Blade Runner is cinematic poetry. The mystery of human existence is explored by examining artificial beings called replicants, advanced cybernetic creations of artificial intelligences that mimic human beings so closely they raise the deepest ethical dilemmas. A dark, futuristic vision based on a science fiction story called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip Dick. This movie is a means of breaking through maya, the illusions caused by our forgetting the ephemeral natures that we possess. The replicants in the cinematic story have been created with a short life span of four years. They rebel at the enslavement imposed on them as workers in the "Off World" of outer space and return to earth desperate to find a way to prolong their lives. Blade Runners are special police charged with finding and retiring them before the public can panic about their presence on earth.
The movie is filled with violence and mayhem, too much for a friend who tried to watch it with me. She could barely manage to get through the first ten minutes. It has the dark, chiaroscuro atmosphere of a Philip Marlowe detective story but is set in the dystopian world of Los Angeles in the year 2019. You expect to see a character with the general attitude of Humphrey Bogart in The Deep Sleep. And you are not disappointed when these expectation play out in the appearance of a retired Blade Runner, Harrison Ford, who is quite surly about being called back to action by the police who need his special detection skills. I am as much intrigued by the designers who created this futuristic nightmare as I am by the action, dialogue, and characters. The narrative is mostly unsentimental but not without romance as a relationship unfolds between Deckard (Harrison Ford), the Blade Runner, and Rachel (Sean Young), a woman from the Tyrell Corporation, the makers of the replicants. She is an advanced model of the type who are now a menace on the planet. But she has been given memory implants to insure a gentler, more pliable replicant. As Deckard pursues the dangerous escapees from Off World, he is gradually drawn into a close and loving relationship with Rachel the new replicant. She saves his life and the favor is returned in full measure. But the power of the film is not for me primarily in this relationship but in the eerie atmosphere of the city and the themes that underlie the narrative.
The themes are variations on the exposure of our technological hubris and are perhaps best summed up by Norbert Wiener in his work for laymen called The Human Use of Human Beings where he refers to his fears for our future with the combination of cybernetics (his invention, more or less) and what he called "the venality of engineers." (Something he should have known well as a mathematician employed at M.I.T..) Tyrell, the C.E.O. of the corporation in the movie, certainly fits the bill with his insouciant optimism about his latest model of replicant. Beyond this dilemma, viz,. our inability to cope with the full consequences of what Wiener called "the Second Industrial Revolution," is the theme of human identity and the role of memory and the perplexing issue of our ephemeral natures. Despite the brutal rebellion of the replicants, the final scene of destruction and mayhem, the battle between Deckard and Roy is a paean to the mystery and grace of life itself--even a brief life. Roy Batty, the leader of the replicant rebellion, says when he dies that the wonders he has seen with his eyes, like ships on fire off Orion, will be lost "like tears in rain." An oddly sentimental moment in the life of someone given to merciless killing when it suits his purposes. (As disconcerting as some of the poetry of Villon.)
Capek touched on similar large themes in R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), the capacity of our advanced technology to destroy our humanity and the role of memory in grasping the reality of Time, as did Arthur C. Clarke in his two films: 2001: A Space Odyssey and the sequel, 2010. We must continue to meditate on these themes because we are still in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution (e.g., try getting a human being on the phone at any office) and because our Promethean arrogance may yet be our undoing as much as our forgetfulness of our mortality and fallibility. We are still in the romantic stage of fascination with our gadgets, especially our computers. The only serious caution, besides Wiener's books, I have read is in Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum, another professor at M.I.T. Arthur Clarke's work seems to glow with a cosmic optimism (not unlike Freeman Dyson); the work of Phillip Dick is far more pessimistic, though the movie seems to suggest some cautious optimism--like the alternate ending of R.U.R. which Capek wrote to satisfy those who found his conclusion too bleak--the complete destruction of the human race. In Blade Runner, Deckard leaves with Rachel after 'retiring' the other replicants. It is not clear how long their new found love and happiness will last--a universal dilemma, all-too-familiar to most of us.
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