Origamis

Rating: Null/10 (25 November 2012)

Much more so than any other film, this is going to be remembered long after many of its betters are forgotten. There's a reason why a significant number of viewers report that they eventually liked this on their second or third rewatch. Something compels you to come back. I believe this effect has nothing to do with Deckard's situation, though that seems to be the majority opinion.
Let's get right into it. The story is by all admission poor, though it has ambition and that is good. The theme of manufactured memory is weighty (and dear to me), just not the exploration in the noir direction. What does this mean? Film noir in the old days was all about a narrator succumbing to hallucination. (watch Out of the Past again)
Usually caused by the woman, this had the uncanny effect of manifesting as strange and suspicious perturbations in the investigated story, often noted by viewers as fate pulling the strings. Everything else was only incidental, the murder, fashions and hardboiled lingo. The first thing that greets you here as noir is the detective plot and retro fashions, and of course most viewers rest there.
There's more to it, though. There is an origami in the outer story, proof or not of fabricated memory, an excellent device. Something has to map to that in the world of dreams, an inner vision. Indeed, there is a corresponding scene of Deckard (as per noir rules) dreaming/hallucinating on his desk. There is a previous scene (part of the same sequence), where Deckard using impossible technology delves into and reconstructs a photograph for clues.
What is amazing is that this exactly the same process by which Deckard (anyone when dreaming/remembering) reconstructs his memory, by moving walls around in the mind of the original image, until we arrive at the subconsciously desired 'truth'. The setup of these two scenes is superb, one of the best in film, and the best explication of noir.
It smartly points to the fact that each and every memory is a constructed hallucination, a continuously shifting impression of a room, the furniture never in the same place twice. It is among other things how films are put together, in line with other metaphors in the film (toymaker, artificial eyes).
Scott in my view destroys this because he has set up a powerful mechanism, but also wants to swim inside Deckard's head. And he was simply not a psychonaut, never could be as a Kubrick adherent. Tarkovsky was, and that is a whole different school, one of inner-seeing and ecstatic time.
And what is Deckard's vision according to Scott? A unicorn running through a glade. In slow- motion. Eegad.
Nevermind the blunt action story of eye-gouging and heads through walls, though the contrast with above all but kills the film. This one image right there mars everything else, visual perfume.
So why do we come back to it, myself included? I have seen this four times, more than any of my favorites. The world of the film, a mixture of LA horizons, vertical Hong Kong, and a crowded Casbah. It is the most organic depiction of the future to this day. It breathes, feels at dusk like an entire world is coming home from work. So, though this particular story is pulp, you can almost hear sounds of people moving furniture in the room next to you, dreaming something else.