I discover Blade Runner
Yes, I am that bizarre scifi junkie who has never seen Blade Runner.
Until tonight. They have rereleased the director's cut in the most awesome cinema in town, the one with the huge huge screen and red curtains and so myself and Mr. Mousie went.
Blade Runner, based on a Philip K. Dick story, is a 1982 Ridley Scott movie, (according to imdb) summarized thus: in Los Angeles, 2019, Rick Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specialises in terminating replicants, artifical intelligence indistinguishable from humans. Originally in retirement, he is forced to re-enter the force when four replicants escape from an offworld colony to Earth. OK, to sum it up thus is to say that Lord of the Rings is a movie about a bunch of short guys with a jewelry fetish.
My God. MY GOD.
It's a feverish dark dream, both a scifi film noir and a meditation on what it means to be human and even (if you want to read it that way) an essay in atheism. It's also strikingly beautiful and visceral. This is the movie that reminded me why movies are made and what they can be: make you think and make you feel and change you. I was literally shivering when it was done and Mr. Mousie and I spent the last hour discussing it. I have also finally understood why people loved Harrison Ford. I mean, I liked him OK, but never got the fuss (except for Star Wars, but it's Star Wars, you know. It's a special case). But here, it was if I was suddenly woken up to his vulnerability and intensity, and desperate charm. I adored him. But the movie was stolen, for me, by Rutger Hauer and Darryl Hannah, replicants Roy and Pris.
The visuals for this movie are incredible. Like nothing I've seen before. It's criminal the arts designer didn't get every award in creation. Also, this movie looks and feels like nothing else on earth. You couldn't tell when it was made, at all. Most movies from 1980s have dated, but this looks otherworldly: visual overload through film noir filter of dreams (no scene takes place in the daylight).
I find the underpinning theme of replicants being human, of what it is to be human, to possess soul, to be a person, something that stays and stays and stays (and yet it's never overt, there is no big speechy discussion).
Because there is no question that the four escaped replicants, as well as Rachael, the replicant that Deckard (Ford) falls for, are as much a person as any human, and even more so. They have souls, they feel love and joy and pain and anger. They are people. Now, whether they are people who should ne in jail or get the death penalty for murders is a separate issue, but there is no doubt that shooting them is murder, not 'retirement.' Actually, I can understand their killing of 26 shuttle crew to get to Earth. Look at it this way: how can they view humans as anything but enemy. They are the ones who make them into slaves, give them only four years to live, deny their personhood. Hell, Pris (Hannah) was made to be a whore. Roy (Hauer) and Pris and the other two are people with nothing to lose. They were not treated as people, why should they treat humans any differently? When you create beings with nothing to lose, you get brutality and slave rebellions in response.
The interesting things, the replicants are the most human characters in the movie, except for Deckard, and there is an open question at the end whether he is a replicant himself (I think he is. There is the fact that he is all alone, no family, and that the corporation started implanting memories, and Rachael asks him if he'd ever taken the test, and the fact that the cop seemed to know he dreamed of unicorns, as if those dreams were put there). The humans, in fact, live vicariously through replicants: they design all these beings to do amazing things, while they themselves are isolated and sit in their solitude: designing eyes all day, or living in a house surrounded by dolls, or playing fantom chess. No wonder they are all 'there is some of me in you' when they meet the escaped replicants. That is the closest they themselves, ironically, come to living, to doing.
All the humans are isolated: even in the crowds, there are no couples, no mother and child. It's a mass of people all huddled into themselves, desperate for contact. Part of the reason Deckard gloms so onto Rachael isn't just attaction or love but a desperate need to connect, to escape solitude. This is the same reason the genetic designer lets Pris (and we realize later he knows she is a replicant) in. The humans are the cripples, in a way. They are grey, sleepwalking through life. The most vivid emotions are replicant. Faceless mass of tired humanity or the raw scene of Roy kissing dead Pris' lips, and mourning her, a sheer visceral reaction of love and loss. (I think that is the most intense scene in the movie. I loved them together, totally shipped them. So damaged and so alive and somehow that they can find love with each other in the middle of all of this, and with all that they have done and been made to do, is amazing). What is more human? What is more full of feeling?
All the feeling of tenderness and connection is connected either with replicants or through them. I am thinking of the love scene between Ford and Rachael: it's so tender, and passionate, and intense. And Rachael is a replicant. And Ford knows it. In a way, I don't think Ford ever had to deal with this sort of thing before. He never was faced with the fact that they are people. You got the sense that it was always the way it was with the first replicant. You hunt them down and kill them, like an errant machine. (And even then he was fed up with the job, and was only gotten to do this because he was told he is either a cop or nothing, a mass of slave humanity). But on this job, he got close. He saw the photographs one of the replicants kept on himself. He saw the humanity in Roy (when Roy pulled him up at the end, it's such an amazing human thing to do: Roy doesn't kill him then, even to avenge Pris, because what is the point, he himself is almost dead, but also because, and that is what makes it so human, he doesn't want to die alone. When he talks about things he's seen and how when he is dead, it will be all gone. Is there anything more human than this?) And of course, Ford fell in love with Rachael (with her he is not on guard, he can be wounded, he can be hurt, he can be human). Rachael, who saves him. Rachael, who was implanted false memories, and didn't even know she wasn't human until the test. And that is the thing. He cannot love Rachael, but think that killing others like her is not murder. If she is a person and he loves her, if she can love and be loved, then the others are beings with souls too.
And of course, he choses not to live in fear, as Roy said (Roy is right, the people are in fear, not really alive). He takes her with him, and they go on he run, even if that means he will be killed shortly. But that is the thing. He is not sleepwalking, he would have lived. And however little time they have together (in best case scenario, less than four years, most a replicant can live), they can feel, experience and be.
As the replicants have lived. It is clear that Roy at least had done some amazing things. And you cannot create a person, an exceptional person, and then when their job is done, just put them back into a box and tell them 'good toy.' In a way, what a horrific waste. All those brilliant minds, and what did they do? Create people who have an expiration date. Just send in normal people to do things and give them a wheelbarrow and some heat-resistant gloves. All this work, and to do what? To create a whore? (Pris) or a laborer? Or soldier?
I got shivers during the scene where Roy confronts his maker. (I do NOT feel sorry for his death). I was especially struck by the maker's response to when Roy said he had done questionable things. Of course he had, he was a soldier, and then he went on the lam, killing people. And then the maker's response that this is OK, doesn't matter. That is the total denial of his personhood, because that is the thing, you can't have morals, things you've done and seen can't bother you because you are a machine. Only you are not. Denial of guilt, of responsibility, is a denial of your soul. This really brings in the issue of God. What is the difference between replicants and humans? Replicants were created by engineers, but if you are religious, you believe humans were created by God. The issue is not how and why you were created but whether you think and feel. When the maker tells Roy it's OK the replicants have a short life, they burn brighter, the thing is...they were not given a choice. It's not as if they are offered a long life doing paperwork or exciting short life. Agency has been taken from them.
But you know, humans in this world...are sleepwalking through life and death and pain. None of them are even afraid or stunned by dying. Except for Deckard, who might be a replicant himself. Ford is tormented, and hates what he is doing, and is clinging to hope and salvation in the form of Rachael: connection to another person is the most one can have in this world. And if Rachael is a replicant, does it matter? She thinks, she feels, she is full of tenderness and fear. She looks like a pre-Rafaelite madonna with her hair down. More human than human. When he asks her to tell him she wants to kiss him, it's a shatteringly human moment. And he asks her, at the end, if she loves him. He does not see her as a person despite her replicant status, he just sees her as a person, accepts her autonomy and soul. In which case, there is no difference between replicants and humans, for him. In which case, does it matter, even, if he is a replicant himself? Not really. But it does mean that what the corporation is doing is unconscionable.
There is so much in this movie I could discuss, like the Messopotamian look of it: from the zigurrats to Deckard's apartment with angular designs, to LA as hell, with literally flames in the sky.
There is of course, the topic of comparing it to A.I., where once again, the issue of responsibility for your creations is raised. The boy in A.I. is both more and less complicated: he is a child, not someone who has killed. But he has less of a personality, yet.
Oh, I could talk for hours.
It's the best scifi movie I've ever seen. I am still shaking. And I must see it again.
MV for it:
Until tonight. They have rereleased the director's cut in the most awesome cinema in town, the one with the huge huge screen and red curtains and so myself and Mr. Mousie went.
Blade Runner, based on a Philip K. Dick story, is a 1982 Ridley Scott movie, (according to imdb) summarized thus: in Los Angeles, 2019, Rick Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specialises in terminating replicants, artifical intelligence indistinguishable from humans. Originally in retirement, he is forced to re-enter the force when four replicants escape from an offworld colony to Earth. OK, to sum it up thus is to say that Lord of the Rings is a movie about a bunch of short guys with a jewelry fetish.
My God. MY GOD.
It's a feverish dark dream, both a scifi film noir and a meditation on what it means to be human and even (if you want to read it that way) an essay in atheism. It's also strikingly beautiful and visceral. This is the movie that reminded me why movies are made and what they can be: make you think and make you feel and change you. I was literally shivering when it was done and Mr. Mousie and I spent the last hour discussing it. I have also finally understood why people loved Harrison Ford. I mean, I liked him OK, but never got the fuss (except for Star Wars, but it's Star Wars, you know. It's a special case). But here, it was if I was suddenly woken up to his vulnerability and intensity, and desperate charm. I adored him. But the movie was stolen, for me, by Rutger Hauer and Darryl Hannah, replicants Roy and Pris.
The visuals for this movie are incredible. Like nothing I've seen before. It's criminal the arts designer didn't get every award in creation. Also, this movie looks and feels like nothing else on earth. You couldn't tell when it was made, at all. Most movies from 1980s have dated, but this looks otherworldly: visual overload through film noir filter of dreams (no scene takes place in the daylight).
I find the underpinning theme of replicants being human, of what it is to be human, to possess soul, to be a person, something that stays and stays and stays (and yet it's never overt, there is no big speechy discussion).
Because there is no question that the four escaped replicants, as well as Rachael, the replicant that Deckard (Ford) falls for, are as much a person as any human, and even more so. They have souls, they feel love and joy and pain and anger. They are people. Now, whether they are people who should ne in jail or get the death penalty for murders is a separate issue, but there is no doubt that shooting them is murder, not 'retirement.' Actually, I can understand their killing of 26 shuttle crew to get to Earth. Look at it this way: how can they view humans as anything but enemy. They are the ones who make them into slaves, give them only four years to live, deny their personhood. Hell, Pris (Hannah) was made to be a whore. Roy (Hauer) and Pris and the other two are people with nothing to lose. They were not treated as people, why should they treat humans any differently? When you create beings with nothing to lose, you get brutality and slave rebellions in response.
The interesting things, the replicants are the most human characters in the movie, except for Deckard, and there is an open question at the end whether he is a replicant himself (I think he is. There is the fact that he is all alone, no family, and that the corporation started implanting memories, and Rachael asks him if he'd ever taken the test, and the fact that the cop seemed to know he dreamed of unicorns, as if those dreams were put there). The humans, in fact, live vicariously through replicants: they design all these beings to do amazing things, while they themselves are isolated and sit in their solitude: designing eyes all day, or living in a house surrounded by dolls, or playing fantom chess. No wonder they are all 'there is some of me in you' when they meet the escaped replicants. That is the closest they themselves, ironically, come to living, to doing.
All the humans are isolated: even in the crowds, there are no couples, no mother and child. It's a mass of people all huddled into themselves, desperate for contact. Part of the reason Deckard gloms so onto Rachael isn't just attaction or love but a desperate need to connect, to escape solitude. This is the same reason the genetic designer lets Pris (and we realize later he knows she is a replicant) in. The humans are the cripples, in a way. They are grey, sleepwalking through life. The most vivid emotions are replicant. Faceless mass of tired humanity or the raw scene of Roy kissing dead Pris' lips, and mourning her, a sheer visceral reaction of love and loss. (I think that is the most intense scene in the movie. I loved them together, totally shipped them. So damaged and so alive and somehow that they can find love with each other in the middle of all of this, and with all that they have done and been made to do, is amazing). What is more human? What is more full of feeling?
All the feeling of tenderness and connection is connected either with replicants or through them. I am thinking of the love scene between Ford and Rachael: it's so tender, and passionate, and intense. And Rachael is a replicant. And Ford knows it. In a way, I don't think Ford ever had to deal with this sort of thing before. He never was faced with the fact that they are people. You got the sense that it was always the way it was with the first replicant. You hunt them down and kill them, like an errant machine. (And even then he was fed up with the job, and was only gotten to do this because he was told he is either a cop or nothing, a mass of slave humanity). But on this job, he got close. He saw the photographs one of the replicants kept on himself. He saw the humanity in Roy (when Roy pulled him up at the end, it's such an amazing human thing to do: Roy doesn't kill him then, even to avenge Pris, because what is the point, he himself is almost dead, but also because, and that is what makes it so human, he doesn't want to die alone. When he talks about things he's seen and how when he is dead, it will be all gone. Is there anything more human than this?) And of course, Ford fell in love with Rachael (with her he is not on guard, he can be wounded, he can be hurt, he can be human). Rachael, who saves him. Rachael, who was implanted false memories, and didn't even know she wasn't human until the test. And that is the thing. He cannot love Rachael, but think that killing others like her is not murder. If she is a person and he loves her, if she can love and be loved, then the others are beings with souls too.
And of course, he choses not to live in fear, as Roy said (Roy is right, the people are in fear, not really alive). He takes her with him, and they go on he run, even if that means he will be killed shortly. But that is the thing. He is not sleepwalking, he would have lived. And however little time they have together (in best case scenario, less than four years, most a replicant can live), they can feel, experience and be.
As the replicants have lived. It is clear that Roy at least had done some amazing things. And you cannot create a person, an exceptional person, and then when their job is done, just put them back into a box and tell them 'good toy.' In a way, what a horrific waste. All those brilliant minds, and what did they do? Create people who have an expiration date. Just send in normal people to do things and give them a wheelbarrow and some heat-resistant gloves. All this work, and to do what? To create a whore? (Pris) or a laborer? Or soldier?
I got shivers during the scene where Roy confronts his maker. (I do NOT feel sorry for his death). I was especially struck by the maker's response to when Roy said he had done questionable things. Of course he had, he was a soldier, and then he went on the lam, killing people. And then the maker's response that this is OK, doesn't matter. That is the total denial of his personhood, because that is the thing, you can't have morals, things you've done and seen can't bother you because you are a machine. Only you are not. Denial of guilt, of responsibility, is a denial of your soul. This really brings in the issue of God. What is the difference between replicants and humans? Replicants were created by engineers, but if you are religious, you believe humans were created by God. The issue is not how and why you were created but whether you think and feel. When the maker tells Roy it's OK the replicants have a short life, they burn brighter, the thing is...they were not given a choice. It's not as if they are offered a long life doing paperwork or exciting short life. Agency has been taken from them.
But you know, humans in this world...are sleepwalking through life and death and pain. None of them are even afraid or stunned by dying. Except for Deckard, who might be a replicant himself. Ford is tormented, and hates what he is doing, and is clinging to hope and salvation in the form of Rachael: connection to another person is the most one can have in this world. And if Rachael is a replicant, does it matter? She thinks, she feels, she is full of tenderness and fear. She looks like a pre-Rafaelite madonna with her hair down. More human than human. When he asks her to tell him she wants to kiss him, it's a shatteringly human moment. And he asks her, at the end, if she loves him. He does not see her as a person despite her replicant status, he just sees her as a person, accepts her autonomy and soul. In which case, there is no difference between replicants and humans, for him. In which case, does it matter, even, if he is a replicant himself? Not really. But it does mean that what the corporation is doing is unconscionable.
There is so much in this movie I could discuss, like the Messopotamian look of it: from the zigurrats to Deckard's apartment with angular designs, to LA as hell, with literally flames in the sky.
There is of course, the topic of comparing it to A.I., where once again, the issue of responsibility for your creations is raised. The boy in A.I. is both more and less complicated: he is a child, not someone who has killed. But he has less of a personality, yet.
Oh, I could talk for hours.
It's the best scifi movie I've ever seen. I am still shaking. And I must see it again.
MV for it:
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