Day 181: Blade Runner - Final Cut (September, 6)

Brasilia has put on its mind that the city is a burning furnace. On a too hot and boring week, the chance to see Blade Runner in a movie theater was more than welcome. It would be even if my week had been perfect, because... well, I don't think I need to explain actually.

To keep referring to  my surreal place of birth again, Blade Runner made an appearance here only 4 years before its premiere. It was 1986, and its reputation had arrived here at the time, and my friends and couldn't wait to see it. And the movie didn't disappoint. As it never does, by the way. 

With me in the theater were two different generations of dear friends. Dea, my old good friend that thinks Batman and Dracula are the same, was horrified by some more obscure aspects on the art design, especially its darkness and the obsolete TV monitors. Rodrigo, that hadn't seen Blade Runner before today, was amazed by how incredible it really is, and left the cinema asking me why he hadn't seen this before. It is never too late, I think. But, as its already a tradition with him, he questioned some things, of course (the most inconvenient questions, as it's usual too - and ever entertaining. Do you have any doubt? Take this: Harrison Ford kissing Sean Young, Deckard angrily affirming to Rachel her humanity, the guy looks at me and asks: why the reason of this scene? Yeah, I know). Two good friends with different views about a movie that is so important to me, sharing their views and perceptions. A precious way to be with a film. 

Twenty nine years after first meeting Ridley Scott's masterpiece, five known versions and all, and I was still amazed by it. Even more, if that is possible. Today's screening was evocative, but also a novelty to me - classic movies are always reinventing it selves. Some time discrepancies are there, of course, but they add to the movie's atmosphere on current time. That it is a '80s production looking to a dystopic future has no doubt. The kind of older technology, the ever present sax in Vangelis' (perfect even if clearly dated) score, the younger actors tell us about another time. But Scott's view was so out of his time in some aspects that it is plausible to say that we can transcend them and be amazed by what we see in this still brilliant debate about humanity.

Walter Benjamin, one of my favorite people on this world, said, in Manorially Furnished Ten-Room Apartment (one of the fragments in One-Way Street and Other Writings), that "For without exception the great writers perform their combination in a world that comes after them, just as the Paris streets of Baudelaire's poems, as well as Dostoevsky's characters, only existed after 1900." The author talks about the structure of the houses in detectives stories specifically, but, by his words, I thought how a writer can envision things out of his time. Many names occurred to you, right? Julio Verne, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark - Philip K. Dick is also in this circle. He's the writer of the novel in which this movie was based, Do Androids Dream of Eletric Sheep? It is amazing how this movie shows his own time at the same time it transcends its temporality, as a genius fictional story can do masterfully. The choice of replacing androids by replicants is one example of the visionary features of this story.

The distance in time enabled a crescent admiration toward this film for me. The cinematography is surreal in the contrast of darkness and light. How people in an advanced technological society can turn to the past pursuing some sense to their own time. Details that tell the story are appointed in imdb.com trivia. Tyrel's Gothic room was already impressive, but it becomes even more symbolic with the realization that it was based on the Pope's private quarters. 

Rutger Hauer's final monologue sounds like poetry to me, I haven't realized it before today. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...", and I was already crying. My tears weren't lost in the rain, but I was lost in my own feelings and memories and images around this movie. 

Blade Runner's images and dialogues have become a fundamental part of the way we think dystopian future, even if we are not aware of it. Screening like the one today are able to remember us of that, and this was another element of surprise and amazement on this day's evocative screening. 

I've said a lot here, but I'm sure I wasn't able to convey the impact of this movie to me, neither the countless references that it created on me. In moments like this, I wish I was a better writer, without so many limitations...

Blade Runner (Final cut). Directed by Ridley Scott. Directed by 
Ridley  Scott. With: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer.
Writers: Hampton Fancher, David Peoples from the novel 
Do Androids Dream of Eletric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. 
USA/Honh Kong/UK,  1982 (2007), 117 min., 70 mm
6 Track/Dolby Stereo,  Color (Cinema). 

PS: Despite the older tec, I still love the picture scene. But it is funny how digital technology changed our way to deal with images in comparison to the analogical time of this movie.

PPS: Daryl Hannah on the screen for the first time in the film, Rodrigo asked me who was she. My answer: she'd the sensates' mother... Sorry, Hannah.

PPPS: Fragment: Edge of Tomorrow, 2014.