“I love when cinema brings questions in our mind, in our heart. I like movies that stay with me for days or weeks. That’s the beauty of cinema, when you create images and those images create emotions and questions inside your head. That’s what I would like to do as a filmmaker.”
— Denis Villeneuve
Cinema is foremost a tool for storytelling, but it’s not the only thing that cinema can achieve. Perhaps the greatest way to wield cinema is to use stories of high personal significance to reflect the issues that pervade all of humanity, a fusion of the personal with the universal. And this is the perfect encapsulation of the cinema of Denis Villeneuve. The unique ability to visually expand a story with minute elements, on and off-screen, is a rare sight to be seen. Villeneuve has an incredible prowess over these crafts that make him stand out as one of the modern filmmaking greats, in the leagues of filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Alejandro Iñárritu, and every other director who comes to our minds when talking about the best.
But the most striking attribute of his movies aren’t the stories he tells, but the way he tells the story. Villeneuve’s films have a certain kind of gravitas in them, which is conveyed by the flawless use of atmospheric scores and thematic color palettes that complement the overall theme or emotion behind the scene. He creates a cinematic experience on the notion of uncertainty, highlighting the darker side of humanity and other realistic themes in the most artistic way.
Awarded the “Filmmaker Of The Decade” award by the Hollywood Critics Association, Denis Villeneuve is the filmmaker behind many critically acclaimed movies. Let’s look at some of the best films of the Oscar-nominated director and discuss some of his best works.
PRISONERS
Kidnapping thrillers often lure us to feel a sense of safety in their opening sequences, showing us the normal rhythms of life that will soon be shattered. Prisoners doesn’t follow this sequence. The movie opens with a shot of a snowy forest, where a deer wanders around for food when we hear a prayer being intoned, with the barrel of a gun pointing towards the deer. The deer goes down as we hear the loud bang of the gun. The camera cuts back to show a father and a son, holding the gun. The opening shot of the movie not only introduces us to one of our protagonists, the father, but also provides us a brief narrative on the character of our protagonist, who is a very religious man but, at the same time, morally ambiguous. Villeneuve conveys these details about the character in a span of barely 65 seconds, with no distinct dialogue except a prayer. This moral ambiguity of the father, Keller Dover, later emerges out to be one of the central themes the movie discusses.
Released in 2013, Prisoners focuses on Keller Dover, a carpenter who, when his daughter is abducted, takes the matter into his own hands to search for the perpetrator of the crime, resulting in a dark tale of violence and vengeance. It gives us a haunting tale about the hidden darkness that we all have inside us but don’t want to acknowledge, but under the right circumstances, we might get to see. One of the most chilling crime thrillers of the decade, Prisoners is rich in compelling narratives and stellar performances from the ensemble cast of Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman, Paul Dano, Viola Davis, and Terence Howard. Moreover, the flawless cinematography from the great Roger Deakins elevates the cinematic experience into one that will remain with you for a long time.
ENEMY
Enemy begins with a line flashing in the middle of the screen.
This is a line from Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s The Double, the novel on which the movie is based. Enemy may seem like a movie without an explanation or extremely convoluted, but this line suggests we can make some sense of it, some order, if we know how it can be deciphered.
On the surface, Enemy may seem like a confusing and uninteresting piece of cinema, but when dug deeper, the entire film unveils itself as an allegory or an expression of duality. Enemy is a unique cinematic piece that personifies the contrasting modes of the mind- the desires and the struggles to suppress those desires.
The movie deals with a man, Adam Bell, played by the brilliant Jake Gyllenhaal, a glum history professor, whose life changes when he meets his identical double, an actor named Anthony Claire. Villeneuve presents us with a different take on the doppelgänger genre, by establishing themes of loyalty and desire in a way no one has ever imagined before. The movie conveys how life’s hard choices don’t end once you have made the ‘right’ decision. It’s a battle that never ends. The two characters represent the moments where we are forced to fight between what we want and what we feel we have to do. The uniqueness and unpredictability along with Villeneuve’s immersive direction, the symbolisms, make this movie one of a kind.
SICARIO
Ambiguity is a recurring instrument that Villeneuve uses for the progression of his stories. But in Sicario, ambiguity isn’t just a mere tool for the advancement of the plot, but also used to describe the overall theme of the movie. It invokes the idea that the conceptual dividers we use to categorise the world, particularly regarding the notions of morality, are not only fragile and brittle, but may even be meaningless.
The film follows a principled FBI agent, Kate Macer, who is enlisted by a government task force to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel. But like our protagonist Kate, we, the audience, are kept in dark about how exactly the mission will be carried out. As the movie progresses, secrets unfold which places Kate inside a moral dilemma and questions her and our moral code.
Villeneuve gives us a thrilling experience through a genuine yet haunting portrayal of violence, often preceded by long sequences of build-up, accompanied by brilliant cinematography by Roger Deakins, stunning imagery, and background scores, and stellar performances by the whole cast, especially Emily Blunt and Benicio del Toro.
ARRIVAL
Science fiction is a genre mostly reputed to talk of the future or the probable, and cross boundaries of our imagination, but the most remarkable illustrations of science fiction emerge when the elements of science fiction are used as tools to explore the most basic notions of humanity and nature. Arrival uses a very recurring premise of “aliens invading the planet” to create a mesmerizing and thought-provoking movie concerned about time, free will, and love.
Arrival is a cerebral, visceral sci-fi mystery, arguably the best the genre has produced in recent years. Intricately crafted by Villeneuve, with breathtaking cinematography and a subtle yet graceful performance by Amy Adams, Arrival is a paragon of what the genre can achieve besides all that is associated with it. Arrival is a poignant story of love and acceptance, with each frame telling the story with more than just words. The ethereal framework and the slow narrative engulfs the viewer’s minds; throwing them into an inner conundrum. Tensed yet serene, a sense of despair diffusing yet imparts a feeling of tranquility, Arrival profoundly yet tenderly impacts us through the journey of our protagonist.
Arrival is a surreal cinematic experience, an achievement of the genre in recent years, along with the likes of Ex-Machina and Gravity. The magnum opus of Villeneuve's career, which despite its flaws, influences you, questions you, and stays with you.
BLADE RUNNER 2049
Masterpiece. Breathtaking. Magnificent. Mesmerizing. Blade Runner 2049 is a representation of humanity through the lenses of an inhuman, a human story that shows our humanity may stem from imagination. An elegant story trying to decipher the true nature of the soul.
With Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve didn’t just manage to make a movie but created a meditative journey that means different to different people. The movie does this by not conveying any individual idea, rather by asking questions and let viewers answer for themselves. It is a study, or more specifically a hypothesis, on an existential ground, of our experiences and what it means to have humanity. Experiences and memories, are they the same entity? Does every memory that shape us has to be experienced? Or does it even matter?
The movie follows our protagonist Officer “K” who also happens to be a replicant, a genetically bioengineered being, when he unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of the dystopian society into chaos. What follows is the journey of our protagonist as he searches for his identity and his role in the grand scheme that may change the whole world, that may shake the whole belief of the word “human”. One of the profound gains of knowledge in Blade Runner 2049, visually and symbolically represented is, maybe the soul isn’t necessarily something we are born with, but something to be constructed. A construction necessary for us humans to escape the identical meaninglessness. Blade Runner 2049 is a meditative and poetic journey into and of the human mind.
The brilliant performances of the whole cast, especially Harrison Ford’s haunting yet brilliant performance, and the enigmatic presence of our protagonist, Officer “K”, played by the stellar Ryan Gosling convey more than said. But what really sets this movie apart is its transcendental, picturesque cinematography by the great Roger Deakins, with each scene dripping with visual and aesthetic beauty. Villeneuve has crafted a piece of cinematic art in the form of Blade Runner 2049, and Deakins has transformed it into a cinematic experience. A truly cathartic experience.
Denis Villeneuve is an evocative filmmaker, with a distinctive visual narrative style, creating an ambience of uncertainty, to drive the narrative, through awe-inspiring cinematography, music, and editing. His movies have a way of making us uncomfortable, uneasy, and confused. He creates worlds without answers. He makes us search for answers, and in the process provokes us to question our beliefs. Denis Villeneuve is a true auteur. A master of the craft.
