[CRITICAL] BLADE RUNNER (1982)

Read also our second critical complementary BLADE RUNNER

Ridea in BLADE RUNNER today in the restored version on the digital copy allows you to measure to what extent the film is, more than ever, modern, always avant-garde 32 years after its release in a version since wound by the director Ridley Scott. The work of restoration, we completely forget that at that time the special effects were first of all patient work of a designer (see the photos from the shoot here).

This in the credits after the producers and actors, the producer had at the time not strong enough to impose its point of view. Over the years, Ridley Scott has managed to get out a version of “Director’s cut” first restored to be distributed on copies film and now on digital media.

The story of BLADE RUNNER has its roots in a new american author of science-fiction Philip K. Dickentitled “do androids dream of electric sheep ?” which the director and the writers only keep the premises in order to install an atmosphere unrivalled in the cinema since. Deckard (played by Harrison Ford), a cop alcoholic in pre-retirement, is summoned to resume the service as a “Blade Runner” to stretch “Répliquants” absconding, concealed somewhere in a Los Angeles sentenced to a rainy night eternal. Film noir and sensual, BLADE RUNNER, plunges the viewer into an abyss over the course of an investigation to the unpredictable rhythm. The intelligence of Ridley Scott is to have imported the codes of film noir (femme fatale, detective, alcoholic, and omnipresence of the past on the behavior of individuals stuck in a city with an architecture aggressive) in the Science Fiction. This fusion of the genres we still speak today of a multitude of problems created by our technological and economic development.

The “Répliquants” are androids perfectly similar to humans, but have only 4 years of life expectancy. What is there to revolt against the human species which you had created when it is complete as they are, memories and self-awareness. Beyond the metaphysical questions on what defines a human being (the movie never asks a question on the front, but still hollow), BLADE RUNNER also has a discourse on what defines the film. Very quickly, the personality of the Répliquants as Humans are identified through their memories, which they derive strange behaviour and obsessions. To highlight the importance of affective-memory (quoted in the film as such), it is also a reference to the main tool of the direction of actors. According to the method of the Actor’s Studio, the actor is able to convey an emotion with correctness, only if he can recall a memory that is closer to the situation concerned. If it does not, thanks to his personal experience of this memory, it must be able to create and to believe in the time of the scene.

True and false memories, dreams and fantasies, which are shared by Humans as well as by the Répliquants, are the raw material of BLADE RUNNER. Have chosen not to differentiate between some of the caverns by a special effect or by a game player, more or less mechanized is of a remarkable efficiency.

“Black and sensual, the film plunges the viewer into an abyss, over the course of an investigation to the unpredictable rhythm.”

BLADE RUNNER is so perfect, you wonder if Ridley Scott himself was conscious at the time of its development. Harrison Ford, it seems, didn’t understand anything from the scenario and simply string together the scenes without knowing what the film could mean. New screenshots were leaked on YouTube before being removed. Mounted end-to-end they showed another film, more easily interpretable. Walking among the possibilities offered by the raw footage in the first film’s release in 1982, and then the version Director’s cut, Ridley Scott may be constructed indecision fundamental about the nature of Deckard in the installation (Replicating or not ?). A lot of fans were disappointed when the director announced bluntly : “of course that Deckard is a replicating !” as if it was obvious, then, that it is this mystery which had so fascinated decade after decade.

Likely that, over time and versions, Ridley Scott has chosen an interpretation among others. While it is rare that a film director “spoil” the end of one of his films, in retrospect, using all the clues left in the movie, her decision appears to be completely consistent.

The choice to announce shrift to the true nature of Deckard can be understood in the context of the upcoming release of Blade Runner 2, the direct sequel of the first. We now know that a large part of the storyline of this upcoming film directed by Denis Villeneuve with Ryan Gosling, will be to understand why Deckard is a Replicating, but why it seems to have 32 more years (Harrison Ford is not going to be retouched digitally to be younger), then that Répliquants are supposed to live only 4 years.

Since the first BLADE RUNNER, Ridley Scott has come a long way as a filmmaker, but also as a producer. Much more to be financially independent, Ridley Scott will not have the excuse of too much pressure studios on a poor little developer to explain in a few years a version Director’s cut of Blade Runner 2 by Denis Villeneuve at the height of Ridley Scott for BLADE RUNNER, both at the level of ambiguity of the quality immersive of this new film.

Fans of the first film expect to the time that Denis Villeneuve tribute, and they continue to amaze. Because that would be a BLADE RUNNER , without complexity ? Probably the image of Total Recall : memories programmed, a disappointment that the action did not successfully saved, the opposite of awkward the first Total Recall directed by Paul Verhoeven. Also inspired by the work of Philip K. Dick, just like the movie Minority Report by Steven Spielberg, and a multitude of films since the 2000s, the failure of the sequel to Total Recall is a warning to those who want to adapt the novels of the author of Science-Fiction solely on the basis of its popularity. Philipp K Dick is an author and complex, it is necessary to understand the impact of the themes and questions it raises before you imagine to transpose its universe of machines and human memories are artificial to the screen.

There is no “recipe” to make a good film from a novel by Philip K. Dick. The author wrote most of his work against the dominant thought of his time, and the institutions of power that transmitted it. It is refreshing to see that his books are not totally soluble in the machine to earn the money that is Hollywood. Blade Runner 2 is a challenge at the height of the talent of Denis Villeneuve, chaperoned by Ridley Scott , that we imagine a manufacturer caring. But the output in digital copy restored BLADE RUNNER allows us to measure the difficulty of the task. Pass after an absolute masterpiece is never easy.

Envision a good film to come, the risk that faint hope, “as the tears flowing in the rain” mentioned by Rutger Hauer in BLADE RUNNER. If by some misfortune, this second film was a disappointment, we will remain in the memory bright of the first, just as real as the memory emotional, that of the androids as humans.

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BLADE RUNNER has been reviewed in the context of its projections during the Light Festival 2015 !

Wednesday 14 October – 20: 30 to Vénissieux, Thursday, October 15 – 20: 30 at the Pathé Cordeliers, on Friday, 16 October – 20: 30 at the UGC Confluence, and Sunday, October 18-19 at the Institut Lumière.