Monday 13 August 2012

Even Replicants have feelings

There are many sad scenes in 'Blade Runner', but this is one of the saddest.  A sort of analogy to finding out you are adopted, but 100 times more shocking?  Especially if you haven't been told you have a life-expectancy of about 12 years from birth, and you appear to be about 25 years old.

13 comments:

  1. I am perhaps one of the few film geeks in the world that actually didn't like Bladerunner
    Having said this I kind of like Harrison Ford as the latter-day Sam Spade

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    1. It's amazing how our taste in fillums differs so greatly. Maybe it's because I never had any training about what I should like.

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    2. It really does seem as though we have completely opposing taste in movies though, and I really don't see why the last bit was so stupid. I was only accusing myself of being an amateur...

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    3. you like what you like
      "training" ( whatever that means) has nothing to do with it

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  2. Saw Blade Runner displayed on a stretched out sheet in Belize in the early Eighties. A brilliant film and still part of my collection.

    A year later I met Harrison Ford when he was filming Mosquito Coast. Very nice bloke but that film was shit.

    For me, the best bit, the most poignant, was when Rutger Hauer, with his dazzling blue eyes, knowing that all his experiences, everything that he had seen would be snuffed out, said,

    'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die.'

    Dying is inevitable and so is the grief for those who remain. The sad part about death though, the really, really sad part, are all those memories, the experiences, the skills that you will no longer be able to share.

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    1. Yes, the manufacture of crap Scagliola will be lost with me...

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  3. Loved that movie. Thanks for reminding me. Rachael was probably my favourite character.

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    1. I had already put up a clip of the dying Rutger Hauer character (full transcript above, courtesy of Hippo), but Rachel was just so... 'human' I suppose...

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  4. But is Harrison Ford a replicant, too? And why the origami on the landing?

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    1. When I was looking for that clip, I came upon another where Ridley Scott explains that H.F. was also a replicant. I was a bit disappointed to hear it, really. It would have been nice to think of him running off with Rachel at the end, knowing for once that this was going to be a short-term relationship, and he would soon be moving on without having to dump her...

      As for the origami, I don't know. It reminded me of the Pet Shop Boy's bit in the closing ceremony.

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  5. P.S. - Claim to Fame number 99: I tarted up some stonework for Ridley Scott's London house a couple of years ago. Carry on.

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