Cutting edge

Rating: 10/10 (22 July 2007)

Generally, I don't like voice-over narration; it tends to tell us what we are already seeing, or what should be made clear anyway in a well-written story. Yet, I prefer the original version of Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER that features narration. Read as a flat monologue by Harrison Ford, the narration is relatively minor and it is bland and lacking any sense of humor or style. And though it does provide some fresh details, it really isn't dramatically necessary. Yet, the voice-over works, I think, because it is so banal; in a film that relies heavily on style and visuals, the narration's absence of any sense of poetry grounds the film. It contrasts with the overwhelming stylistics of the film as a whole. It gives us something real -- something human -- in an overcrowded world of eye-popping fantasy.
Director Scott -- as well as Ford himself -- are on the record as not liking the narrated version and when Scott got the chance to have his say on a quasi-director's cut, the studio-imposed narration was the first thing to go. And while his version, without the intruding words, is more solemnly impressive, it is also more desolate and aloof. Without the narration, we observe the action in BLADE RUNNER from a safe distance; with the narration, Ford's Rick Deckard talks to us and forces us to be his confidante. And I think that is essential to appreciating the film because otherwise it is difficult to care one way or the other about the character or his fate. One-dimensional and unsympathetic, Deckard is not the film's hero -- indeed, he is anything but heroic -- but in the end, all depends on whether he lives or dies and the fact that he has shared his thoughts with us makes all the difference.
BLADE RUNNER is a strange hybrid of genres, an odd melding of the traditional film noir, with its peculiar sense of pragmatic morality, and modern sci-fi, with its darkly pessimistic and persistent distrust of both humanity and scientific progress. There is also an element of the traditional western, and its romanticizing of masculinity and individuality. Deckard is a retired cop, drawn back into service by the proverbial "one last case." He is a "blade runner," a policeman by law, but in this dark and murky vision of the future (circa 2019), he is more of a hired assassin, in reality a gunslinger or bounty hunter. His job is to track down and "retire" a quartet of humanistic androids -- replicants -- who were genetically constructed to be slave labor on some off-planet space colony. Though they were created with built-in expiration dates and are fated to die soon anyway, the four have violently rebelled and have come to earth to try to force the corporation that created them to somehow extend their longevity.
Though now considered a landmark of sci-fi cinema, BLADE RUNNER was a box office flop when it was released and was greeted with critical indifference. This is understandable; released about the same time as E.T. - THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, and on the heels of STAR WARS and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, the film represented a jarring difference in style and tone for audiences eager for upbeat sci-fi fantasy or thrilling matinée adventures. And this was especially true given the presence of Ford in the starring role; there is nary a trace of Indiana Jones or Han Solo in Deckard and though Ford plays the part well, it is with a dour lack of enthusiasm. Deckard has a job to do and one that he doesn't particularly like; that is the closest he comes to acting heroic. Indeed, in the end, what many may have found hard to appreciate, if they grasped it at all, is that Deckard is the film's villain, a man with no soul who seeks to kill others because they are deemed less than human.
There are two other points of contention brought up by Scott's revisionist view: One is his dislike for the film's so-called "happy ending" and the other his notion that Deckard is also a replicant (though Ford rejects this idea, insisting the character was always meant to be human). If Deckard is a replicant, the film gets an ironic twist at the end -- but it also robs the film of it's spiritual essence. The climatic moment of the story is when the last act of a dying replicant, Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, is to save Deckard's life. If Batty saves Deckard because he senses he is a fellow replicant, it is an act of unity; but if he saves a human enemy, it is an act of forgiveness. As the narration explains, at death Batty loves life so much, he can't bare to take it from another. Batty receives redemption (and reveals he has a soul) by forgiving Deckard; Deckard's soul is reborn through Batty's generosity of spirit. And a beautifully ugly film about death becomes a film about the preciousness of life.
The original ending, where Deckard and the replicant Rachel (Sean Young) flee to the country in the hopes of sharing a life, is optimistic, an underscoring of the idea of rebirth. It is vastly superior to Scott's preferred inconclusive ending, which suggests that the two are doomed fugitives. Though the studio-imposed "happy ending" was no doubt a purely commercial decision, it gives the film meaning in a way Scott's pessimism can't. Scott's vision of BLADE RUNNER is like a replicant, an engineering marvel and, like a machine, he assumes it is should run with cold, empty efficiency. But just as hope is what makes the replicants human, it is it's original message of hope that gives BLADE RUNNER its humanity.