An Imitation of Life
It's courted controversy is now as established into the cult & pop psyche as the movie itself. The dubbed voice over, The final edited scene, The addition of a Unicorn. Ridly Scott on /off relationship with the financiers These have all added weight to the story of a film about Replicants.
But Phillip K Dick's Novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , of which the film is tenuously based on, did not lend itself well to the medium of film . The language is difficult to translate, and the dystopian landscape within can be hard to imagine, it's full of the uncomfortable colour of a world gone wrong.
The central story line of the book is disjointed and difficult to sum up in a few words. I can imagine trying to pitch the book to a Hollywood producer would bring even the best out in a sweat.
The book was originally released in 1968 and was received about as well as any book describing a mans decent into confusion and doubt can ever be. Flash forward to the early 1980's and Dick's work was in development with some of the central characters intact. The rest came from the hearts and minds of screenwriters Hampton Fancher & David Peoples. On it's original release, Blade Runner did not receive particularly favourable reviews, and audiences did not necessarily embrace this idea of the future.
When the VHS rental phenomena began in the mid to late 1980's in the UK, the film begun to get its legs. Now of course, it's unusual to meet someone who hasn't seen it, and most of who have, consider it at least a work of weight and interest.
2007 will see what I think will be called "Blade Runner (25th Anniversary Final Cut)" which I believe will be Ridley Scott's attempt to put all the bits of all the other previous releases (of which there have been 7 so far) into some coherent order with extra scenes, deleted scenes, interviews, trivia etc into one 3 disc set (or something).
It's interesting to note that, as a philosophical comment on what it means to be "human", Blade Runner has few contemporary Science Fiction films on which it can be compared. As a visual aid to what an imagined future may look like, it's undeniably close to what we're living in now. Technologically speaking, many of the "Hi Tech" gadgets we see fleetingly in the film are commonplace items today:
But actually, all these effects or visions of a future are really just a backdrop to a very human question which threads throughout Blade Runner.
"Who am I?"
And, in fact, the one character that portrays in some way the pursuit for an answer is Roy Batty (pictured above), though his conclusion may not be a reassuring one, it is a most certain truth for his character; The irony of course, is that he is essentially far from human.
Some of Batty's last words reflect the truth of things;
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe...All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
You don't have to be a fan of Science Fiction to Enjoy this film. You don't have to be an advocate of all things new. There's a sense throughout the film that actually technology is taking over human space, and certainly not always in a good way.
Oddly, for a film with very little dialogue, this is in someways an extremely pensive view on frailty.
...See this film:
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