Pan left two degrees. Ok, zoom in. Hold on Ridley Scott…. Now, take a picture…
For a generation of filmmakers, there is a sharp division between Before Blade Runner and After Blade Runner. In 1982, Ridley Scott’s primordial vision became part of our very essence. Looking back, as I anticipate (with a mixture of eagerness and dread) the release of Blade Runner 2049, the vivid memory of the original, like a first love, will never fade. For me, it is more than a memory. Ridley Scott’s vision still has the power to make me explore my existence, my very self;
I’m still haunted by the penultimate moment of the film as Roy Batty, lead replicant, played by the eccentric Rutger Hauer in the smeared makeup of the tragic clown, his Christlike wrist pierced with a nail, awaits his death. As tears and the rain course down his face, he defends his life saying,
I've… seen things... you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate... All those… moments… will be lost, in time, like [chokes up] tears… in… rain. Time… to die.
To be or not to be, here is the cinematic answer. We as audience, and Harrison Ford as his would-be assassin, Deckard, can only watch silently. There is nothing to say. The white noise of modern life holds for one frail moment, as we ponder the deepest of concerns … life, death, human dignity. And through our own tears of rain, we console him: Rest Roy, the violence will soon be over; you are one of us, exposed, weak; now sleep, dream.
We who stand on street corners holding our walkie talkies in one hand and a blood-stained, crumpled shooting script in another, shouting through bullhorns to crews, commanding our troops with raw passion, tossing through sleepless nights, have a bond with Scott that few others could ever understand.
Frank Capra once said “I love to tell stories on a wall in a dark room in front of 500 people.” That credo has the deceptive simplicity of a Capra film. But simplicity in a great film is always deceptive. To understand, just watch a documentary on the making of Blade Runner, or Citizen Kane, or any masterpiece. No theme park rides will ever be made from these films. Ridley Scott was the auteur who breathed new life into Sci Fi. In Blade Runner he created the noir dystopia and imbued it with such complexities that it became an inextricable part of film culture.
It was based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but in the end had little to do with the final version of Blade Runner. The book seems an excuse for Scott, who had just lost a brother to cancer, make a film about life and death. Every frame is infused with existential questions. The film echoes the words of the German existential philosopher Martin Heidegger: “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life— and only then will I be free to become myself.”
Seen through the cinema mirror of replicants and forsaken lives, it's human dignity that hangs in the balance. The film’s neon landscapes, its sense of time passing, its synthesized strains by Vangelis all convey a poetic longing to penetrate life’s mysteries. And key to the film’s indelible mark are the performances that Scott, against all odds, was able to pull out of Ford, Hauer, Sean Young and Darryl Hannah. Acting in a film of lofty ambition had its effect. Later we learned of Ford's dislike for the process, but he like the rest of the cast has never been better.
I’ve known lonely midnights when directing faulty smoke machines, contending with budgets and disgruntled crews. It takes sheer will. Most of us end up with broken masterpieces. But add a man of overarching vision, and you end with new life like a Blade Runner.
For the millions of us who watched that story on the wall, we can still see the rooftop rain trickling down the fallen and fading Batty, we still hear his bated breathing. We know that our art, like our life, is fragile and fleeting, just like our chance to experience the transcendence of Blade Runner. But we will head to the theater to see Blade Runner, 2049 because it will sustain the memories of what might have been. What might still be. What choices we would make yet again.
FADE OUT SLOWLY