Student Blog

Blade Runner

During this week we were asked to watch the film directed by Ridely Scott (1982) partially based on a book by Philip K Dick, Do the Androids dream of electric sheep?

The film became really influential in the sci-fi genre has been the leader of a later film genre the Cyberpunk (postmoden science fiction focused on "high tech and low life"

Although the film is partially an action film, it does not have a proper narrative rythm as it is not only an action film, but a film full of symbolism (which i'll talk about later), and influenced by the genre Film noir (themes like femme fatal, the narration in first person, and the dark and sadowy cinematography as well as the questionable moral of the hero). 

It has been given the popularity of a postmernist classic art piece due to the "realist description of a future decay"

Blade Runner presents a Dystopian future (Los Angeles, 2019), humanity decay, and proposes fundamental worries for XXI.

Ridely Scott described the film as "extremily dark, both literally and metaphorically, with an oddly masochistic feel"

There are different symbologies throughout the film which relate to the themes we have been working on throughout this week. 

The eyes are a recurrent symbol which call into question human ability to percieve and remember accurately. This is linked to the various manipulated images in the film (i.e the dream Deca has about the unicorn).

The first image is the eye that is presented at the beginning of the film, the two way mirror eye.

Replicants are discovered through an empathy test were empathy questions are made meanwhile their pupils are studied through a machine that detect when pupils are dilatated. The experiment indicates people's humanity. This metaphor alludes to the fact that we all have memories because we have seen some of them trough our eyes, and therfore we can picture images in our mind, and when we can't recall something, this can be noticed trough our eyes.

During the film, when playing the piano Dec has a dream, a flashback of a unicorn in a forest. Does this mean he is a replicant? that he has been created and given false memories?

Louise Bourgeois, Ode à l'oubli, 2002

One of the most interesting characters in the film is Rachel, a replicant who has been given memories from different people, and thinks all the memories she has belong to her. When she starts to suspect she is a replicant is when Dec testes her, although it takes much longer for him to figure out she is a replicant, the memories she has are not hers, and she starts to question her own memories.

Later on, she goes to Dec's apartment to talk with him, she asks him if she not human. Later on Dec tries to help her, so he asks her if she can remembers what happened to that spider egg she had next to her window when it bursted. She replies she saw thousands of spiders born.

This is the question that makes her realize those memories aren't hers, but from another human.

 This is a sketch I did in my sketchbook after watching the film, the image of the siper and the egg is not pictured, and because it is a cruicial part in the movie, I decided it was important to record what my mind had pictured when the story was described.

Items that are seen constantly are pictures, specially Rachel's picture of her and her mother when she was little. When she sees it, she recalls that exact moment when it was taken. What she realizes afterwards, is that the little girl in it is not actually her, and the woman in it, is not her mother. She has photographs because it provides her with a non-exsisting past she believes she has. Ridely Scott is playing again with our minds, what the eyes see and the resulting memory is not to be trusted.

Sketch I drew when tears start to run down the face of Rachel.
memories fade away with all I thought I had lived, experiences, smelled, touched, seen, heared. What is there left for me? No memories, lies, no past, no life. I'm not human.
I wanted to capture the moment when the tears whipe away all of what she thought were her memories.

The film is a future memory, Ridely Scott uses his memories to propose a hypothetical future, some exampes are humans migrating to other planets, an allusion to the migration to the Americas. The 80's prediction of the United States being economically weaker than Japan which can be seen in the domination of Japaneese people and cuture in Los Angeles (2019), as well as the advance in engineering and robotic.

The film has captured in perfection the themes we have been working on, and discussing in our blogs throughout the week. Memories and Future Memories are exposed both  in the film, using different methods, specially lots of symbolism, Ridely Scott has been able to create a film which is much more than a sci-fi movie, it is a postmodernist art piece with high leves of paranoia, and hidden themes that have triggerd my mind.

What will the future look like? How will it be?
Memories are valuable and we can use them to imagine a future.

These are some cinematography images that inspired me: