***½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
directed by Ridley Scott
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Ridley Scott is quite obviously no auteur. Not notable for returning to a series of themes and tropes, he's more for gazing at a pretty set and ladling on the chiaroscuro. The man is less Orson Welles than Michael Curtiz, presiding stylishly over writers and actors and, crucially, designers, bringing them together in harmony instead of imposing some personal meaning on the whole shooting match. But just as Curtiz will be rescued from obscurity by the fluke triumph of Casablanca, Scott's Euro-trash imagery will always seem like more because of his resonant cult fave Blade Runner. This is a film that unites all manner of disparate elements to produce something greater than the sum of its parts, one that speaks to the displacement we feel in a technocratic world far more succinctly than if the filmmakers were conscious of what they were doing.
I have had a thorny history with this movie. My first extended piece on film was a junior-high newspaper article on the magic of Ridley Scott, with Blade Runner considered to sit near the summit of his achievements; later, I turned on it with a vengeance, determining it to be dull and overdone after realizing that so many of the hipster faithful were too much for it. But though I still feel chills when I think of my first film production class, where everybody's favourite movie turned out to be either Blade Runner or Reservoir Dogs, there's undeniably a reason for the former's lasting popularity. No film of the past 30 years better captures the anxiety of living in a media- and technology-saturated world: the constant blaring billboards, the omnipresent neon, and the uncertainty at who is even human anymore speaks to the post-modern condition better than any thesis-statement art movie ever could.
Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) now appears as a stand-in for everyone who ever looked at the proliferation of technology and wondered where it was going. This is hardly a clear-cut Luddite hate-on, however: the movie transports us to a world that's simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, sort of like Edward Burtynsky's photos of industrial refuse. We're hardwired for this dystopia, and Deckard–part of a police unit that kills runaway robots called "replicants" (or, colloquially, "skinjobs")–is as ambivalent as anybody. He's supposed to not notice that the price of his profession is to deny the humanity of these mega-clones by treating them like errant property. When he's tapped to hunt down a bunch of "off-world" replicants led by the ultra-blonde Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), he's forced to confront both the insanity and ubiquity of the crowded post-industrial nightmare of Los Angeles 2019.
Crucial to Blade Runner's newfound power for me is the "director's cut"'s elimination of the tacky voiceover ("My ex-wife called me 'sushi'–cold fish") that marred the original release version. Leaving aside the track's artistic limitations, it granted Deckard too much authority: instead of a character convivial with us as a hero, he's now just another lost soul in the teeming L.A. night. And so he's an equal with his quarry, a matter compounded by his romance with Rachael (Sean Young), an advanced-model replicant who's been led to believe that she's human. How do you reconcile yourself with a world that remolds the very definition of a person–determining robots to be "more human than human" yet somehow less than citizens? Technology blends with humanity; the line between self and environment is erased. Welcome to the new world order, sucker.
This is all part of the Hampton Fancher/David Peoples script, which lays the groundwork with some achingly sad dialogue. Hauer's final monologue, played by an actor knocking it out of the park, is especially devastating. But equal to its vision are the neo-noir stylings, capped off with "visual futurist" Syd Mead's supremely detailed designs. Not only does the film capture the fetid melancholy of noir, it ups the ante, too, by smashing it into the shining pyramidal structures and geometric indomitability of Mead's skyscrapers and devices. One gets the impression (as one did in much of '80s po-mo cinema) that the past and the future exist simultaneously, though the crowding of the former by the latter gives the film extra poignancy. Lauren Bacall stands trying to look centred while the nightmare of the future rushes past.
It's in the assembling of ace designers and other creative staff where Ridley Scott stands head-and-shoulders above his commercial-trained British brethren (i.e., Alan Parker, Adrian Lyne, and Scott's own brother Tony). As with Alien, whose script would be completely unremarkable without H.R. Giger and Moebius (among others), the talents of disparate individuals miraculously cohere into a sense of gravity. Scott and DP Jordan Cronenweth know how to make a good set look great, and their embellishment of the searchlight-waving flying billboards during the final fight scene is like watching God try to find some indeterminate item while ignoring his greatest creation. The pieces come together under watchful Ridley, regardless of whether he knows where it's all coming from; and the result is one of the key films of the 1980s–and essential viewing for fanboys and cineastes alike.
THE DVD
Warner's new-to-DVD remaster of the Director's Cut is spectacular. Transferred from the 35mm interpositive as opposed to the 70mm blow-up that served as the source print for the previous DVD and LaserDisc (dramatically reducing the amount of grain on display while increasing fine detail), the 2.37:1, 16×9-enhanced image is super-sharp, with well-modulated colour and nary a hint of oversaturation or bleedthrough–a remarkable achievement for a film with so much darkness and so many competing colours. The Dolby Digital 2.0 surround sound, on the other hand, betrays the movie's age, though it's without significant defect. Strangely for Warner, no extras–not even a trailer; alas, this is a stopgap release to tide people over until the definitive Blade Runner package streets next year. Stay tuned.
117 minutes; R; 2.37:1 (16×9-enhanced); English Dolby Surround, French Dolby Surround; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
