Blade Runner

My father took me to see BLADE RUNNER in 1982, the year I began to see "adult" films at the multiplex.  To this day I can recall how overwhelming of an experience it was.  The awe inspiring opening shot of the cityscape, accompanied by Vangelis' initially dissonant, then melancholy score. Immediately announcing that this was more than just genre science fiction.  I knew I was in for something historic, though certainly unaware of what sort of legacy it would have.  I became a huge fan, catching every showing on cable and purchasing the VHSs and DVDs.  Many of my friends (and later my wife) did not share my enthusiasm.  In 2008, I bought the Five Disc Limited Edition Gift set, housed in a replica of a blade runner's briefcase which included the original theatrical cut, the European cut, the final cut, and even a workprint.  Also, a superior three and one half hour documentary called DANGEROUS DAYS: MAKING BLADE RUNNER, which might rate its own review here someday. 

Years back on this very blog I posted some thoughts about the "big ideas" of  BLADE RUNNER, which has occupied my All-Time Top 5 for some time now........

 1. The replicants in the story, the mechanical men and women with a 4 year life span, are created by the Tyrell Corporation. What was Philip K. Dick's view on cloning? A.I.? Genetic engineering? Immoral? Was the very crux that drives the narrative, that the replicants run amok, begin to question things, his statement on the danger of playing God? 

2. Was Eldon Tyrell supposed to be God? Why does Roy, the prototype replicant, the golden boy, seek out his creator, then kill him? Does this suggest that BLADE RUNNER is espousing that there is no god? That Roy represents rationality, man himself, destroying the god myth? Then dying like man always does? But what about the dove Roy was clutching? The dove that ascends after his death? Is it going to the afterlife? 

3. Perhaps Roy was Dick's way of saying there IS a god, and that the wrongheadedness of cloning corrects itself by having man (now Tyrell) destroyed. Perhaps the replicants were manifestations of godless science, then God himself takes replicant form and corrects the situation.  Then he sacrifices Himself, later to ascend to Heaven.

4. In light of these questions, just who made who? 

5. Why would Tyrell give the replicants perspectives? Because he is God? Or were the replicants not given perspectives, but the Nexus series evolved, and gained them? Was natural selection at work? 

Those musings still ring in my brain as I watch this film, which has sparked more debates among myself and my friends (and strangers on the Internet) than any other I can recall.  One can spend days on end discussing the religious implications, the fallout from the encroaching technology, the portrayal of a police state, the socioeconomics irrevocably tainted by big corporations.  Also, making the case that Rick Deckard (portrayed with just the right weariness by Harrison Ford) is or is not a replicant.  My take? He is not, unicorn or otherwise.  To arrive at a different conclusion suggests a movie that is  contriving unnecessary (and ultimately demoralizing) plot twists for their own sake.  A dilution of the dynamic between human and replicant, so profound during Deckard and Batty's final confrontation.

The original version of BLADE RUNNER featured narration by Ford, which sounds as disinterested as um, humanly possible.  It didn't bother me as a teen but when I saw the "director's cut", released in 1992, which excised the voiceover, I realized how much better the film is without it.  It's funny.   In some ways, the trite, hastily scribbled and banal sentences Ford growls is congruent with his character and demeanor.  But they are still a bit insulting to the viewer's intelligence.  I tend to feel this way about voiceovers.

Back in January I sat down for it for probably the 50th time and was struck by something else.  How lonely this film is.  Every bit of it.  Possibly the loneliest piece of cinema ever produced.  Screenwriters Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, adapting Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, play up the neo-noir aspects of this story of a cop named Deckard who in 2019 Los Angeles is hired to locate and "retire'' rogue replicants (bioengineered humanoids comprised of microchips and miles of fiber optic nerves) who've returned to Earth illegally.  In this dank future (er, now the past), it is always nighttime and advertisements for "off world colonies" fill the air, promising a new world in which to "begin again."  Earth seems to have become a hellhole of darkness, rain, and endless neon signs.  It does look fabulous, though.

Cinematographer extraordinaire Jordan Cronenweth does what I consider his best work here.  His contrasts of light, dark, and shadow are unmatched in a movie of its time.  The perfect visualization of lonely people, which include Tyrell (Joe Turkel) whose corporation created the replicants, which were intended to be soldiers, "pleasure models", or manual laborers and implanted with humans' memories.  Rachael (Sean Young), his assistant, is revealed to be one.  Other such creations are Roy (Rutger Hauer), Leon (Brion James),  Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), and Pris (Daryl Hannah).  Tyrell's genetic designer, a reclusive, soft spoken fellow who ages prematurely named J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) may be the loneliest of all, with only his misfit doll-like creations to keep him company.  He lives in a unit in a puddle strewn Bradbury Building, which is endlessly violated by the shafts of light thrown down from hovering police "spinners."  This iconic L.A. location is perfect beyond words for this movie.

And Vangelis' score.  One of the most haunting and sad I've heard.  "Blue Runner Blues" is one of my favorite pieces of music.  Its synths sound both futuristic and retro (now and during the film's original release), evoking nearly unbearable melancholia, a sense of (nonetheless) beautiful hopelessness and loss.  Vangelis' compositions suit every moment perfectly.  Racheal's learning that her memories actually belong to her boss' nieces.  Deckard's final approach into the Bradbury.  Roy's "tears in rain"  speech near the close, one of my all-time favorites.  This is the ultimate soundtrack of loneliness.

It tends to be difficult to write about films you adore.  The bad ones are much easier, as it becomes almost fun to pick apart what is wrong with them.  BLADE RUNNER, like my other favorites, has become part of my subconscious.  Barely a week passes when something doesn't remind me of it.   It is an imperfect movie, and some of the criticisms leveled against it may be valid, but it has long since passed being merely an item to be analyzed.  It is something to love.  And with any such thing, one will look past and forgive any flaws.

P. S.  - Like any seminal work I’ve encountered, BLADE RUNNER has so infused itself into my cerebrum that I find myself recalling bits when Life seems to imitate Art.  During Orientation Week as I was beginning doctoral studies in audiology some years ago, a Myers-Briggs personality test was administered. As I replied to the manipulative inquiries, I was reminded of the Voight-Kampf test, which viewers may recall is the oral questionnaire the blade runners use to determine if their subject is a replicant. As I creatively answered each question, it occurred to me- what sort of personality makes the best audiologist? Or is it the other way around? Do they want replicants? My mind reeled, and I was being ridiculous. My twenty classmates and I were later subjected to a lengthy explanation by one of the university’s psych profs, a session where the aggregate results were expounded upon at great length. He explained that we were Thinking Introverts, or so went that classification dichotomies, as they’re known.  Ideal for audiologists! he cried.  Hmmmm.