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Blade Runner - Ridley Scott
I have watched this film three times and I have liked it more on every viewing. I think that this is because I have appreciated some aspects of it that I didn’t on previous screenings.
This is a super simple story. Retired blade runner, Deckard, (Harrison Ford) is roped back in to work to track down four replicants that have recently arrived on earth. At its heart it is a detective story.
Deckard follows the trail of clues that lead back to the replicant’s target is their ultimate creator – Dr. Eldon Tyrell, the owner of Tyrell Corp. Why they are after him is a mystery.
Just a Detective Story or Something More?
On the face of it the story is simplistic, almost too basic. Why was Scott interested? Why has it become so iconic? I think it is exactly because of this simple plot.
The simplicity allowed for Scott to look at the other issues in a much greater way than he would have been able to if the plot was complex. At the centre of this story are huge issues all revolving around a central theme – What does it mean to be human?
Tied with this is the value of a thing that emulates us perfectly. So perfectly in fact that we needed to create an entire division of the police force to hunt and destroy them.
Sci-Fi or Film Noir?
The film ticks all the boxes for old school film noir. We have a fantastic femme fatale in Rachael (Sean Young). The visuals constantly reminded me of gritty noir, showed lines across the walls in Deckard’s house.
The use of light and shadow at the Tyrell mansion is magnificent. The swirling of smoke takes me right back to classics like China Town.
And the story is a detective story, like some of the best. The protagonist is a flawed hero who is brilliant at his job.
But the setting most certainly is Sci-Fi, there are flying cars and the basis of the plot is rebel robots. Everything on the screen screams fallen tech. Scott has nailed the mise-en-scene of this film. Both parts benefit from each other.
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Pacing and Visuals
The pacing also feels a lot like the slow boil of the old noirs. And it still works perfectly here. Watching the cityscape unfold beneath you as the police car rises into the air or looking at the detail of the crowded city streets as Deckard waits for a table at a street restaurant.
It’s just a beautiful film that allows you to enjoy it. The attention to detail really blew my mind. This is constant throughout but one scene that really exemplified it for me was after the first retirement.
Deckard has killed a replicant and returns home with some alcohol. He and Rachael are drinking. A drop of blood gets into one of the glasses and the colour a lighting are used so well to emphasise the point of what has just happened without a word been said.
Ethical Treatment of Non-Humans
This story raised a lot of questions for me around artificial intelligence. At what point do we have an obligation to afford rights to conscious beings? If a creature was able capable of abstract thought and could display emotion would we not have a responsibility to treat them with similar rights that we treat other humans?
What if we had created them? How would this change our obligations towards them? Should it? These ideas have been explored in many ways, some nuanced and some not so in the times since Blade Runner. But I don’t think anyone has done it in such an open way for us to draw our own conclusions.
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What makes us who we are is another great concept explored here. One of the key aspects is the ability of Tyrell Corp to implant memories in the replicants. They believe they had a childhood. They have the replicants so human that they are almost more human than the human characters.
Which brings me to my final point – I’m certain Deckard is a replicant himself.
