommendation: IT by Stephen King, read by Steven Weber
If you haven’t noticed from listening to the podcast, I am a huge fan of audiobooks. My job allows me plenty of time to listen to them - way more time than I have at home to read regular books. So often, I download the audiobook of something I’ve been anticipating forever, only to find out about 3 minutes in that it’s just unlistenable. I’m not sure why there aren’t more great audiobook narrators out there. Too often the type seems to default to “very old, tired British person.” So when I find a reader who is energetic and can truly make the story come to life, I’m always overjoyed.
This is a 45 hour audiobook. For someone like me, it’s exciting to find a book that will keep you occupied for that long. But I know especially with the movie version out now, I feel like most casual listeners are immediately going to turn down a novel of this length. Don’t do it!! This version of the novel is really its own special animal. Steven Weber, an actor who has appeared in several King adaptations, gives such a phenomenal performance here, that even if you know the story through the physical book, movie, or miniseries, this reading is an endless delight. It will suck you right in and take you completely out of reality. Of course, you may not like where you’ll end up...
SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, stick to my hot take in the previous post. You have been warned!!!
It’s been 35 years since the original Blade Runner was released - a film that only gained its standing in pop culture well after its initial run in theaters. Despite not connecting with audiences at first glance, Blade Runner made its way up the ranks to be considered a sci fi classic, not only for its stunning and innovative visuals, but because of the heart at its center. An artificial heart - not of its protagonist Rick Deckard, but of its villain, Roy Batty, an android (’replicant’ in the language of the film) rebelling against the constraints of his short, brutal life. The first film is a haunting classic, so when the sequel was announced several decades later, the question was immediately asked - why do we need another one? Is this just a shameless nostalgia grab, another hamfisted attempt to cash in on the unique joys of 80s pop culture? Somehow, the answer turned out to be a resounding no.
By some mad stroke of luck, the perfect filmmaker for this project had just made a major awards contender out of a sci fi drama, Arrival, and it was good enough to convince the studio system to actually let him take a chance and make Blade Runner 2049 as contemplative and explorative a film as the original. The result is likely something that won’t gain much headway with audiences until later - it’s not the type of film to immediately make a splash. But it is a brilliant expansion on the universe of the first film, both visually and thematically.
It’s impossible to overstate how beautiful and thoughtful the design of this film is. Every frame has been crafted with immense care, to convey mood, emotion, setting, and exposition. It’s a completely immersive landscape, laden with so much detail that very little exposition is needed from the characters. It’s all there on the screen. You don’t need to see the first film or read the source material, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, to understand the background of the story. Apart from a title card that bridges the gap between the first movie and the next, explaining how the Wallace Corporation absorbed the Tyrell Corporation and changed the design of the replicants, the filmmakers trust us to follow the story ourselves.
By choosing to follow one of these new replicants, a futuristic cop (the titular ‘Blade Runner’) named K, this sequel is able to explore much more deeply the intersection of humanity and technology. K has been programmed to eliminate his own kind, older models of replicants that have gone rogue or pose a threat to their creators. When the story opens, he is able to destroy his targets because his consciousness gives him no room to disobey. He has been made with a purpose, as all replicants have. But when he stumbles on the bones of a replicant female who clearly had died in childbirth, K’s world rips right open. He’s at the center of two opposing sides, who see this discovery as the key to the missing link between humanity and artificial intelligence. Wallace, the creator of the new line of replicants, desires the missing child of this woman to unlock the secrets of procreation, so he can meet the demands of production through natural reproductive means. He seeks to exploit this possibility as a further way to control his slaves - as he himself admits they are - and give himself an even more godlike sense of control over the future. Meanwhile, K’s employer, Lieutenant Joshi, a human woman, recognizes the danger this secret poses to her people. If replicants are given that last missing link between them and humanity, there’s nothing left to stop them from demanding to be equal, to be given the chance that Roy Batty killed and died for, to live a free life.
The mystery of this missing child links the sequel to the first film, but what I’m more interested in is how this central question explores the desire of artificial intelligence to be “real.” The original Blade Runner portrayed replicants with short, violent lives, desperate to gain some kind of bodily autonomy and to understand their place in the world, beyond being subservient to their master they were created for. As a disposable workforce, they were soldiers and mercenaries, prostitutes and showgirls, factory workers and perfectly polished office drones. If they wanted anything other than the life they were designed for, they had to kill for it. This is largely still true in the universe of the new film. However, an extra layer is added to this conflict of what makes a human - K’s love interest in the film is a holographic operating system in the form of a dream woman, much like Samantha in the brilliant 2013 movie Her, only this version is embodied by a beautiful girl who saddles the line between corporeal and projection. This character, Joi, seems to be developing real feelings for the replicant who bought her, even putting her entire existence on the line just so he doesn’t have to be alone. But when K later sees an advertisement for the original “product,” he has to wonder, did her love and devotion towards him come from anywhere other than her code? Does she have the apparatus from which she can love? (A soul, perhaps, or just.. self awareness? The ability to want something bigger than oneself?)
As K explores the possibility that he may be born, not made, he follows the journey of so many of the great robot heroes of speculative fiction. Along with Westworld, A.I., Battlestar Galactica, Ex Machina, Metropolis, and the aforementioned Her, much of the best sci fi imagines a future in which we have created beings that want to be us, and must break free of the oppression they were created in. Blade Runner 2049, like its predecessor, seems to offer forward the idea that these sentient creations are in fact, ‘more human than human.’ The final scene of the film, both bleak and hopeful, brings forth the idea that eventually, there will be only humanity, no matter how it came into the world. And that’s what elevates this film far beyond its visual brilliance, into the realm of something as haunting as science fiction has ever reached.
This is a stunning achievement. A full day later and I’m still thinking hard about this one. Even at 164 minutes, I’m desperate to watch it again. Visually, there’s more here than you could possibly take in at first glance. But I think there’s a lot going on below the surface as well. Like so many of my favorite sci fi films and shows, the essential question here - what defines the human spirit - is explored in so many provocative, fascinating ways. Is it love? Desire? Invention? Sacrifice? Or something more basic and primal? How do we know what’s real in a society where these definitions are constantly changing?
I’m Jenny, cohost of the podcast Three Sheets to the Wind. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, iTunes, Onecast, and probably some other sites too. My cohosts Rob, Mike, and I like to have a couple of drinks and shoot the shit about a so-called “classic” book and pair it with a funny, usually not-so-classic movie.
This blog will be about that podcast. It will also be about other things.
I used to do a lot of writing about film, and I miss it. I’ll be digging into the films I watch, as well as doing my favorite type of blogging - list making! Look for all kinds of reviews of movies, TV, music, books, and whatever else I feel like. Maybe I’ll review the drinks I make while I record. Who knows??
