Denis Villeneuve on Roger Deakins' 'Blade Runner 2049' Work: 'People Won't Be Disappointed'

When I spoke to Denis Villeneuve last month, he was clearly exhausted. He’d just finished shooting “Blade Runner 2049” in Budapest, Hungary, and had arrived in Los Angeles for a packed schedule of interview and Q&As on behalf of his most recent release, “Arrival.” The fact was, Villeneuve was so entrenched in the follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic that he wasn’t even able to jump on a 90-minute flight to attend its world premiere at the 2016 Venice Film Festival.

“No, I missed everything, which is very strange. It’s like giving birth and giving the baby to adoption,” Villeneuve says. “I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there. I was far away. I’m grateful for all the work that Amy and Jeremy did and all the crew, the producers, the director, all the press they did. I was trapped in the future. I was somewhere else fighting another war.”

And his “Blade Runner” leading man, the star of a little movie called “La La Land,” was just as hamstrung. He adds, “Basically, it was very simple. Ryan [Gosling] didn’t go to his premiere. I didn’t go to my premiere. We were shooting together. We are missing the party. No, I went to Venice the next weekend a little in the afternoon to do press.”

READ MORE: The 50 Best Sci-Fi Films Of The 21st Century So Far

“Arrival,” which landed at no. 2 on The Playlist’s top 25 films of 2016, basically asks the question: “If you knew the future would you still take a path that would ultimately lead to pain?” It does so in the context of the first visit by an alien species to our planet and the dangerous process of learning to communicate with them as seen through the eyes of linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and her colleague Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). Villeneuve candidly admits the post-production process was “very long and difficult” mostly because of the amount of time it took to land the right effects. He describes it s a “very delicate movie.”

“Before all the elements were there, it was a movie that needed everything to go together, to arrive at this peak and this moment of time in order to be alive. It’s really like a Frankenstein that came to life with the last electric spark,” Villeneuve recalls. “I watched the movie. I said, ‘All right. It works.’ I went onto a plane and went on to do ‘Blade Runner.’ The movie as it is. I never saw it with an audience. Again, it’s a very strange experience. It was like a dream.”

Villeneuve’s absence from Venice and subsequent festival screenings put him in an odd place compared to his previous pictures. He knew it was a good sign it was also chosen by Telluride and Toronto, but says he was ready for anything in terms of critical and audience reaction.

“When we were doing this movie, I felt we were flirting with disaster,” Villeneuve says. “I knew that the people from Venice were raving. I knew that Amy and Jeremy deeply loved the movie. I knew that the producer loved it. Me, I didn’t have any distance. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t have the time to sleep, to watch it alone, to go make peace with what it was.”

READ MORE: The Best Cinematography Of 2016

“Arrival” was Villeneuve’s first time working with the famed Bradford Young and he calls him “by far the most singular, original cinematographer I’ve ever worked with.” That’s a pretty remarkable compliment from a filmmaker who just finished his third film with the legendary Roger Deakins.

“Most of the cinematographers I work with, work with lights. Bradford works with darkness,” Villeneuve says. “Really, if he was shooting us both right now in this room, he will cut lights from everywhere. To go on a Bradford Young set on ‘Arrival’ was kind of a sensorial experience where everybody had the impression to go at the bottom of a well. You had to go deep into darkness. Then, you will find it. Seriously, you are coming into set. You have to wait two minutes for your eyes to adjust before you kill yourself and bump into a stand.”

Villeneuve adds that Young’s minimal light was so dramatic that it was like “a very delicate poem floating in the air. It was working at the limit of the Alexa [camera]. The VFX people were enraged against him because he was so on the edge of the material and pushing the envelope. They were afraid. The result is fantastic. We were working with a very shallow depth of field. He was really able to create tension and a feeling of dread and feeling of seniority with light. That’s the only thing I can say.”

Young and Deakins are two of the top working cinematographers in the world and Villeneuve says they are “both very different.”

READ MORE: Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Arrival’ With Amy Adams & Jeremy Renner Is Great, Gravity Defying Sci-Fi [Venice Review]

“Roger will create a corridor for the shot. He will work with the actors. When the blocking is done, when he decided to do one shot, the shot becomes a tableau,” Villeneuve says. “The light is specifically done in a very precise way, to work in a precise angle. You have to play in that. When the actors come into the camera, you want to start to cry. It’s so beautiful. It’s so powerful.”

Young’s work, according to Villeneuve, is much more about creating an environment for the actors and camera to travel through.

“It’s a total different way of using light,” Villeneuve says. “For me, there’s something very poetic, flexible, strong, intimate about the way Bradford is using it, so intimate. That level of intimacy, I never saw that before. I needed that intimacy, I will say. I’m not there to compare both; I will not dare to do. They are both masters. I just feel so privileged to have the chance to work with two artists like that.”

READ MORE: Interview: Roger Deakins Talks ‘Sicario,’ Partnership With Denis Villeneuve, ‘Blade Runner 2,’ Digital Vs. Film & More

He does have a message for anyone concerned about Deakins living up to the legacy Jordan Cronenweth created with the first “Blade Runner.” Villeneuve bluntly remarks, “Honestly, what Deakins did on that movie, people won’t be disappointed.”

There were few details about the new “Blade Runner” Villeneuve was willing to talk about, but he did note, “I felt like I was totally free. I felt that it was the first time and probably the only time in my life that I was allowed and I had the responsibility. I had the responsibility to take someone [else’s] universe and to translate it in a new story. It brought a lot of anxiety and a lot of pleasure.”

He added, “What…Scott created was a very rich universe. With his permission, we found out that it was space to create. I think [aesthetically], we tried to stay on the same planet. We took freedom with some elements. We had a lot of fun, Roger [and I].”

“Arrival” is still playing nationwide. “Blade Runner 2049” arrives in theaters just in time for next awards season on Oct. 6.