Human ambition

Rating: 10/10 (11 February 2007)

There are several extraordinary things about Blade Runner.
1) It does not state who's good and who's bad. 2) It throws you into a scenario that you'll probably not enjoy. 3) It doesn't bother to explain why things are the way they are. 4) It shows us something that, although it doesn't exist anywhere, still has an existential meaning to us.
Apart from that Blade Runner has the best score ever. Vangelis created a style that in its simplicity strikes you far more as being of the future than any more sophisticated electronic music could ever do.
The thing I was referring to in 4. is a grown up without experiences of his own. That is a logical impossibility, a paradox. But paradoxically it's one of the most powerful stimuli of existential reflection that were ever shown in cinema. The point being that it lets you ask yourself what all your experiences were good for.
Not quite so subtle, yet still of interest, is the idea that you could be born into life knowing full well what your purpose is and how long you'll live. What does that do to you? The film answers that though, it's unacceptable, you'll deny it, seek something else, something more. It just cannot be that everything will be lost like tears in rain.
But human ambition is a much broader theme of this film. The world itself, in which Blade Runner takes place, is a statement about the human longing for progress and power, his forwardness and his backwardness. Some concepts seem ridiculous from nowadays perspective, but the overall atmosphere is right on the spot. And in this respect I have to say that the original cut has the better ending, because of the contrast, because of all the emotions that are awakened by that contrast, which does not appear cheesy, but rather estranged, a release into the completely unknown.