Blade Runner: At the Landmark

I parked my car inside the underground lot, and hurried upstairs. Next to me, on the escalator, was a woman, probably in her early twenties, wearing a beige flat cap. She looked agitated, hesitant, much like I was. I wondered if we were not perhaps headed the same direction. After all, she looked the "movie-fan" part. I didn't linger to figure the answer; I hopped up quicker than the escalator's rise, went to the cashier, got my ticket, was informed by the ticket-shredders that the movie had already started, replied that I knew so, quickened through the doorway, past the hallway, and was finally affronted by the screen, the large screen, already displaying the first scene, where Leon is given the Voigt-Kampff Test. I found the first available seat and nestled down into it. Seconds later, flat-cap girl entered the auditorium. I was right.

We were both here to watch Blade Runner: Final Cut.

I had heard that it was playing near my house. But for some reason, I let the news flutter away from my memory. Then last Friday, being free, and having no class, I decided to go watch a movie at the cinema. I checked the schedule of showings at the Landmark, because I like going there. My plan was to watch either Assassination of Jesse James, or Into the Wild. Those were my options. But then I saw Blade Runner on the list of available movies. Obviously, all else faded in comparison. The day had a new prerogative, and that was to go watch Rick Deckard run after replicants in futuristic Los Angeles.

Alas, I'm a strangely lazy fellow, even when it comes to important stuff I've been looking forward to for months. Ever since I had seen the Final Cut's trailer - during this past summer's televised AFI list - I had been excited to go watch it. I knew that the movie was getting an end-of-the-year DVD treatment. What I didn't know for sure was whether or not it would play at the theaters for a short limited release. Thankfully, that was the case. But I didn't rush to the Landmark when I discovered the fact. No. I ate. I watched TV. I shaved. I talked to myself in the bathroom. And only then did I sprint to my car.

At any rate, forty minutes later, there I was, sitting down. Flat-cap girl was some rows ahead of me. To my right, there was an old fifty-something, nodding his head in tandem with Captain Bryant's briefing, as if agreeing with the dialogue.

I smiled a bit. I felt in the company of fans. I removed my jacket, and placed it on top of me like a mantle. I gazed at the screen.

Watching a film at the cinema, especially a great film, one often gets the feeling that this is how you have to watch movies. In front of the big screen, enveloped by sounds - music, ambiance, thumps, and steps - your face slanted upwards at the projected image. If film is an evocative art, it is never so evocative, as it is inside a theater. Such were my feelings on Friday.

Great moments in this film arrive unannounced; a shot, a camera-angle, a mix of music and imagery. Harrison Ford entering his apartment. Sean Young being made aware of her artificiality. The Spinners floating through the orange air. Pris walking down a dilapidated street.

And behind it all, Vangelis' score, endowing everything with something deeper, something melancholy and festering and horrible and beautiful at the same time. Like Jazz fused with echoes of the future; as retro-fitted as the cars and buildings. A fusion between old-style sounds and something new. The music of the sewers, of the after-hours; like something you'd hear while drunk a Sunday morning at two, wandering the long strips of pavement, stepping on old newspapers with their old stories and characters. Or maybe you wouldn't hear it, exactly, but you would feel it.

"Memories!" goes Deckard. "You're talking about Memories!"

This is his first real instance of disgust. He will only become more displeased as the film goes on. Sickened with how the replicants are treated, taken advantage of, used like tools. But the replicants aren't just any tools; they're tools that have emotions, aspirations, hopes.

Roy Batty isn't content with being a tool; he wants more life, and not to spend further hours as a slave, but to experience things, live more adventures, see more things. He is proud of what he has witnessed; he demonstrates the fact twice. He tells poor Chew, "If only you could see, what I've seen with your eyes." And then he tells a befuddled Deckard, in the film's great closing monologue, about all the important "moments" that he's stored in his memory - not pre-fabricated memories, but real ones, garnered through experience.

Deckard eventually comes to understand how humane the replicants are, how unfair it is to control their lives, or attempt to control their lives, as if they were one of Sebastian's crude toys. He begins to feel a real sense of pity for Rachael; he bluntly tells her the truth about her origins, but then tries to withdraw his comments. It doesn't work, and she realizes the truth; that what Deckard has just told her is real. They later fall in love, because, ultimately, they only have each other. Deckard becomes obsessed with Rachael's photographs of a youth that wasn't hers. Perhaps it's because he wonders if he is not a replicant himself. Or maybe he is pondering the cruelty of allowing someone to live under the assumption that they have had a life that never was.

Deckard's initial hate for the replicants turns into empathy by the end. He lets himself have feelings for Rachael, and is visibly disturbed when he kills Pris. She shakes uncontrollably after being shot; her last spasmodic movements making the floor rumble. Deckard stares, horrified, at the spectacle. He shoots her again, one last time. He doesn't feel comfortable. He has ended a life, a life that writhed in pain and desperation as it was coming to a close.

This is an important development for Deckard's character; one that the film only implies, but never makes abundantly clear. Deckard does try to continue his job; but it is not a job he is happy with. He completes his duties, but he has almost sided with the replicants by the film's conclusion. Gaff stands under the rain, looking at Deckard as if he was the enemy. There is a strange animosity in the former's glare. And yet, it could be said Gaff almost helps Deckard. Doesn't he let him run away with Rachael?

The idea is that, since Deckard is a replicant himself, and since Gaff knows this, because his little origami unicorn is ostensibly based on Deckard's implanted memory/dream, then it makes sense for Gaff to act a tad apprehensive at Deckard, since the latter is, potentially, as much of a liability as Roy Batty. And yet, if this is the case, why does Gaff help Deckard? Or at least, allow Deckard a prize?

Perhaps because Gaff has come to the same conclusion as Deckard: the replicants are not tools, they're not things. They have advanced past that point. Gaff doesn't like them. But he comprehends their plight. To a point, of course. He doesn't exactly discourage Deckard from completing his quest. It could be said that Gaff is the most ambiguous character in the film. So it is perhaps fitting that he leaves the most ambiguous clue in the entire film: the unicorn.

In fact, it's not really a clue. It's pretty obviously a fact. If this new version is taken as the authoritative final version - as the title implies that we should - then Deckard is a replicant. The theme of implanted memories is a big one throughout the film; and the only way for Gaff to know of Deckard's unicorn dream, is for that dream to have been implanted into Deckard's brain during his construction.

Some say this causes plot holes: How can Deckard be a replicant? Doesn't he eat? Doesn't he not have super-strength? To the second question I respond: we don't know enough about how the replicants function. Perhaps they have a mechanism allowing them to inject food, for later dispersal. Why? A replicant is given false memories in the hopes of convincing that replicant that he or she is a human being. Allowing that replicant, also, to eat, would further strengthen that mirage of organic existence. The replicant will not, thanks to this mechanism, find himself or herself asking, why do they eat, when I don't? To that third question I respond: doesn't he climb the building at the end? That surely seemed like a fairly difficult undertaking. He's not as strong as Roy Batty, but he seems fairly capable of doing his job; though he is not, true, the greatest at hand-to-hand fighting.

Nevertheless, whether we choose to accept Deckard as a replicant, or not, the point is still the same: he has sided with the machines. It's important to note that Deckard is a proverbially lonely figure. He has no friends, no family, nothing; the only human beings he meets, he does because of his job (Tyrell, Bryant) or his routine (The Noodle Bar). The only emotional link he establishes is with a replicant, Rachael. Though they meet because of his job, their later meetings, and eventual relationship, are not job-related. And that is Deckard's situation at the end of the movie. Whether he is a replicant or not is ultimately irrelevant; either way, the only thing of import to him, in the entire world, ends up being a replicant.

All of Deckard's connections to humanity have been closed. Even his employment is over with; Gaff's definite air of finality, during his final appearance, suggests that Deckard now won't even have much of a job. This has been his last collaboration with the police. What does that leave Deckard with? Nothing. Nothing organic, at least. Only Rachael.

Rick Deckard's entire life has revolved around trying to kill the things which are now his only reason for living.