Blade Runner’s Memories

[Spoilers alert: Don’t read this if you’ve never seen Blade Runner but you are planning to]

Husband seems to believe that watching the same movie over and over again is fun. He likes how old movies feel familiar–you’ve learned all the lines by hearth and known exactly what to expect. They become part of you, and it’s almost like watching yourself. To me, watching the same movie twice feels like a waste of time. I like novelty. Familiarity bores me.

Well, except for Blade Runner, of course. I lost count of how many times I saw Blade Runner.

I blame Ridley Scott for the multiple versions that continue to crop up every decade: the first and studio-engineered voice-over version (“Families considering viewing this film should avoid the original like the plague; instead go with Ridley Scott’s vision” write Afsheen Nomai and Marjorie Kase in Common Sense Media), the Director’s Cut, and now the “Director’s Final Cut”.

Yes, Blade Runner is in theaters again (well, at least in one theater, the Ziegfeld in NYC) and yes, I went to see it again. (I wonder, how many times can a director make the same movie?)

I just cannot resist existential sci-fi, the type of sci-fi that explores other worlds and creatures as a way to reflect on what makes a human being human (is it emotions? memories? dreams? compassion? empathy?).

Blade Runner’s cinematography and the atmosphere are still amazing. Inside buildings and in the streets everything is dusty, messy, and wet. You can almost smell the moldy and rotten stench of the street of 2019 Los Angeles. Most scenes are dark, but bright artificial light intrudes and blinds. And it always rains.

Some scenes are more violent than I remember, probably because even the first time I had to close my eyes (this time, I knew exactly when it was time to keep my eyes shut). Watching replicants die was hard the first time, and hasn’t got any easier. They die with a fight, and they are painful to watch. But this is exactly the point.

Replicants are the scary others–so strong, unpredictable, and merciless–but killing dangerous creatures who don’t want to die still feels very much like killing.

Above all, Blade Runner is a movie about memories. Are we our memories? What if our memories are not real? What happens to our memories when we die?

At the end of the movie, Roy saves Deckard life, and it’s for not compassion or a sudden awakening of empathy. Roy needs a witness. A part of himself will continue to live if somebody listens to his memories and survives: “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.