Blade Runner
I've been feeling a little queasy the last couple of days. My stomach gets mildly upset every so often and I've had some - shall we call them - bowel irregularities. It's annoying, but for the most part I feel fine. I wonder if it's something I ate - say, something that had Olestra that I wasn't aware of. I dunno. I do seem to be better today than yesterday.
Yes, it was the director's cut; I've never seen the originally released version, but I've generally heard that the director's cut is better, especially in that it doesn't assume that the viewer are children who need to be led through the plot.
On reflection, though, the irony of this is that Blade Runner is a sterling example of putting style before substance. In it, Harrison Ford plays a cop, Rick Deckard - a "blade runner" (a term whose origin is never explained; no blades, for instance, are in evidence) - who is charged with taking down six androids - "replicants" - who have arrived on Earth to try to fix a planned flaw in their construction: They die after four years. Replicants are illegal on Earth, and are almost identical to humans. Along the way, Ford meets and falls in love with Rachel, who is a newer form of replicant.
The film is dark, atmospheric and stylish, and great at building up suspense and tension without resorting to cheap shock and gore. The one love scene between Deckard and Rachel is quite tense itself, and primes the audience for the final confrontation between Deckard and the leader of the replicant group.
But, ultimately, the film isn't really about anything. Although Ford leaves with Rachel - herself under a death sentence - at the end, it's not really about freedom. (Where are they running to? What sort of chance do they have? Any overt oppression of the replicants is only handled obliquely.) Also Rutger Hauer's character, Roy Batty, talks briefly about the wonders he's seen as a replicant, and how all that will be lost when he's gone, the line is really just a throwaway. Although the world of Blade Runner doesn't seem to be a nice place to live, we're not really shown that, and it's not clear that Deckard's actions have changed things one iota.
Perhaps most importantly, the character of Blade Runner are ciphers. Who is Deckard? What does he want? Why did he retire from the police force? Batty and the other replicants are mainly driven by their desire to live, but are one-dimensional in that way and don't really advance any philosophical purpose. (The film doesn't really consider in any depth the notion that "replicants are people too". Again, it's handled obliquely, in the background, without any real force behind it.) What do people think about the world they live in? How do the average citizens really feel about replicants? We don't find out.
Given all of this, Blade Runner is really just an exceedingly stylish adventure yarn, with a visually tantalizing backdrop (and a vision of the future which holds up fairly well, 16 years later). In that way, it's not so different from director Ridley Scott's other major SF film, Alien. Both are perfectly enjoyable films, but don't go much beyond that.
Oh, and I slept a lot last night. About 11 hours. I guess I needed it.
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