Film Studies
“Early in the 21st Century, robots known as Replicants, were created as off-world slave labor. Identical to humans, Replicants were superior in strength and agility, and, at least, equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them” (Blade Runner). Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, exhibited in 1982, portrays an idea about the truth of human nature. What is to be a human? How do we differ from a machine, and, after all, what makes us human?
Before the love scene, which we are going to analyze, the blade runner Deckard has been attacked by Leon (one of the replicants) in the city. Deckard, almost half-dead, is trying to defense himself from a violent Replicant, but all in vain. It is clear Deckard’s life is hanging by a thread. Suddenly, Rachael (supposedly, a Replicant herself) shots Leon down, saving Deckard’s life. At his place, Deckard cannot suppress his feelings any longer, though he still feels ambivalent and unsure about Rachael’s nature. The scene is crucial and, on the one hand, conveys the complex Deckard’s feelings to Rachael (he knows she is a replicant, but after she saves his life, he is confused: “how is this possible?”). On the other hand, we witness Rachael’s becoming as a human (she saves a man, apparently she is in love, when she plays the piano with feeling (this playing touches Deckard), she changes her look as if understanding her sexuality, her gender, eventually she has known love. Rachel is trying to distance herself from replicants, she reflects her otherness – Deсkard, in his turn, introspecting what makes him a human, not a machine, what makes him fall in love with the robot, and how all this paradoxically works: “Replicants weren't supposed to have feelings. Neither did blade runners” (Blade Runner).
A machine may be more empathic to a man, and if it is true who is more real and human? “Have you ever take the test yourself?” (Blade Runner) Rachael asks Deckard. Can you take for granted that your memory is not something artificial? We can read all this rhetorics in the long and frequent character’s closeups, during the love scene. “After all, they are emotionally inexperienced with only a few years in which to store up the experience which you and I take for granted. If we gift them with a past, we create a cushion for their emotions and consequently we can control them better. – Memories. You're talking about memories.” (Blade Runner) Memories that makes us human. But do many people care for memories as Rachael does?
This mise-en-scene utterly differs from the rest of the visual content of the film. It seems the characters are somewhere in the parallel universe, on their own: the feeling of time and space is very different. The director prepares us to the crucial moment: it is time to ask the most important questions, it is a proper time and location to unfold the characters’ feelings. In the semi-darkness, in a home atmosphere, it is some Rachael’s elusive gestures that make us understand and prove that she is “more human than human” (Tyrell corporation's motto). The space of the apartment is rather confusing and vague. It is sometimes unclear, how the characters are placed, how their dislocations relate to each other in the room. The characters are moving like magnets, attracting each other, but hesitating: over the shoulder views are mixed with closeups and shots of half empty room. The scene uses classic noir low key lightning and it is high contrasted, there is also a spinning spotlight outside, that brings more intrigue and suspense to the scene. Rachael’s makeup and hairstyle again remind us of a classic noir films and, symbolically, (while playing the piano) she changes herself completely as if to break away with her replicant’s mechanistic in human past.
The film features Vangelis’s Academy Award-winning soundtrack. In a love scene, we may divide it into two parts: the first part is somewhat dark ambient with futuristic synthesizers that refer to cyberpunk aesthetics of the film. The second one is a romantic piece with a haunting sax solo that covers almost erotic images and eye contacts. In contrast to Vangelis’s synthesizers, Rachael’s piano playing (using sheet music) seems to convey something archaic and natural, something very human that wakes Deckard’s tenderness and passion. It is remarkable that editing (pacing, in particular) turns into more classical and clichéd in this love scene. After the noise and hustle of the cyberpunk environment (supported by rather jumble pacing of the action film), we are dipping in a good old romantic scene, despite the fact that the lovers are replicated and blade runner.
Alongside with the final scene, the love scene highlights the main problem of the film -- namely, what makes us human beings. The replicants, artificial machines, on top of their mind sources, are trying to solve this riddle (what is to love, to forgive, to care). Some of them, as the film shows, are better than people (more human than human), and this aspect leaves the spectators a lot of food for thought.
Works Cited
Blade Runner: The Movie. Dir. Scott Ridley. Warner Bros., 1982. Film.
