Trevor Tremaine: Response to Bladerunner

(This is one of my favorite films and it is based on a novel by one of my favorite authors. Trevor provides a good context for the film while mapping out some of its themes, so I thought it would help to provide some links to people/films/books/terms for those that have not heard of them before--Michael)



I don't know if it's my aversion to "classics" and/or "blockbusters," or my fear that a big name director like Ridley Scott would have massacred the work of my beloved psychedelic/science fiction icon Philip K. Dick (a lesser work as "Androids Dream..." may be), but I had been subconsciously neglecting to watch Blade Runner (Scott, 1982) for a long time. I started it once, some years ago, was not feeling the languid pace and the overwhelming atmospherics, and popped in some more instantly gratifying fare (They Live, I think it was). However, as it was one of the few movies meeting the criteria of our "Dark Visions of the Future" theme that I either hadn't seen or had interest in seeing, I decided to give it another shot.

First, I gotta give credit where credit is due. I guess I was expecting a pure genre film, sci-fi actioner brimming with unambiguous yet somehow unsatisfying social commentary that misses the point altogether of its source material. I was wrong. Blade Runner lies more in the camp of sci-fi works such as 2001: A Space Odyssey in that the effects and setpieces are impressive, but never gratuitous; they are crucial the the tone of the movie and wholly believable. And the Director's Cut anyway (can't vouch for the TC) is quite faithful to Dick's story and never bludgeons the viewer over the head with patronizing explanations or voiceovers. The narrative has a natural flow.

Scott's thorough rendering of Los Angeles, 2019, says more than any voiceover or cheesy soliloquy could say, anyway. His painterly images are of a world where man's obsession with dominion over nature, not excluding his own race, has consumed him. The city is a blasted, industrial hellscape in which unchecked commerce and crime are offensively ubiquitous. The earth itself is in the throes of a runaway greenhouse effect.

The film concerns a race of manufactured human clones/androids called Replicants. Members of an advanced generation (Nexus) of Replicants have become violent and rebellious. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a special officer of a rank which gives its name to the film, is charged with tracking these rogues and "retiring" them. Deckard is a hardboiled, hard-drinking detective straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel; indeed, the story veers anachronistically into film noir, despite the futuristic setpieces.

Over the course of Deckard's assignment, questions arise about the definition of a human (the Replicants are essentially manufactured slaves; at the denuoment, after an epic fight between Deckard and the rogue Replicant leader Roy, the dying humanoid taunts the detective, "Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."), and the nature of memory and self-awareness (the Replicants are implanted with false "memories"... in the words of their manufacturer, "Give them a past, create a pillow for their emotions; consequently we can control them
better.")

I enjoyed the film for the most part, although there were some overt flaws. A scene in which Deckard "woos" Rachael, the Replicant love interest, is not given the (to quote the film) "emotional pillow" it needs to be effective... or maybe that's the point: that neither possess an actual capacity to feel, so they are naturally a match made in heaven. Ford hams at up a bit when impersonating an persistent bureaucrat in an attempt to ensnare one of his suspects, and the scene is also a bit unconvincing (and a little annoying).

The ending (which I will not spoil for those of you who haven't seen the movie) is delightfully ambiguous (again... in the Director's Cut). While not exactly of the "mind fuck" caliber (thank God), it does give one a new perspective upon repeated viewings.