All the Detectives Dress Up for Each Other
Blade Runner (1982)
directed by Ridley Scott
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
David Peoples' revisions pared down the source novel's sci-fi paranoia for a clean story about loneliness: Voight-Kampff questions on childhood and mothers; men playing chess over the phone; noodle stands and strip clubs. Scott cleaned up the title by buying the rights to the name from William Burroughs, and scoured the ominous Los Angeles skyline that opens the film for a narrow run of streets and alleyways where Deckard buys his food. The set's familiarity is more like a city block from Barfly than anything in Alien.
Like Barfly, each location is a place to be alone. Roy Batty and Pris are the only two characters who confront situations together. Even the cops work without partners. Instead of sidling up to his regular stool for his regular bowl of pho, Deckard waits for a seat to open from a perch half out of the rain. Waiting becomes part of the pace of the film, and it culminates in Deckard's confrontation with Batty, with the audience on the line while Batty, time running out, waits to die.
All that waiting distracts us from the threat of the film: that happiness, once found, can't last. Edward James Olmos, with all of Admiral Adama's weight on his ivory-handled cane, gets Peoples' best line from across a rotting rooftop. "It's too bad she won't live," he shouts, "but then again, who does?" Deckard takes it as a warning, and runs. But it isn't. Just a fact, an inevitability, like the end of a movie.
directed by Ridley Scott
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
David Peoples' revisions pared down the source novel's sci-fi paranoia for a clean story about loneliness: Voight-Kampff questions on childhood and mothers; men playing chess over the phone; noodle stands and strip clubs. Scott cleaned up the title by buying the rights to the name from William Burroughs, and scoured the ominous Los Angeles skyline that opens the film for a narrow run of streets and alleyways where Deckard buys his food. The set's familiarity is more like a city block from Barfly than anything in Alien.
Like Barfly, each location is a place to be alone. Roy Batty and Pris are the only two characters who confront situations together. Even the cops work without partners. Instead of sidling up to his regular stool for his regular bowl of pho, Deckard waits for a seat to open from a perch half out of the rain. Waiting becomes part of the pace of the film, and it culminates in Deckard's confrontation with Batty, with the audience on the line while Batty, time running out, waits to die.
All that waiting distracts us from the threat of the film: that happiness, once found, can't last. Edward James Olmos, with all of Admiral Adama's weight on his ivory-handled cane, gets Peoples' best line from across a rotting rooftop. "It's too bad she won't live," he shouts, "but then again, who does?" Deckard takes it as a warning, and runs. But it isn't. Just a fact, an inevitability, like the end of a movie.
posted by NPK at 12:23 PM
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