Posted by I have a confession to make. The first time I watched Blade Runner, I didn’t like it. I remember the first time I laid eyes on the movie (because nobody forgets the first time they watch Blade Runner) in the summer of 2000. It was a year after The Matrix and I was eager to indulge myself in more science fiction of a punk, futuristic, noir variety that was visually spectacular and full of complex ideas. So, Blade Runner really ought to have been right up my alley.
Instead I was disappointed. Harrison Ford was there. There were special effects that still stood the test of time, including flying cars, which I still hope someday become real but feel as if I should now resign myself to the fact that it’s never going to happen. Why did I not like it as much as should have done? It was probably the lack of action. Blade Runner is a mood piece, a dark, slowly thrilling, melancholy mood piece at that, concerning itself with themes about humanity, life, death, all the while featuring cyborgs (in this case referred to as replicants) who want more “life” because they’re about to die, while in the case of lead character Deckard, irony of ironies, we may have a lead character who is in fact “more human than human”, like his prey throughout the movie. Given that it starred Harrison Ford and was from the director of Alien and Gladiator (which was out in theatres at the time and was brilliant), I guess I expected more of an adrenaline-like charge from it that I didn’t get. I should point out I was sixteen and at an age when I needed action to go with my movies.
The version I watched was the 1992 Director’s Cut (one of only two versions available in the UK at the time, there was of course an alternate international cut that was more violent and then in 2007 we would get The Final Cut) and, like a lot of cult movies airing on British television around this time, was broadcast on Channel 4 with a Mark Kermode (my favourite film critic in the world) hosted documentary right after, featuring interviews with pretty much everyone involved (except Ford, who hadn’t made his peace with the film at the time).
Then, something strange happened around this film that I didn’t like that much. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It stayed there. Its themes, ideas and characters just circling around, never leaving. Roy Batty’s final death speech, played over and over, the sadness of it. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that Deckard was not the clear-cut hero of the film after all, and even more ironically may have just haunted down his own kind and was about to run off with Rachel (Sean Young), only to die somewhere along the way due to a possible “incept date”. Of course, those visuals never left me either, and then there was the music. Vangelis’ score is dreamy and disturbing all at the same time and the way he scores the opening shot, probably the most epic opening shot in all of modern science fiction cinema, never fails to take the breath away. I felt as if the more I played the movie in my mind the more I liked it and then I returned to it and found myself falling in love with it.
As the years have gone on, my appreciation of the film has grown more and more, although there are questionable aspects to the depiction of its female characters; the love scene between Deckard and Rachel borders on assault, whilst Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Zhora’s (Joanne Cassidy) death scenes are way too brutal in comparison to those of Roy and Leon. Maybe it adds to the thematic complexity of the narrative, or maybe I’m just trying to let it get away with too much and find forgiveness for what are genuine problems. It’s possible it’s tipping its hat to the problematic sexual politics of noir thrillers of the past, which this effectively is, it’s just wrapped up in a gorgeously ugly futuristic setting, the shadows and never-ending dark streets now baked in a ghastly neon glow of a futuristic world. After all, Pris and Zhora die villains whilst Batty is allowed a moment of redemption in the form of letting Deckard live and, in his beautifully chosen final words, a death scene which ranks with that of Hal’s in 2001, as well as Spock’s in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which, coincidentally, was also released in the same year.
Those sets, though? Damn, does this movie look impressive. Production designer Laurence G. Paull, art director David Snyder and visual futurist Syd Mead sold the idea of this futuristic Los Angeles perfectly. As someone who has visited the Warner Bros lot in Burbank many times, I can always tell when something is filmed there. With Blade Runner it’s impossible. The set that will forever be Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls to me is unrecognisable as this nightmarish hell hole from which there is no escape, unless you watch the 1982 version with its tacked on happy ending and establishing shots stolen from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Wouldn’t it funny if whilst driving through those gorgeous hills and picturesque mountains, Deckard and Rachel saw the Torrance family driving the other way?
Directed by Ridley Scott, it was his second movie after Alien. It has went done in the books as one of the most difficult movie shoots of all time, which, if you didn’t know, could be easily guessed by the fact there are four versions of the movie out there to choose from, five if you include the “Work Print”, which also appears on the Five Disc DVD set. Disastrous test screenings, a tacked on voice over that nobody liked, which Ford sounded bored doing, Scott and producer Michael Deely being fired by the financial backers, English director Scott falling out with his American crew, the “making off” is almost as enthralling as the film that ended up on the screen so it comes as no surprise that the retrospective documentary on the making of the film that accompanies the film’s DVD and Blu Ray editions is three and a half hours long!
Like 2001:A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner has become more than just a film. It’s an experience too, only where Kubrick wants to take us to the stars, Scott’s film wants to take you to the gutter and stay there. Sure there are flying cars and magnificent skyscrapers, but as Syd Mead says on the Mark Kermode documentary, everything below a certain level is basically the basement, and the basement is where you stay for nearly two hours. It really says something when it’s a basement that you’ll find yourself returning to again and again.
COMING SOON: “Flying through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy!”
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