Note to Self On the Morning After Blade Runner 2049

WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Don’t burn the eggs. Burnt scrambled eggs taste what you would imagine rust tastes like.

Don’t cry the whole morning. Crying ages you, and takes a ton of energy, energy you would be wise to use in some other, more positive, way.

Call Jared Leto and tell him to get the hell out of the idiotic oceanic echo-chamber with the pair of expensive-looking leather chairs, and the replicant woman standing silently in the shadows. The big bad sitting in a chair in a graphic, majestic setting, oozing menace and prestige and unspeakable evil, is not very believable – what do you do, sit around all day, looking at the shadows of water on the walls, contemplating how wonderfully calculable and under your command everything is? - and doesn’t make you look scared or scary, it only makes you look lonely (unless that is the point) and like a phony, kind of like you are in an Austin Powers movie, petting the white cat in a pretend-bald headpiece. Also, obviously, it has been done to death.

Call the dialogue masters, the screenwriters, and ask why oh why did the dialogue have to be so bloody artificial and rigid and inanely simplistic and over the top theatrical throughout the film. “You must kill Deckard!” Okay. Sometimes silence is more effective than speaking in pompous gothic exclamations or stating the obvious.

Call Hans Zimmer and tell him wow, you are getting your second Academy Award for this film, very expressive, very impressive, and to get two nominations in one year, one for this and the other for Dunkirk – not too shabby, sir. Partnering with Mr. Wallfisch has been an excellent idea.

Call the cinematographer Deakins, i.e. the ambiance maker, and the other visual artists, the set decorators, and why not the whole art department while you are at it, and tell them congratulations, it all looks very good, exquisite, even.

Call Krista Kosonen and tell her what a day’s work; and in Finnish, too! The only other major American film you have seen before that uses your language at all, was Charlie’s Angels, and that time the phrasing was done by American actresses, so it was barely recognizable Finnish. The role may have been a small one, but it will look pretty awesome on Ms. Kosonen’s resume, because the movie community has embraced this film, and it will likely stand with the classics, and to be part of that is very out of this world. “Toi on blade runner, se on ihan vitun vaarallinen.”

Call Harrison Ford and tell him he still has the thing about his eyes, and that he makes you cry.

Call Ryan Gosling. He’ll know what it’s about.

Call mother. Maybe.

Glue yourself together, because whether or not The Old Lady remains, it is still a school day and all the good kids are in class by now.

Be sure to never check your messages again right at the end of a movie like Blade Runner 2049, because receiving some upsetting news on top of the almost three hours of somber, austere story-telling in sinister and ominous landscapes will derail you in a serious way, and it will take days to get your shit back together.

Experiencing Blade Runner 2049 is, more than anything, a journey into and a study on loneliness. Eleanor Rigby may be miles and miles to the left of this movie, but they both, in the end, address the same thing. Look at the lonely people and where do they all come from and where do they all belong.