Blade Runner: An Essay

This last Wednesday night I saw Blade Runner: The Final Cut - the supposedly "final" of seven versions of the movie (!); this is the one from 2007 that has the restoration of some moments that director Ridley Scott felt were important, and he supervised a total audio/video overhaul from the original source material. It's taken me two full days to really process the movie, which I haven't seen in a few years. Please pardon the length of the review! 

What makes someone a human being? That's the main question explored by Philip K. Dick in his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which Blade Runner derives from. The movie is quite different in many ways, and even the things it keeps from the book are often not really explained - I'll include notes here and there about the stuff that goes unsaid.  

For example: the story takes place in Los Angeles of 2019, which is portrayed in the book as being shrouded in perpetual night thanks to nuclear fallout that sent massive amounts of dust into the atmosphere; as a result, it rains constantly, it has 100+ million people living (dying?) in an urban sprawl, most animals are gone, and the humans remaining on Earth's surface are mostly diseased or otherwise unhealthy. As a result, everyone who can afford it travels to off-world colonies in space, scattered around the galaxy. Anyone left on the surface is presumed to be too poor or too sick or otherwise unfit for the shining future of mankind. 

The look of Blade Runner is justly famous - everything is grainy, wet, black and shining, punctuated by neon, punctuated by trash, punctuated by advertisements; and everything is in motion. Our first glimpse of the city is memorable - a soaring view of mutated skyscrapers, titanic pyramidal buildings, fire erupting from smokestacks, a ruined cityscape that managed to seethe with light and life despite the decay. 

Against that backdrop we meet Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) - a retired blade runner, or cop whose specialty is hunting down and killing replicants - androids created to be "more human than human," but whose super strength and agility are exploited for cheap slave labor out in the far reaches of space. In the world of Blade Runner, governments have fallen and corporations reign in their place - the dollar is truly almighty - people are valued solely for their monetary value. 

This corporate atmosphere pervades every aspect of the movie; killing the androids is called "retirement," emphasizing their removal as gainful "employees" from the predatory corporate chain. The dismal, trash-strewn, benighted streets of Los Angeles appear to be one sprawling marketplace: everything is purchasable, a commodity. And the highest purpose that the Tyrell Corporation (the company who makes artificial beings) can imagine for their creatures is commerce: mining and hard labor in service of financial gain. Even the artificial animals they create are status symbols of wealth and power. 

It's significant that Tyrell himself - the head of the corporation and the man who designs the replicants - owns a synthetic owl, the classic symbol of wisdom: but here the wisdom is artificial, and the owl lives in a small room, flying from one perch to another: a captive, limited wisdom. Tyrell even looks like an owl - the owl's giant reflective eyes are mirrored in Tyrell's massive reflective glasses. 

So we meet Rick Deckard on the grimy streets of future Los Angeles. In the original theatrical cut of the movie, he's given a voiceover by actor Harrison Ford that explains a lot about his personality - he's cold, distant, disengaged from his emotions, nihilistic, fatalistic - a true noir detective. In this Final Cut there is no voiceover and he is much harder to read: his expressions are either blank or sarcastic, and it's only be inference that his empty inner life is revealed. He remains on Earth presumably because he sees no point in leaving - wherever you go, there you are. Perhaps in true noir fashion he feels most comfortable among the doomed, downtrodden people who remain. 

Deckard is called back into duty by his old commander Bryant - a man who wears a perpetual wolfish smile as he describes that six replicants from a mining colony have gone rogue - they killed all the colonists, stole a shuttle, and have returned to Earth for reasons unknown. Two of them attempted to storm the massive Tyrell corporation headquarters, but were killed by the electric fences. The other four - Zhora, Leon, Pris, and Roy - are at large, and Deckard needs to "retire" them. Deckard reluctantly agrees, although it's difficult to say exactly why - perhaps out of a sense of civic duty (he sees the escaped replicants as public hazards), perhaps to hold on to some remaining direction in life.

In a famous sequence, the commander shows Deckard video of something we have already seen in the beginning of the movie - one of the replicants being given a "Voight-Kampff test" - a special test that measures empathy through a series of emotion-producing questions. The idea is that replicants are exactly like us except they can't empathize properly, and their failure to respond to provocative questions will give them away. In another significant moment, one of the replicants (Leon, played by Brion James) becomes enraged and murderous when asked the question: "Tell me the good things about your mother." ... having no mother, Leon kills the interrogator and escapes. 

Shortly after this, Deckard visits the Tyrell headquarters and is asked to administer the V-K test on another employee of Tyrell's - Rachel (played by Sean Young). After dozens of questions, he finally realizes she is a replicant, and confronts Tyrell. Tyrell tells him there is a new generation of replicant - Nexus 6 - and they are the best/most accurate copy of humans so far. In fact they are so much like us humans that they begin to develop their own raw, primitive emotions after a while - so Tyrell has given them a strict four-year lifespan, hardcoded into their DNA. 

Deckard is shortly thereafter visited by Rachel in his (shadowy, stark) apartment. His apartment, like every space in this movie, is a reflection of the inhabitant: filled with darkness, with primitive stone impressions on the walls, the only sustenance appears to be alcohol. His only object of culture is a piano, covered in old photographs - these are never explained, which is interesting because he seems like the least sentimental, least reflective person in the movie. In fact the visit from Rachel - the first of three in the movie - is notable for how they are separated repeatedly by walls, doors, shadows. He withdraws to a chair, insults her callously for being a replicant, she leaves angrily. Each future visit sees him open up more and more until in the final visit he no longer insults or commands her, but treats her as an equal - but that's later, we'll get there. 

The key question that everyone always asks is: is Deckard himself a replicant? In the original novel the answer is emphatically No. Harrison Ford also says No (see below). Ridley Scott seems to want to say Yes. The presence of a sequel with Deckard in it (taking place 30 years later) says No as well. It's an important question, because it spins all the events of the second half of the movie one way or another.

If Deckard is a human being, this movie (in my opinion) gains an extra layer of meaning: Deckard is brought out of his emotional coldness and disengagement by his exposure to the lust and appreciation for life that Roy and the other replicants have. He gains the knowledge of what it means to "be human" - he observes the full range of human emotions in his interactions with the replicants: fear, anger, regret, sorrow, empathy. We see this affect him steadily, especially in his interactions with Rachel. At first he is flinty, sarcastic, and dismissive. Next, he is forceful, wanting to connect but without finesse, without understanding or compassion. Finally, he engages in meaningful dialog: "Do you love me?" ... "I love you" ... "Do you trust me?" ... "I trust you." Deckard finally listens - he wants human connection at last.

If Deckard is a replicant... well, the movie thins out a bit, thematically. Instead of a dissertation on the meaning of humanity, it becomes a rather ironic and sardonic thesis on the irresponsibility of man regarding his profligate creations: we create one problem in our greed (replicant slaves with emotions), and solve the problem with *another* replicant. Any lessons he learns in the movie are doomed to be lost - a grim outcome. Ridley Scott attempts to influence the viewer by showing the policeman Goff (Edward James Olmos) - who is constantly creating small origami creatures (a miniature example of the overarching theme of what it means to create life) - leave a small origami unicorn for Deckard. Earlier in the film, Deckard has a dream about a unicorn - was the dream implanted in him? That's what Scott wants us to think. If that's true, both Deckard and Rachel are doomed to short lives as they escape at the end - a very noir conclusion indeed.  

But there are holes in the Deckard-as-replicant theory. First, all the replicants are between 2 to 4 years old - and thus although their intellects are mature, their budding emotions are those of toddlers - raw, gigantic, hard to integrate, momentary, difficult. They flicker from one feeling to another, often surprised at themselves. Deckard exhibits none of this: he is stolid, taciturn, consistent. When his emotions finally emerge, they are fully developed and have been hard-won. 

The movie shows the replicants all handling their inner life in different ways: Leon fixates on strange photographs that symbolize his feelings; Zhora expresses herself with her body, as a dancer; Pris twitches from one raw feeling to another, moment to moment; Roy ... magnificent Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer) tries the hardest to understand himself and integrate all his feelings into a coherent whole. More mature than the others, he seeks to understand his origins, and what it means to be alive. 

When Roy finally figures out a way to meet his creator, Tyrell, he is a kaleidoscope of intense emotions: regret ("I've done ... questionable things."), fear and desire (his anxious scientific conversation about extending his lifespan), anger ("You were built as well as we could make you" says Tyrell. "But not to last," sneers Roy), sarcasm ("You've done extraordinary things" Tyrell tells him; Roy replies "Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for)... and finally a strange combination of love and rage as he murders his "father": an emphatic rejection of the callous way he was made for commercial slavery and banished to a violent life, retribution against the patronizing, condescending, misunderstanding attitude that Tyrell takes with him, combined with a strange appreciation of Tyrell as his maker, Tyrell whose mind his is modeled on. It's an intensely Oedipal moment - he crushes Tyrell's skull while kissing him. For good measure, he also murders the man who helped craft his body - a more morally ambiguous murder, an extension of his anger and unfulfilled desires. 

Of course, the key scene in the movie is when Roy - alone at last following the violent, screeching, insect-like death of Pris (Darryl Hannah), who seems to explode in rage at her death - begins to stalk Deckard around the penthouse of the Bradbury building. After a game of cat-and-mouse where he jokes about Deckard's lack of fairness in using a gun, a terrified Deckard jumps across the roof to escape him, ending up hanging for his life from a slick stone cornice. Instead of letting him fall, Roy grabs him and lifts him to the rooftop. Then he utters his famous speech, one of the most famous in cinema: "I've seen things ... you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All these moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain. Time to die." 

I once read that Rutger Hauer hated the original speech (which he abbreviated), and called it called "opera talk," and also asked an interesting question: "Are these even his memories, or were they implanted?" Which raises a disturbing philosophical implication: in a world where memories can be implanted, how can anyone know if they are "real" or not? The sequel explores this in more depth. It's worth mentioning that there are all kinds of interesting details in this scene - he breaks Deckard's fingers as retribution for Deckard killing his friends; then Roy's own hand betrays him and curls involuntarily as he begins to die. He temporarily gains control again by piercing it with a nail - Christ imagery, indicating his grown awareness of his full nature ("more human than human"), and echoing a famous poem by Blake that he quotes earlier in the film about angels. 

Then Roy's four-year lifespan ends, and he dies. During this speech he is holding a dove (what appears to be a real, non-synthetic bird, and another Christ symbol), that escapes when his grip releases: a direct counterpart to the synthetic owl kept in captivity by Tyrell, and a statement about Roy's connection to and appreciation of life at last. Roy, who has murdered many in his quest for more life, finally understands what life means to him - an appreciation of every creature's existence. He explicitly tells Deckard - his tireless pursuer, his would-be killer - that he identifies with him in these final moments: "Quite an experience, to live in fear, isn't it?" He chooses to save Deckard and preserve life. He serves, most importantly, as a model to Deckard.

Until the moment, Deckard is an agent of corporate-hired death and destruction throughout the whole film - he disregards the replicants budding humanity, sees them as a "hazard," a problem. But when he is saved by Roy, and shares in Roy's final thoughts, Deckard experiences a critical transformation: he chooses to become instead an agent of life, of hope. He finds Rachel, and expresses his feelings to her for the first time. He escapes with her ("north") to an unknown future, despite knowing her own time is limited. He now has the lust for life and future that Roy exhibited. Deckard wants more - no more Los Angeles, no more solitude. 

Anyway, what an incredibly rich movie... it was difficult to really take in all at once. So many things happen - this essay could be twice as long, easily. I haven't even talked about the music (by Vangelis) or the curious "toymaker" character J. F. Sebastian (William Sanderson). Could go through this movie scene by scene and find things to talk about. 

Interestingly, it was not a hit when it was released in May of 1982: it competed directly with E.T., Stark Trek II, Conan the Barbarian, and Carpenter's The Thing. Audiences and critics complained it was slow and there wasn't enough action (partly a marketing issue). It made respectable money, but wasn't a hit; most of the profits came later, as a cult classic, on video and TV. 

The original cut of the movie tested very negatively in Dallas and Denver, which is why the studio (Warner Bros) added the voiceover narration. Harrison Ford was pissed about it, partly because he respected Scott's vision and partly because they had called him back when he was preparing for Return of the Jedi, and he still dislikes the voiceover to this day - although he steadfastly has said over the years since that Deckard is a human, and that's how the film was sold to him when he signed up. 

Another fun fact: Martin Scorsese really liked the book and was interested in making it in the 70s, but decided against optioning the book so that he could make Taxi Driver instead. 

As for Ridley Scott, what a run he had: The Duelists, Alien, Blade Runner... which he followed up with Legend, an unusual fantasy movie with Tom Cruise, Tim Curry, and Mia Sara that barely broke even, and then the movie Someone to Watch Over Me, which lost money. It wasn't until 1989's Black Rain with Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia that he really had a big hit ($30 budget, $130+ million box office); incidentally, that movie (set mostly in Tokyo) has a similar look and feel as Blade Runner.