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 Blade Runner MeaningsModerated by: ben
Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2008-02-02 00:24:31 Rating:
  The re-release of director Ridley Scott's much-debated 1982 film, Blade Runner, on an final cut DVD is a good occasion to discuss the polarizing film's meaning here on MovieInterpretations. On the simplest level, the film works as a slow, science fiction movie with impressive (for its time) special effects and a couple of action scenes. However,the number of people who hated this movie would've decreased exponentially if this was all it amounted to; it obviously had to be forcing people to think, too.
Based on sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," the movie is very much its own entity, a story wholly cinematic, an event that only works as a motion picture. Scott and his brilliant team of production designers brought a futuristic Los Angeles to life.
In the plot, an L.A. cop (Harrison Ford) is told to hunt down and kill three humanoid androids, or replicants, because they are illegal on Earth, being reserved for off-world labor. Ford's character, Deckard, has a crisis of conscience about the job (after all, as a blade runner he essentially shoots unarmed humans for a living) and is pretty miserable all around in his life. In the end, he has killed all of the errant replicants save one: a female replicant named Rachel with whom he falls in love and runs away from L.A.
The first big issue that Blade Runner is about is, briefly, humanity and human consciousness. As one of the screenwriters, David Peoples, has said, the film asks, "What makes us human?" We follow four replicants around L.A. as they try to extend their artificial life and answer the question for themselves, "Why do I exist?"
I don't believe that there are pat answers to these questions, and neither do the filmmakers, but the dilemma is burned into the viewer's mind by the juxtaposition of Deckard and the replicants. Deckard is unhappy, boring, and lonely. He is supposed to be a merciless killer, a blade runner who destroys androids without pity. On the other hand, the replicants have a lust for life, and they display a stonger sense of community and love than the human characters in the film. (That said, the film doesn't make you wonder who the good guy is; the replicants always kill any human in their way, essentially justifying the blade runners' existence.)
All of the talk of memories and self-awareness in Blade Runner is symbolic of every human's consciousness, and the film asks us if we appreciate our lives as much as we should. Do we take every little experience for granted? Do we appreciate the individuality of those around us?
Also, the film has a lot of allusion to man's relationship to God. This, of course, ties in to the themes I've already mentioned because God is the creator. Roy, played by Rutger Hauer, wants to meet his maker and ask for more life, like a human mad at God over the issue of mortality. As Roy rides an elevator to the top of the biggest building in the city to meet Mr. Tyrell, he is symbolically ascending towards heaven to see God face to face.
Blade Runner is, in essence, a stunningly designed and shot sci-fi film. It asks us to think about our own lives and what our memories mean to us. It definitely isn't for everyone because, as Scott put it, it "substitutes visual density for action." I certainly see it as visual poetry that works on a visceral level, even if one shuts one's brain off.
The last issue is, "Is Deckard a replicant?" Read other websites for that answer; tons of nerds like myself argue about this online. Better yet, watch the film and study the clues yourself, particularly the orange glow in Deckard's eyes when he and Rachel are in his apartment after the fight with Leon. But I'll tell you this: Ridley says he is.
Steve
-towerofecthelion@hotmail.com
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