Blade Runner Thoughts (with spoilers)

Welcome to the first post of the TNFN:AEoF blog. I'm moving most of my movie thoughts here from now on, with short blurbs in the emails. But I think this could be a cool place to continue our filmic de- and reconstructions. So, let's start it up with our Cinerama adventure last night:

Comments after our viewing of Blade Runner last night:

1) This film holds up quite well 25 years later. The soundtrack is very much, ahem, of its time, but is only really obnoxious in the love scene, when it devolves into the worst sort of '80s sax fugue. (A shame, since that scene is extremely interesting.) The effects are mostly good, too, supporting the oppressive atmosphere Scott was attempting to create. (Love the green monochrome computer monitors, though.)

2) Ridley Scott had done Alien in 1979, then Blade Runner in 1982. He's made some decent films since (Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) but not quite the masterpieces we might have hoped based on those two early works. (I see he's working on a film adaptation of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I'm not sure he has the subtlety to do that brilliant novel justice. But maybe no one does. I'd like to see Darren Aronofsky try it. Though I guess he's not too subtle either, usually.)

3) The love scene: Again, a shame about the music. But this is a key scene. She never knew she was a replicant. She's already asked whether he's ever taken his own test. So we may read this scene as him trying to teach her how to love. (In a rather rough way that perhaps even disturbs as as she tries to leave and he forces her to stay. But then we remember she's just a replicant. (Note even that phrasing: "just a replicant".) So how does consent work (or not work) with a replicant? And what if then we include the consideration that perhaps he too is a replicant? By what justification to we apply the human moral code to replicants? Is this maybe the whole point of the scene?)

4) Subversion of expectations: I think it's hard to come to this film, the first time, without heroic expectations for the character played by Harrison Ford (Deckard). He is the movie star. He is the Humphrey Bogart of the film, right away. (This was made even more clear by the lamentable voice-over narration of the original version.) And he's on the trail of the powerful, intelligent killers. Yeah! Then, slowly, the discomfort sets in. These killers have memories, they want to live, really. Their whole goal is to somehow live longer. They show fear, they run, they panic and die just the same as us. Their deaths, one by one, are each horrible. (Recall Pris placing the veil over her face, like a bridal veil, waiting for her dying true love to return to her, for perhaps just another day or two of their desperate love, only to have her home invaded by the gun-wielding man who kills her, messily, clumsily, slowly, just before her lover can return to save her.) Why are we rooting for this man? (And of course, by this point we're not even sure he is a (hu)man.) So even before we get the confrontation with Roy Batty we're a little destabilized by the whole thing. But then we start to feel like, okay, I've got a bead on this scene. Batty killed Sebastian, and he was just a sweet little guy, so I'm clearly still supposed to be rooting for Deckard here, even if he is a bit if a small-minded jerk. But one last time the film subverts our expectations, with Deckard battered from the start, just fleeing for his life, Batty with any number of chances to finish him off. And in the end Batty saves him. Why? Again, we have many options. Did he know he was dying and not want to die alone? Did he know that Deckard was a replicant and want to leave him alive for that reason? Did he feel like by sharing his memories with Deckard at least those few tears wouldn't be "lost...in rain"? (Thumbs-up to the screenwriters, by the way, for choosing "like tears in rain" over "like tears in the rain". The first is poetic, the second cliche.) Was it perhaps some combination of the three reasons?

5) Limitations: Well, as mentioned, parts of the soundtrack are overblown or downright cheesy. The effects, though good, are allowed to dominate a few too many scenes. (Flying cars are cool. We get it.) Sean Young may be a good choice to play a non-human, but maybe a more skilled actress might have been better able to play a "more human than human" replicant. M. Emmet Walsh is a great actor (see Blood Simple if you haven't already -- or wait, since it's a Coen film it's sure to get shown sooner or later on a Tuesday night) but his role as the chief is pretty by the numbers.

But all in all, it's a pretty cool film, that actually preserves much of the "what is the nature of reality" and "what really is consciousness" explorations that one should expect from any good Philip K. Dick adaptation. (Even if you've seen the movie, Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is well worth reading. Quick one, too.)

Please, join the discussion in the comments. Or just stay tuned for future intros and discussions.