Scribbler's Rave & Favorite Five: Tuesday Night at the Movies, #5 Blade Runner

Before we begin breaking down why this movie has made my "Rave & Favorite Five" out of all of the movies that could've possibly made the final cut, allow me this caveat: I'm not really into science fiction flicks.  To be clear, I'd take them over horror movies, Westerns, anime and most martial arts films in a heartbeat, but I don't clamor for them over comedies, dramas, action flicks or animated films.  So when I had to dissect the underlying meanings behind Blade Runner for a film class during my junior year of college, I wasn't thrilled at first.  However, director Ridley Scott (known for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, American Gangster, Prometheus and The Martian) knew how to draw in a fence straddler like me: make the cinematography exhilaratingly irresistible, the storyline brilliantly cavernous and bring in an innovative mind to compose a score well before its time.  Next thing I knew, I was an immediate fan--so much that between watching Blade Runner and reading George Orwell's 1984 in high school, I was convinced that I was going to make the hip hop equivalent to both.  Let's just say that never came to life--and considering how unrefined my rap flow and production were, it's probably a good thing that it didn't--but what did remain was a permanent love affair with a masterpiece.  So although I originally wanted to go through my favorite scenes from each movie in this part of the "Rave & Favorite Five" series, I have decided to enumerate the top overall things that have catapulted Blade Runner to #T5DOA Status...

#5 THE PARALLEL BETWEEN REPLICANTS AND RACISM IS EXPLORED.  In the beginning of Blade Runner, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) had a sit down with his old boss Captain Harry Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh), who is trying to bring Deckard back to the Blade Runner Unit.  "I've got four skin jobs walking the streets," Bryant says disparagingly.  In voice-over narration mode, Deckard says, "'Skin jobs'.  That's what Bryant called replicants.  In history books, he's the kind of cop that used to call Black men 'niggers'."  What makes this exchange interesting is that the NEXUS-6 replicants were created by the Tyrell Corporation, given their identities and used as slave labor in the Off-World colony, only for a contingency of six Replicants to kill 23 passengers on a shuttle and causing the entire lot of them to be declared illegal and killed on sight by Blade Runner Units.  Hmmm...does being "created" or "given their identities" sound anything like having one's original name, religion and heritage completely replaced--all while being generalized under one blanket description based upon skin color?  After being "created", does being used as "slave labor" bring to mind anything that might have happened to people of African descent for over 200 years?  Does the renegade replicants' "mutiny" recall the Southampton Insurrection of 1831?  When the Blade Runner Units tracked down and "retired" the "rogue" replicants, is that not reminiscent of slave catchers and slave patrols disciplining (and sometimes killing) "defiant" slaves?  While Black people in America might not have been specifically classified as "machines" or "more human than human"--in fact, we were only 3/5ths human and often regarded below chattel--their physical attributes were celebrated while the ways in which they were mentally and emotionally superior were dismissed altogether for the sake of free labor--much like the replicants.  "Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it," Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), leader of the renegade replicants, asked Deckard at the end of the film.  "That's what it is to be a slave."  Sounds like Mississippi cotton fields and cat o' nine tails to me...

#4 THE BATTLE OF CREATION VS. CREATOR IS HAUNTINGLY DISPLAYED.  Accepting the notion that we have predetermined birth and death dates is difficult, but it can be even more depressing having no idea when the date right of "the dash" will occur.  The most poignant example in Blade Runner is displayed through Batty, who squeezes his fingers at points of the movie to signify life leaving his body slowly but surely.  In one of my favorite scenes--but also the most disturbing--Batty convinces genetic designer J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) to take him to Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), builder of the Tyrell Corporation.  During the exchange, Dr. Tyrell asks Batty if he wanted to be modified, but Batty suggested that the problem is "death" to which Dr. Tyrell replied, "Well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction...The facts of life.  To make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal.  A coding sequence cannot be revised once it's established."  He later says, "You were made as well as we could make you," but Batty responds, "But not to last."  Being ashamed of the "questionable things" that he's been a part of--including the aforementioned mass murder--Dr. Tyrell consoles him: "Also extraordinary things.  Revel in your time."  Although we as humans are not able to literally gouge out God's eyes as Batty did to Dr. Tyrell shortly after this exchange, man's defiance is certainly hurtful for God to witness.  We often feel like we haven't accomplished enough in our time or that we've made regrettable mistakes and that the only logical solution to all of our problems is to petition for more time.  Many of us are so consumed with the certainty of death that we don't appreciate the presence of life--causing us to question our purpose on Earth, why we were even created in the first place and if God or any higher power exists at all.  Hence, a natural course of action is to rebel as defiantly as humanly possible against what feels like an unjust fate, aimlessly hoping to find answers and sometimes to our own detriment and/or ultimate demise.  As Batty said, "It's not an easy thing to meet your maker."  That means having to deal with every last one of the truths that He chooses to unveil in our lifetime...

#3 THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN HISTORY AND MEMORY IS  CHALLENGED.  We often don't know or remember as much about our personal history as we think that we do--let alone local, national and world history.  We tend to forget way more than we remember and if it weren't for pictures, music, movies, old toys and trinkets, family heirlooms, word of mouth and other memorabilia, then it would be entirely possible that we'd have little to no memory of our life experiences.  No one struggled with this concept in Blade Runner more than Rachael (Sean Young), one of Dr. Tyrell's experimental NEXUS-6 models who doesn't even realize that she's a replicant at first.  She assumes that she is the one who experienced such things as chickening out when her brother exposed himself and dared her to do the same or seeing a hundred baby spiders hatching and eating their mother.  However, Deckard bursts her bubble: "Implants!  Those aren't your memories.  They're somebody else's.  They're Tyrell's niece's."  At that point, she cries--something that replicants don't typically do because they're machines with a limited amount of time to develop emotional control--and it's clear that she's affected by not owning memories that she wholeheartedly believed were hers.  The irony is how many pictures lined the piano of Deckard's apartment because it begs the question: how much does he connect with those pictures?  How much do any of us connect with the pictures that we see of ourselves, our family members, our cities, our nations or our world, or are our connections to memorabilia often based around what someone else tells us about them?  Furthermore, how well do we remember what we claim that we do?  Are those memories rooted and grounded in fact or does a bit of revisionist history--whether those revisions are purely nostalgia or with some ulterior motive in mind--assist in concocting convoluted variations of our recollections?  Sometimes, we want the past to be what we want it to be because it feels like it should be or we've been told that it is, all while it may not have been close to what we thought it was...

#2 THE CINEMATOGRAPHY IS OTHERWORLDLY.  From purely a visual perspective, Blade Runner is the most aesthetically grand movie that I've ever seen--a vision interpreted beautifully by cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth.  In the opening of the movie, you see a very dark, ominous Los Angeles set in the year 2019 with bursts of fire from the tops of towers, flying vehicles, the reflection of the new age chaos being manifested in a person's eye and the magnificent monstrosity that is the Tyrell Corporation headquarters--a massive construction with undeniable centrality to the movie's plot.  The contrast between darkness and light--suggested to Cronenweth by Ridley Scott to model Citizen Kane--is perhaps the most masterful aspect.  Although most of the movie is set at night and the most of the people are shrouded in nondescript darkness, the bright lights of neon building signs, police vehicles, billboards and blimp advertisements for the Off-World Colonies as a "chance to begin again" seem to be the main sources of illumination--especially in places like the Tyrell Corporation, the Los Angeles Police Department's headquarters and the apartments of Deckard and Sebastian.  As evidenced from the picture above, there are very few moments when natural sunlight abounds, but even in this instance, Deckard suggests performing his Voight-Kampff test on Rachael in a dimmer setting.  Interestingly enough, the main times when brightness is abundant is when 1) Deckard first meets Rachael in the scene above and 2) there are breathtakingly scenic views of mountains and hills as Deckard and Rachael leave Los Angeles and start a life together.  That contrast is fascinating because natural light shines the brightest at the points of the movie when emotional capacities--something that both Deckard as a human and Rachael as a replicant struggle with--are exposed and tested the most...

#1 THE GENIUS OF VANGELIS IS ONE OF THE MOST NECESSARY SONIC ENHANCEMENTS TO A MOTION PICTURE EVER CONCEIVED.  If I were to ever do a "Rave & Favorite Five" for motion picture scores, then Greek composer Vangelis (born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou) would win in a landslide.  In a post by Vangelis' Nemo Studios speaking on his work on Blade Runner and his overall views on scoring films, the author stated, "Vangelis tries to capture his first impression of the visual images as he plays, letting his spontaneity react to the images and not letting his thoughts interfere with his inspiration."  Using a wide array of synthesizers and instruments including a Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus, a Fender Rhodes and a Yamaha CS-80 (a synth that I regularly use a modeled version of), he created the optimal soundscape for Blade Runner that perfectly achieved his intent of interpreting "what the images might not have been able to say on their own".  If I had never physically seen the movie or heard/read the script, then simply listening to Vangelis' score would fuel my imagination and take me to every destination where the storyline intends to take its audience as he leaves no visual nuance uninterpreted and gives the film a significant portion of its personality.  Despite being an avid R&B and hip-hop fan, Vangelis' work on Blade Runner has greatly influenced my taste in and approach to music production over the past fifteen years since first watching this film.  Moreover, the score, of which I have purchased two different versions, is the biggest reason why I will watch this movie over and over again because it does what music is supposed to do whether it's a standalone sound recording or to sonically complete the cinematic experience: be transcendental as often as possible.

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If you're a fan of Blade Runner like me, then please feel free to share some of your favorite things about the film.  Please come back next week to see which film takes the No. 4 slot in my "Rave & Favorite Five: Tuesday Night at the Movies" series!