Bladerunner
Place on List:
IV. Special Area: Literary
Social Criticism
3. Primary Texts: Film
Ridley
Scott. Bladerunner.
Key Terms (tags): film noir, science
fiction,
Supporting References:
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“Ridley Scott has enjoyed more
critical acclaim and financial success as a director of television
commercials than he has as a feature filmmaker. Ironically, the very
element that has made him an award-winning director of
commercials—his emphasis on visual design to convey the message—has
often been at the core of the criticism aimed at his films.
“Though Scott began his career
directing popular TV programs for the BBC, he found that his
meticulous attention to detail in terms of set design and props was
more suited to making commercials. Scott honed his craft and style on
hundreds of ad spots for British television during the 1970s, as did
future film directors Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Adrian Lyne, and Tony
Scott (Ridley's brother). In 1979, Scott became a fixture in the
American television marketplace with a captivating commercial for
Chanel No. 5 titled "Share the Fantasy." Still innovative
in this arena, Scott continues to spark controversy with his "pocket
versions of feature films"—his term for commercials.
“Scott approaches his feature films
with the same emphasis on mise-en-scène that distinguishes
his commercials, prompting some critics to refer to him as a visual
stylist. Scott assumes control over the visual elements of his films
as much as possible, rather than turn the set design completely over
to the art director or the photography over to the cinematographer.
Because his first feature, The Duellists, was shot in France,
Scott was able to serve as his own cinematographer for that film—a
luxury not allowed on many subsequent films due to union rules.
“Hallmarks of Scott's style include a
detailed, almost crowded set design that is as prominent in the frame
as the actors, a fascination with the tonalities of light, a penchant
for foggy atmospheres backlit for maximum effect, and a reliance on
long lenses, which tend to flatten the perspective. While these
techniques are visually stunning in themselves, they are often tied
directly to plot and character in Scott's films.
“Of all Scott's films, Blade
Runner and Legend make the fullest use of set design to
enhance the theme. In Blade Runner, the polluted, dank
metropolis teems with hordes of lower-class merchants and
pedestrians, who inhabit the streets at all hours. Except for huge,
garish neon billboards, fog and darkness pervade the city, suggesting
that urban centers in the future will have no daylight hours. This
pessimistic view is in sharp contrast to the sterile, brightly lit
sets found in conventional science-fiction films. Inherent in the set
design is a critique of our society, which has allowed its
environment to be destroyed. The overwrought set design also
complements the feverish attempts by a group of androids to find the
secret to longer life. Blade Runner influenced the genre with
its dystopian depiction of the future, though the cluttered set
design and low-key lighting were used earlier by Scott in the
science-fiction thriller Alien. Legend, a fairy tale complete
with elves, goblins, and unicorns, employs a simple theme of good and
evil that is reinforced through images of light and darkness. The
magical unicorns, for example, have coats of the purest white; an
innocent, virginal character is costumed in flowing, white gowns;
sunbeams pour over glades of white flowers; and light shimmers across
silver streams as the unicorns gallop through the forest. In
contrast, a character called Darkness (actually the Devil) looks
magnificently evil in an array of blood reds and wine colors; the
sinister Darkness resides in the dark, dismal bowels of the Earth,
where no light is allowed to enter; and a corrupted world is
symbolized by a charred forest devoid of flowers and leaves and black
clouds that cover the sky. The forest set was constructed entirely
inside the studio and is reminiscent of those huge indoor sets
created for Fritz Lang's Siegfried. In Black Rain,
Scott once again reinforced the film's theme through its
mise-en-scène, though here he made extensive use of actual
locations instead of relying so much on studio sets. Black Rain
follows the story of two New York detectives tracking a killer
through the underworld of Osaka, Japan. The two characters are
frequently depicted against the backdrop of Osaka's ornate neon signs
and ultramodern architecture. Shot through a telephoto lens and lit
from behind, the characters seem crushed against the huge set design,
which serves as a metaphor for their struggle to penetrate the
culture in order to track their man.
“Though Scott has forged a style that
is recognizably his own, his approach to filmmaking has a precedent
in German Expressionist filmmaking. The Expressionists were among the
first to use the elements of mise-en-scène (set design,
lighting, props, costuming) to suggest traits of character or enhance
meaning. Similarly, Scott's techniques are stunning yet highly
artificial, a trait often criticized by American reviewers, who too
often value plot and character over visual style, and realism over
symbolism.
“Scott's more recent films,
especially Thelma and Louise, suggest that his strongest
quality all along has been an ability to create film myths that
resonate in viewers' minds for years afterwards. The Duellists
continues to be a haunting film despite the actors' inadequate
performances, not just because of the splendidly romantic
cinematography but because of the starkness of the tale itself (from
Joseph Conrad); and Alien, with its own duel between a
no-nonsense heroine and a hidden evil, continues to be an object of
critical study, feminist and otherwise. Blade Runner, perhaps
most of all of Scott's films, has seized the imagination of both
movie fans and scholarly theoreticians: a 1991 volume of critical
studies of the film contains a 44-page annotated bibliography, and
this is before the theatrical release of the "Director's Cut,"
which had aficionados debating the merits of its eliminating
Deckard's noiresque voiceovers and the hopeful green hills at the
end, and of adding a brief shot of a unicorn. One might attribute the
relative failures of Someone to Watch over Me and Black
Rain, despite their visual swank, to their inability to transcend
tired generic conventions, while the more recent 1492: The
Conquest of Paradise seems most successful in its mythic
moments—notably Columbus's first glimpse of the New World as mists
sweep aside—rather than in its efforts to document the Spanish
extermination of native peoples while partially exonerating Columbus
himself.
“Thelma and Louise, with its
near-hallucinatory, flamboyantly archetypal American Western settings
(bearing little relation to such specificities as "Arkansas"),
debuted with much debate about how feminist it actually was in its
characterizations of two "dangerous women" and in its
delineations of the patriarchal causes of their doomed flight. But
whatever conclusions might be drawn about the film's polemics, those
unforgettable shots of Thelma and Louise whooping in delight as they
light out for the territory in their T-bird convertible—red hair
flying, sunglasses glinting—seem destined to enter American
mythology (granted that it is too soon to rank the pair alongside
Huck and Jim on the raft). Closer to tall tale than high tragedy,
Thelma and Louise is memorable due not only to the script and
the seemingly inevitable casting of the leads, but to Scott's
realization of landscapes, from the rainy night highways (a
background wash of massive dark trucks and blinding lights) to
Monument Valley and other vast spaces populated by little more than
swarms of police vehicles. It may well be a defining film of the
early 1990s, as Blade Runner has become for the early 1980s.”
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“This futuristic
hard-boiled detective yarn stars Harrison Ford as a world-weary film
noir hero whose job is to smoke out and retire (i.e.,Page 146
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of Article destroy) "replicants"—androids
with a human instinct for survival—in an overcrowded Los Angeles
circa 2019.
“Complications arise when Ford falls
for an android, a gorgeous experimental model played by Sean Young,
dressed up as a 1940s film noir femme fatale, and comes to the
conclusion that his task of mercilessly hunting and striking down
these creatures whose only crime is a belief in their humanity has
dulled his own humanity— although it is subsequently revealed,
somewhat obscurely, that Ford comes to identify with them because
he's a replicant with deep-rooted memory chips himself.
“Director Ridley Scott used his clout
following the success of Alien (1979) to create this visually
striking science-fiction piece, drawn from Philip K. Dick's novella
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Partisans consider the
novella (somewhat altered in the film version) and the film modern
masterpieces of the genre. Certainly the film's milestone special
effects (orchestrated by 2001's Douglas Trumbull and an army
of technicians) are stunning. As is Scott's evocation of a teeming,
twenty-first century Los Angeles perpetually drenched in rain or
steam. Apart from the occasional spacecraft circling the Capitol
Records building, it looks remarkably like Scott's garish evocation
of present day Tokyo in his subsequent neo-noir (minus the
sci-fi element) Black Rain (1989).
“The film's dramatic structure is
much less satisfying, however, although it has been significantly
improved with the studio's release of the never-before-seen
"director's cut."
“Scott suffered a great deal of
studio interference in the course of making the film. The script
underwent numerous rewrites before and during filming. His woes (he
called the experience "a war") continued through
post-production and several previews until the film was released in
1982, becoming a cult favorite but a box-office flop.
“Audiences were knocked out by the
film's images but frustrated by the ambiguities of many major plot
points (Ford's being an android among them), and bored by the
constant narration inserted over and obscuring the otherwise
imaginatively detailed soundtrack to help clarify them. That the
narration spoken by Ford in his customary expressionless monotone
slowed the film's pace to almost a crawl didn't help. There is some
debate as to whether Ford's narration was planned from the start or
cobbled together in a panic move during post-production. Evidence
suggests the former. But the unwelcome decision not to drop it for
the film's initial release hints at the latter.
“In any case, when the studio
re-released the film in 1991 in a newly struck 70mm "director's
cut"—the print now in circulation on video—the narration was
jettisoned. It's deletion improves the film's pace considerably.
(Even Harrison Ford has gone on record as saying so.) Many plot
ambiguities remain, but the significant revelation that Ford himself
is a replicant—and all the more human because of it, who finally
realizes his brotherhood with the android combatant (Hauer) he has
destroyed, is much clearer now.
“Ironically, although many so-called
"director's cuts" tend to re-insert footage—typically
explicitly sexual or violent scenes—trimmed from the first-round
general release, Blade Runner—The Director's Cut actually
takes the opposite route by toning this footage down a bit. For
example, Darryl Hannah's gymnastic android doesn't take quite as many
bullet hits as before—nor do you see Ford gouge Hauer's eyes.
Enough remains to sustain the film's R rating, however.”
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