chesneycat (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} chesneycat) wrote,@ 2008-02-11 10:59:00 |
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| Entry tags: | films, sf |
"It's too bad she won't live; but then again, who does?"
Deduct ten points if you don't know what I'm talking about yet.
Jez and I went to a screening of Blade Runner: the Final cut in our local Arts Cinema last night. We've seen both the previous versions, but never on the big screen before, and we certainly weren't disappointed.
The original version is a classic for so many reasons. The voiceover narration, later removed, was perhaps more necessary at the time it was released, when the general audience was less familiar with the genre tropes that this film exemplifies. In this version, particularly in a cinema, the Vangelis soundtrack does a lot of the talking, more than making up for the voiceover's absence, which was never really necessary. Besides, I always felt it was a little heavy-handed in places. The film, carried by the ringing electronic sounds, seems somehow brighter and more colourful than I remember, and the city and its people more beautiful while still being horrifically dystopian.
You only see the sun once during the whole film, when Deckard meets Rachel for the first time at the top of the Tyrrell building. That whole scene... the expensive perfection of Rachel and the owl, the pinnacle of riches and tehnology, the wonder of what they've achieved... and the crushed and emptying city beneath them, all of it glittering brightly in the sunlight. Of course it's too bright to see the truth of things. Down in the decaying underside, things are different. The city, probably the whole planet, is in the midst of the biggest disapora it's ever known. Immigrants, emigrants, and those stuck between the two states seem to make up most of the population, alongside the poor, the stubborn, the downtrodden. The environment is clearly fucked, society in general looking in just as shoddy a state, but even so, mankind is capable of wonders and is striding across the stars. Except, most of them aren't. Small lives, small opportunities, fear, corruption, colonial propaganda...
The replicants, the city, and the wider natural and social environments all seem to me to be facets of the same stone. Brutal technology, wondrously capable, driven to the limits of human endeavour, beautiful and oh so terribly, gloriously wrong. They are made beings, designed, and for all their awareness and chaotic free will they are still the products of their creators. It's depressing how believable it all is at times, that nothing we make of ourselves will ever be free of humanity's darkest impulses - but in a way that makes it all the more optimistic. Roy has lived, he's done questionable things enough to damn any soul, but the desire to do more and be more is far more inspiring than Deckard's clinical retirement of the other replicants we meet in the film. 'Revel in your time', Tyrrell told him (and that's a well chosen name if ever there was one), which was a horrifically poor choice of things to say as much as it was honest. Trying to take away Roy's self-doubt, diminishing his desire for further life, absolving him of responsibility for his actions, all of that's in there, and it makes him more of a thing than a person. And yet, the same contradiction is still there. Revel in your time. Live. Be all that you can be. How it's interpreted by Roy, how it was meant by Tyrrell, well it all depends on what they think of each other. Flawed, arrogant humanity facing flawed, arrogant humanity.
Anyway, that's why I life the character of Gaff most of all, the ambiguous origami-littering manipulator behind the scenes, because he's the only person who seems to see the whole, what's going wrong and what's worthwhile. Him, and the reintroduction of the unicorn scenes. There's three of them, not just the two most obvious ones - look out for the model in JF Sebastien's crumbling apartment. Those things, Gaff's departing line, and Rachel's suggestion that Deckard runs the VK test on himself are the only snippets that suggest that Deckard too may not be as human as he believes himself to be. I think it'd work better if they'd been a bit more subtle with the pupil reflections of all the obvious replicants, but all you need is the seed of doubt. Has Deckard murdered his own kind? Is he who he believes himself to be? What kind of life has he been living prior to meeting Rachel, Roy and all the rest?
Rachel won't live, but who does?
Roy did. And Deckard probably will too, now, though whether he has months or decades left is anyone's guess. But that doesn't matter for him anymore, does it?
The original version is a classic for so many reasons. The voiceover narration, later removed, was perhaps more necessary at the time it was released, when the general audience was less familiar with the genre tropes that this film exemplifies. In this version, particularly in a cinema, the Vangelis soundtrack does a lot of the talking, more than making up for the voiceover's absence, which was never really necessary. Besides, I always felt it was a little heavy-handed in places. The film, carried by the ringing electronic sounds, seems somehow brighter and more colourful than I remember, and the city and its people more beautiful while still being horrifically dystopian.
You only see the sun once during the whole film, when Deckard meets Rachel for the first time at the top of the Tyrrell building. That whole scene... the expensive perfection of Rachel and the owl, the pinnacle of riches and tehnology, the wonder of what they've achieved... and the crushed and emptying city beneath them, all of it glittering brightly in the sunlight. Of course it's too bright to see the truth of things. Down in the decaying underside, things are different. The city, probably the whole planet, is in the midst of the biggest disapora it's ever known. Immigrants, emigrants, and those stuck between the two states seem to make up most of the population, alongside the poor, the stubborn, the downtrodden. The environment is clearly fucked, society in general looking in just as shoddy a state, but even so, mankind is capable of wonders and is striding across the stars. Except, most of them aren't. Small lives, small opportunities, fear, corruption, colonial propaganda...
The replicants, the city, and the wider natural and social environments all seem to me to be facets of the same stone. Brutal technology, wondrously capable, driven to the limits of human endeavour, beautiful and oh so terribly, gloriously wrong. They are made beings, designed, and for all their awareness and chaotic free will they are still the products of their creators. It's depressing how believable it all is at times, that nothing we make of ourselves will ever be free of humanity's darkest impulses - but in a way that makes it all the more optimistic. Roy has lived, he's done questionable things enough to damn any soul, but the desire to do more and be more is far more inspiring than Deckard's clinical retirement of the other replicants we meet in the film. 'Revel in your time', Tyrrell told him (and that's a well chosen name if ever there was one), which was a horrifically poor choice of things to say as much as it was honest. Trying to take away Roy's self-doubt, diminishing his desire for further life, absolving him of responsibility for his actions, all of that's in there, and it makes him more of a thing than a person. And yet, the same contradiction is still there. Revel in your time. Live. Be all that you can be. How it's interpreted by Roy, how it was meant by Tyrrell, well it all depends on what they think of each other. Flawed, arrogant humanity facing flawed, arrogant humanity.
Anyway, that's why I life the character of Gaff most of all, the ambiguous origami-littering manipulator behind the scenes, because he's the only person who seems to see the whole, what's going wrong and what's worthwhile. Him, and the reintroduction of the unicorn scenes. There's three of them, not just the two most obvious ones - look out for the model in JF Sebastien's crumbling apartment. Those things, Gaff's departing line, and Rachel's suggestion that Deckard runs the VK test on himself are the only snippets that suggest that Deckard too may not be as human as he believes himself to be. I think it'd work better if they'd been a bit more subtle with the pupil reflections of all the obvious replicants, but all you need is the seed of doubt. Has Deckard murdered his own kind? Is he who he believes himself to be? What kind of life has he been living prior to meeting Rachel, Roy and all the rest?
Rachel won't live, but who does?
Roy did. And Deckard probably will too, now, though whether he has months or decades left is anyone's guess. But that doesn't matter for him anymore, does it?
