Blade Runner the final cut?

There’s a new Blade Runner DVD coming out in December, so they’ve released a print in limited runs to stir up interest. Blade Runner the Final Cut started a run at the Regent Theatre on Mt. Pleasant a couple of weeks ago. I ended up seeing it three times so far, the most recent on a dark and rainy Sunday night with a nearly deserted streetscape echoing the movie’s vision of a city.

If you haven’t seen Blade Runner before (any of the 6 versions of it floating out there), stop reading as I’ll probably give things away that are better witnessed first-hand. The Final Cut represents version #7, if you’re keeping score at home.

The Regent is a great little indie movie house. Originally built for live theatre, it’s a post-production facility by day and movie house by night, so the projection system and the sound system are amazing. The room is also acoustically fixed up.

I own the Director’s Cut (version #6) on VHS and on DVD, but I’ve seen Blade Runner onscreen a few times—there was a scratched print floating around, and I got to see a genuine 76-mm print at the late great Eglinton Theatre once, even if it was also the “happy ending” version with voiceover.

So, to see a fresh print, digitally restored and remastered the way Ridley Scott had intended (he didn’t have control until version #6), in a great theatre, was too much to pass up on 3 separate occasions.

Blade Runner is quite a bleak view of the future (CITY-TV used to run it right after its New Year’s Eve show as a subtle but powerful statement), with perpetual night and constant heavy rain dominating the formerly sun-baked climate of Los Angeles. Enormous refineries spout fireballs of gas into the air during the opening flight over the dark cityscape as drums hammer the audience into their seats.

There’s a great book written about the making of the movie called Future Noir—I’d recommend it to any fans who haven’t read it—which will keep this entry short.

The big debate amongst the fans for the longest time was whether or not Deckard, Harrison Ford’s protagonist, was a replicant or not. Ridley Scott ahs more or less confirmed that the character is a replicant, but Ford has been quoted as saying that Scott told him that Deckard wasn’t a replicant when they were shooting the movie. In version #7, Deckard is clearly a replicant: the unicorn daydream and the origami unicorn are proof, glowing red eyes aside.

In the end, however, it doesn’t matter whether Deckard is a fake or authentic human. The final scene is powerful regardless.

After meeting and facing down the last of the replicants, Deckard returns home to pick up Rachael, the femme fatale, so that they can flee together. As he gets her to the elevator, he spots an origami unicorn on the ground—a sign that fellow blade runner Gaff was there. He picks it up and holds it in front of his face as a series of emotions play across his face, and Gaff’s last line, “It's too bad she won't live; but then again, who does?” is heard.

That closeup of Harrison Ford’s face is one of Ford’s finest moments as an actor. And it gives Ridley Scott a great, low-key climactic moment. Because Deckard’s feelings are not explained with dialogue, it’s ambiguous. And it’s absolutely brilliant on all parties’ counts.

Here’s how I interpret that last shot:

For devotees of the Deckard-is-a-replicant school, Deckard realizes that he is a replicant at that moment: the unicorn daydream could only be known to Gaff if the daydream was an implant (either Deckard’s or Gaff’s, or both). He realizes that he and Rachael are both hunted—by Gaff and the other blade runners, by their built-in limited life-spans, or by both. But Deckard still turns and joins Rachael in the elevator. In the “happy ending” version, this is followed by the closing credits over aerial footage as though from one of the spinners (flying cars) fleeing the city. In the other versions, like #7, it goes to black and credits.

For Deckard as authentic human, that moment is still awful: he realizes they’re being hunted, either by Rachael’s best-before date, Gaff, or both.

In turning to join Rachael, he’s not giving up, he’s seizing the day, he’s alive, dammit. That’s the faint light at the end of the Blade Runner tunnel. How anyone felt it necessary to throw in the aerial footage that cheaply represented the POV of a fleeing spinner….

Regardless of how you see Deckard, this shot, to me, is great filmmaking: a powerful climactic beat, with enough ambiguity to leave the viewer debating with himself what the character is thinking and feeling, and wondering what happens next.

It’s also an instructive lesson in acting with the eyes and face for film, and how to capture that acting in order to give that beat its proper expression.

Ford is completely in the moment during that beat. He’s not telling us his emotions—he lets them come from within and they take him and us through the beat. The beat feels honest because Ford is honest in that closeup.

Ridley Scott held that shot to let the beat pass uninterrupted. Here’s what I remember of that last scene: Rachael steps on the origami unicorn—cut—Deckard comes out of his apartment—cut—closeup as Deckard notices the unicorn—cut—Deckard’s hand picks up the unicorn—cut—closeup on the unicorn—cut—Deckard holds the unicorn in front of his face and the great moment happens.

I don’t remember what shot is next—Deckard turning around? Shot of Rachael in the elevator?—because those shots follow the climax of the film. The few seconds of Deckard following Rachael are the epilogue, to make sure we know he’s going with her, regardless of what’s chasing them.

Watch Blade Runner the Final Cut and you’ll be transported to a dark world with a faint glimmer of hope, a powerful and disturbing story that resonates so much with what we face in 2007. There are some great moments of writing and acting in it—the Roy Batty speech before he dies is another great moment in acting—but the whole movie builds up to that final 10 seconds of greatness.