Review of Blade Runner (1982) by Mereie D — 06 Oct 2014

Okay, here's for another atonement session. I decided Blade Runner too deserved a second change after I'd made mincemeat out of it after my first viewing years ago. I now see that paying acute attention from the very beginning of the movie might have made a difference.

I had read the introductory screens about the story's background (colonization of planets, replicants necessary for the donkey work, illegal status of the replicants and their euphemistic retirement), but I didn't allow for the info to sink in properly, I guess.

Consequently, the film didn't make much sense to me the first time, which is partly my own fault. Partly, that is, for I still think the rest of a movie should be clear enough to make ample sense without that initial context info.

True, I like Blade Runner better now than at my first viewing, but I still need way more time to let it grow some more on me. Somehow I feel this film will look very good in the script and would be very interesting in a modern remake, Sin City-style, with computer effects and graphic novel elements.

I would also suggest the use of a voice-over (one of the experiments during the production, as becomes clear from the documentary Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner from 2007). This would fill in some of the gaps in the movie and it would give some more weight to Harrison Ford's character.

For there are quite some gaps there. For instance, why is it always nighttime? Why does the whole world look like a china town (or is that just in this particular location on earth)? Why do we not see any ordinary people in ordinary houses? How do people live anyway? Why are we swaying back and forth between stuffy offices, empty factory halls and Asian market places? And some more background on the replicants wouldn't go amiss either.

Please acquaint me more with my setting and my protagonists in these two hours. It almost feels like not doing this is the easier way out, and the viewer is left to do all the work. I will not complain about the fact dated sci-fi never works in hindsight, and that 2019 is only five years away from us.

Some things you simply cannot win. But fact is that the abovementioned documentary is way more interesing than the film itself. It sure does make it look a very iconic and initially underrated masterpiece that took painstaking effort to produce, but at the end of the day there is only one thing that really counts: the viewing experience "sec", without any form of explanation or recommendation.

And that, alas, doesn't do it for me (yet).