By Steven Boone
Screened at the 45th New York Film Festival.
[Editor's Note: "On The Circuit" is a joint production of The House Next Door and Zoom In Online. For news, events, training, and other points of interest to the creative community, please visit Zoom In Online by clicking here.]
Is there anything more to see, anything left to say about Blade Runner? More to see, yes. That's always the case with the great ones, and the fact that there isn't much left to say about Ridley Scott's sci-fi cult classic doesn't contradict the first claim; it illuminates it. "More of the same" is a very good thing in this case.
The Final Cut is remastered from original 35mm elements and transferred to High Definition digital video at 4K (4096 horizontal pixel) resolution. Projected in HD at 24 frames a second for this year's New York Film Festival, this Blade Runner has no visible grain, dirt or scratches, stuttering frames, reel-change "cigarette burns" or soft-focus moments when the film gets loose in the projector gate. Funny how I thought I'd miss all those things, their "organic" qualities, but this restoration gives us a pristine image without sacrificing warmth. The picture even fooled our editor, who at first thought he was looking at a 35mm projection. This Blade Runner removes every barrier to getting lost in Scott's fire-and-rain Los Angeles short of presenting it as interactive theater.
Here are 10 images, sounds and ideas from Blade Runner that stand out in 2007 and/or HD:
10. The opening smash-cut shot of nocturnal future L.A. What used to induce instant, unsettling future shock is now so seamless and luminous that we get a pretty nice jolt of Close Encounters awe. In an age of murderous aerial drones, this film's pretty flying cars are as precious as Model T's.
9. The brief interlude of bicyclists pedaling through the drizzly, backlit night, to a dreamy Vangelis cue.
8. Outcast designer J.F. Sebastian's (William Sanderson) home workshop full of biomechanical "toys", which now looks even spookier and suggests even greater depths of loneliness.
7. The frantic play of neon and other reflections on both Joanna Cassidy's see-through raincoat and the endless panes of glass she smashes through during her agonized death. The last time light itself screamed such bloody murder was during the climax of Scott's Alien. Before that: the big murder scene in Touch of Evil.
6. Daryl Hannah's kicking, screaming death scene. Now it looks for all the world like a stroboscopic wigout from David Lynch's Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive or INLAND EMPIRE.
5. The rain.
4. Scott and his all-star design team correctly predicting Asian cultural dominance, but wrongly guessing Jumbotron images of Geisha on blimps instead of anime and wire-fu -- or the hidden Japanese hands of Sony Corporation in Ho'wood. As for American brands: The electronic billboard for Coca-Cola is still appropriate, and the Atari logo that seemed an outdated joke ten years ago is now back on novelty t-shirts and video games.
3. Edward James Olmos's handful of brief, tantalizing appearances as Gaff, sort of like Orson Welles in The Third Man, Richard Pryor in Silver Streak and Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back. Just enough to leave you licking your fingers. His final Dietrich-in-Touch of Evil bit of philosophy still haunts.
2. Tortured replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) now threatening his creator, Mr. Tyrell (Joe Turkel), with the line, "I want more life, Father!" "Father" instead of the original "fucker." This one edit takes some of the intensity out of that deranged closeup and replaces it with a shade of empathy. Makes sense, though: We'd all be a little humble and familial before our maker, even if we were angry enough to kill him. (2a. Hauer's climactic dance of death through the crumbling loft, which builds more despair than menace -- even before he gets to his speech about "tears in the rain." Those wolf howls are pure existential sorrow.)
1. Sean Young's red lipstick.
FINAL NOTE: Across decades of theatrical, Laserdisc, VHS and DVD versions of Blade Runner, I've noticed only two significant alterations: Cutting the studio-imposed narration and including the unicorn memory?/dream?/flashback?. As usual, both creative decisions add mystery and gravity to the film by leaving certain questions deliciously unanswered.
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Steven Boone is a New York-based critic and filmmaker, a contributor to Vinyl is Heavy and the publisher of the pop culture blog Big Media Vandalism.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
"On the Circuit": Blade Runner: The Final Cut
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18 comments:
Looking forward to this. I'm wary of the HDifying of all older movies, but with something like Blade Runner I imagine it'll work.
"Father" instead of the original "fucker."
I think I like this. The original line always seemed a little awkward to me, an overextended attempt to signal the character as tough guy/mean guy. It clashed with his basic dignity and self-mastery.
Re: changes, I've never seen the original but I know that the 1982 release had a driving-through-countryside happy ending which was changed in the Director's Cut. I'm curious what's different in this but mainly just psyched to see it on the big screen.
I attended the same screening as Steve and Keith and was knocked out. I've seen the movie many times over the years, in various versions, and I'm also getting to the point where I can't recall the particulars from cut to cut. However, I had a fairly strong sense that the scene where Deckard confront, chases and kills Zhora had been changed in some significant way. After searching around the Web, I found this article that I'd somehow missed back in the spring.
Sounds like some pretty major alterations there.
I'm interested to know what people think about the whole "Is Deckard a replicant?" question. After the screening, I talked about it with a couple of colleagues and said that I thought this version pretty much settles it: Deckard is not a replicant, but he is a human who is somewhat less than human, and the movie is about the process of his moral and emotional awakening by Rachel, Roy and the other replicants. It's about a non-slave-owning member of a slavery-based culture learning what it means to be a slave (the whole point of Baty's final rampage). I'm not sure exactly what Scott did to make this come through so strongly for me, but that's what I got out of it.
One of my colleagues agreed that this cut pretty firmly established that Deckard is human. But another one said that for her, it absolutely, positively verified that Deckard is a replicant.
Then on the way home I was reading the press kit, and there was an interview with Ridley Scott in "Wired" where he pretty much said flat-out that Deckard is a replicant, and that's what Gaff's unicorn in the final scene is all about -- it's Gaff saying, "I know your secret." Deckard didn't tell anyone else in the movie about his image of the unicorn, so clearly Gaff must have read his file, just as Deckard read Rachel's file.
I didn't get any of this from the new cut. And I also don't see how it makes any sense at all that Deckard could be a replicant given that the most advanced models have four-year lifespans, and Deckard's association with the police department seems to have lasted longer than that. Or is Deckard's "long history" as a blade runner something that Gaff and the rest of the LAPD have collectively agreed to pretend is real?
I'm going to stop writing about this because it's giving me a headache.
The rain.
Jim Emerson of Scanners has his own post up about the new cut, Boone's piece and the "Is Deckard a replicant?" question. The link is here. Tons of great linkage there.
Also, thanks, Jim, for reminding me of a link I forgot to throw up there: Fred Kaplan's piece in The New York Times, in which Scott says Deckard is a replicant and was always a replicant. But do we trust the artist or the art?
Matt: The art. Always the art.
Yeah, I neglected to mention the happy ending that was excised long ago, but, really, I'm with what Ebert once said about the various versions: Ain't much substantial difference between them, really. V.O. or no V.O., unicorn or no unicorn, "fucker" or "Father"-- these are mostly just ornaments on an Indian temple elephant. It's remained the essentially same beast throughout.
The geek thrill of this movie for me is the dream team of designers and f/x wizards Scott threw together, how solidly they fleshed out P.K. Dick's world. Under a coherent vision. These days, a lot of sci-fi films on a comparable scale are realized by a bunch of competing firms and departments, each doing what feels like a different movie, guided by a director who seems more on a shopping spree than a mission. (SW prequels, Matrix Revolutions).
In this cut, the idea of Dekkard as a replicant didn't catch fire at all. I agree with you that he's just a flawed human here (and seemingly a potential rapist(!)) who learns some humility and compassion from Roy Batty and Rachel.
The whole idea of Deckard as a replicant is Ridley Scott and Ridley Scott alone. It's his personal obession and he is the ONLY one who has ever tried to rejigger the story to include that. It's not in the original Philip K. Dick story (although it's a weirdly Phil Dick type twist), not in any of Hampton Francher or David Webb Peoples scripts, and not really supported by anything in the film.
The whole thing arose from a monolouge Peoples wrote for one version of the script which had Deckard at the end ruminating about how he was a combat model like Roy Beatty, yet he could'nt go to his maker, whoever had programmed him. Now, this was a metaphor, but Scott totally misunderstood it and walked away going, "Yes! Deckard's a replicant! Brilliant! I love it!", not grasping that this MAKES NO SENSE and never bothering to really change anything else that contradicts it.
Like, why the hell would you create a replicant that's even more dangerous then all the other replicants, and go through all this trouble convincing him he's human when the others are constantly reminded they're artifical? Then you're left with this other replicant running around who is not only going to be harder to kill because he knows exactly how Blade Runners work and has acess to all their files and equipment, but you even go and tell him that he's a replicant and you're after him? AFTER letting him go on the roof, when Gaff could've just walked up and shot him in the head?!?!? Why not just reprogram the blimp to fly around saying, "DECKARD: WE ARE COMING TO KILL YOUR ASS. WE ARE THREE BLOCKS AWAY. DECKARD: YOU ARE A REPLICANT."
See, here's the thing about Ridley Scott, and it's something that Sean Burns actually pointed in a conversation we had back around the time Gladiator came out. Scott is not good with story. He's a good STORYTELLER, but his best films--off the top of my head, The Duellist, Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise--are the ones where he had the least involvement with the script. His story ideas generally WEAKEN a script and he has a very poor sense of narrative importance. Like, Both Gladiator and Black Hawk Down have this exact same repetetive feel where everybody keeps saying, "We have to do this, we have to do this, if we don't do this we fail, but we can't do it!", and then, after it's been built up how hard it is to do whatever and how important it is, they just go ahead and do it and it's tossed off like it's no big deal. In Black Hawk Down it's, Sizemore can't get the trucks through, they're stuck, they're stranded, they' can't get the trucks through!!!! and then, he....just drives up and, gets the trucks through.
Same with this. Scott really loves MOMENTS, moods, atmospheres, and the idea of a big revelation that DECKARD WAS A REPLICANT ALL ALONG!!! is a great moment...but it it does'nt tie in with anything else.
So when I watch it I just ignore that whole notion. The unicorn works a symbol of what's been lost in this filthy, polluted, fallen world. Deckard thinks he's never retired a human by mistake. Elevator door slams shut. Cue Vangelis. The End.
I'm with you Matt: Not replicant, but less than Human. I've never made the association of "a non-slave-owning member of a slavery-based culture learning what it means to be a slave" but it rings to true with the entire body of the piece.
For what it's worth, my readings and recollations are that they went through a whole bunch of iterations where Deckard was human and replicant depending on the draft, sometimes explicitly so. There was some voice over narration written about Roy and Deckard being "brothers" that never made it into any version as well but that obviously came after filming even.
Amongst the contributers: Ford played Deckard as human, writer Hampton Fancher wrote him as human who becomes more human through his interactions with the replicants, and Ridley sees him as a replicant, damnit!
Personally, I don't care how the unicorn fits into the logic of the piece, Blade Runner isn't purely about logic anyways.
On a side note: does the new release correct the issues about the number of replicants on the run from the beginning? Cheers.
James: I think Deckard learns that there are six escaped replicants and that two of them were somehow electrocuted during the escape, leaving the four that Deckard has to pursue on earth. I don't know if that was established in previous versions; all the different cuts are jumbled up in my memory.
You guys are funny. Scott, the person who made the movie, is telling you that Deckard is a replicant, and you're saying the he doesn't know what he's talking about. Okay. Maybe Deckard's not a replicant in the original story, but guess what? He is in the movie. Deal with it.
Anon -
Scott didn't come up with the "Dekard is a replicant" interpretation until 10 years after the movie was released. Also, his interpretation is just that -- an interpretation. It's not an issue of fact.
It's not as though he said that scene X was shot with a 55mm lens and someone is saying "looks like a 38mm to me."
Scott clearly thought Deckard was a replicant--even during filming, tl, seeing as he went to the trouble of giving Ford those reflective eyeballs in one scene.
The actors and writers clearly did not; you could wrench the plot laid out into justifying Scott's take without enormous difficulty, but only by imagining a bunch of scenes and character motivations that are never alluded to.
For me, one of the great strengths of the film is the confusion caused by this struggle at the helm. It might seem a fence-sitting cop-out, but after at least 20 viewings over the years, I have no idea whether Deckard is a replicant or not. If the Tyrell corporation was correct in their discovery that the key to emotional stability, and thus control, is memory, what difference does it make to how Deckard ended up if the pictures that clutter his piano top are any more "real" than Leon's precious photos? Family, school, shitty job, nasty divorce; or implants siphoned into your cortex. You're being programmed either way.
No question Deckard's humanity is dragged toward the surface under Batty's harsh tutelage, but it's really six-of-one to me whether it's dredged up from the soul of a man or the hardwiring of new neural pathways in a Nexus-6. The point isn't the commonalities Deckard shares with the androids; it's that, man or machine, he finally sees the androids, the clouds briefly, mercifully parting to aid his vision, and realizes there's no difference.
A query of my own, if it's not too far afield: If you've read Dick's novel, you know that his point was pretty much exactly 180 degrees opposite from the film's. I love both book and film, but was wondering if there's been another adaptation that so thoroughly undermines the meaning of its source. (Another successful adaptation, I should emphasize; stuff like Miss Lonelyhearts's cynicism being defanged for the dull Advice to the Lovelorn doesn't count.)
I thought Cuaron's Children of Men undermined and inverted the meaning of James' novel, if that helps.
I love both book and film, but was wondering if there's been another adaptation that so thoroughly undermines the meaning of its source.
Barnard Malamud's "The Natural."
Yeah, the movie of "The Natural" is maybe one of the worst offenders of all time -- a real up-is-down, black-is-white situation.
I don't think "Blade Runner" so much undermines Dick's novel as finds an alternate route to its themes and adds some hard action along the way. It's more swooningly romantic than the book as well, though there are some semi-satiric touches that I miss. I especially liked the Penfield Mood Organ, which sort of allows you to pick your mindset. According to Wikipedia,
"Another device from the novel is the "Penfield Mood Organ," named for neurologist Wilder Penfield, which induces emotions in its users. The user can dial a setting to obtain a mood. Examples include "awareness of the manifold possibilities of the future," "desire to watch television, no matter what's on it," "pleased acknowledgement of husband's superior wisdom in all matters," and "desire to dial." Many users have a daily schedule of moods. The Mood Organ also has a setting for depression states, which contradict its original purpose to cheer up its user.
We don't have any machines like that, but there are pills. The future is here!
Matt: "I don't think "Blade Runner" so much undermines Dick's novel as finds an alternate route to its themes and adds some hard action along the way."
In writing out how I disagreed with this statement I realized I probably didn't. Both novel and film are convinced the deadening of empathy marks one as horrifically nonhuman; but I'd say the book argues such beings exist and merit being eradicated (I'm not even sure Dick meant that metaphorically) while the movie's ultimate siding with the androids negates the premise, claiming everyone is human if you look hard enough. With complications, of course--both movie and book reserve their greatest mistrust for the all-too-human corporate heads trying to build the better android.
I miss the mood organs as well, plus the role of animals in the book--a civic and spiritual investment that's inevitably sullied by class overtones--instead of the more conventional environmental/economic metaphor they play in the film. But I love Blade Runner dearly. For the marvelous dialogue (one of the most heady and quotable in all sci-fi); the assuredness of its presentation; career-high performances from Ford, Young, Hauer, and, till Deadwood came along, Sanderson; and, perhaps most of all, for Ryland's rain.
Bill, nice call on The Natural. Reading that a year or two after I'd seen the movie was quite a shock.
Another that occurred to me: the Peanuts tv specials, delightful in their own right, dependably less sacharrin and harder-edged than most kids' fare on television. Yet they still trade on communal uplift, rather than the tender isolation that was Schulz's calling card.
Have a better one.
I'm almost sick of talking BR at this point. What matters most is viewing. This Final Cut has me stoked. When talk started of Joanna Cassidy coming in to do work, it seemed to veer toward her dialogue scene with Deckard. "Why?", I wondered. The only scene with Zhora that needed fixing was her death.
Her death, despite the stunt double, is like in my Top Five. I'm ecstatic to know it's "fixed", but despite its obvious problems, I was always able to hone in on its beauty.
Late to the orgy on this, but the revoicing of the out-of-sync Abdul Ben Hassan sequence (which jarred me the very first time I saw the film) by Benjamin Ford (Harrison's son, who is pretty much the same age as his dad when he made the movie) is another major fix that helps the movie immeasurably. Go back to any other cut of the movie and see how badly out of whack it is, or was.
I really only need the 82 International Cut and this one to satisfy my BR jones but I'm glad the whole shebang, or most of it, is due on DVD.
Deckard as replicant? That's Ridley Scott trying to stir up interest for another 'final cut' he's peddling.
There's nothing in the film to suggest Deckard is a replicant, not in a literal sense. The point is that Deckard is mortal, a killer facing his own physical limits, and his need for love instead of death. (David Peoples would go on to write UNFORGIVEN, a perfect double bill with BLADERUNNER.)
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