Blade Runner

I.          Introduction

·       Blade Runner is a film that takes place in the year 2019 in L.A. where the main protagonist Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a Blade Runner. His job is to find four outlaw replicants and retire them. This job starts out just like every other retirement job he’s had in the past until he is given a reason to question his own existence.

 

 

II.          Characteristics and Conventions of the film that link Blade Runner to classic film noir.

A.    Cinematic and Landscape. 

1.     Almost all of the movie is shot at night with it raining most of the time.

2.     Inside shots are with cigarette smoke and angled lighting.

      a. when Holden is interviewing Leon the room is filled with cigarette with celling fans    slowly turning over head and the lighting is angled though a window showing the shadows, like something you would see the classic Marlow style film.

3.     Architecture has buildings that were present back in the days of old school noir like the Bradbury building. With the classic 4^th st tunnel in L.A. being one of the road ways.

B.    Protagonist Deckard

1.     Deckard throughout the movie is more like the Philip Marlow style detective from the movie The Big Sleep. He is a retired lowly detective that has been brought back to life because of his ruthless style of work, he also was not the first choice to do this job like in The Big Sleep. He is for the most part a drunk and when confronted by the bad guys he gets beaten up and ends up only shooting woman replicants.

2.     Deckard’s attire is the black dirty trench coat style who is just the average looking sort, nothing to write home about. The kind of looks you see when you look at Humphrey Bogart.

3.     Deckard’s meeting with Zhora in her dressing room where he plays a nerdy rights activist couldn’t have come any closer then when boogie is playing the nerdy type book collector at the bookstore/porn outlet.

C.    Femme Fatale

1.     Rachel’s femme fatale looks date right out of the 40s her hair is folded like you would see on Barbara Stanwick from double indemnity

2.     Although Rachel’s femme fatale is short lived as a traditional noir bad girl her appearance in the interview with Deckard is classic noir as they trade shots back and forth. “Is this a test to see if I’m lesbian or a replicant” is classic boogie and Lauren Bacall.

III.          Elements of the film that Deviate from the Classic Film Noir and link it to Neo Noir

A.    Cinematic and Landscape and deferent cultures and not human.

1.     Even though Scott keeps with a mostly classic style atmosphere he intertwines it with flying cars and a city that bellows fire from the industrial towers that surround the city.

2.     The film is shot in color instead of black and white.

3.     Throughout the film we see a mixture of deferent races and even main character’s that are not human.

B.    Protagonist

1.     Deckard transform’s into a detective who is in question of his own being. After finding out that memories can be installed into their DNA make up. And as the clues build up, like being able to play the piano and dreaming of unicorns. He fights with the reality that he may be hunting and killing replicants and that he may be one of them. 

C.    Femme fatale

1.     Rachel is transformed into a woman who then realizes she is a replicant and only kill’s to protect the man she is following in love with. Not by greed or ambition but as necessity.

IV.           Dual Protagonist

A.    Roy is the leader of the outlaw replicants and my opinion is the second protagonist. He also displays traits as being a detective on a mission to find the man who made him.

1.     Roy’s reference to the man who made him as father as if he were talking to god. And this relates to the protagonist trying to find himself through a religious venue. This keeps with past Neo Noir.

2.     Roy show more human traits then Deckard as he save the man who is trying kill him. Transforming villain into victim. 

 Quotes from outside sources to implicate references to Classic and Neo Noir.

Sammon, Paul. Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. New York: HarperPrism, 1996. Print.

        In his book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. Paul Sammon really puts the visual elements of the classic noir detective in words as he states “Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the films protagonist, a cynical, world-weary ex-cop, Deckard exhibits all the familiar icons of the burned-out detective; he wears a trench coat, and drinks too much” (4). Blade Runner set the pace for how to make a future sci-fi movie. Still contain the classic Noir feel. Combining the classic look of Philip Marlow along with the self-destructive tendencies that we all know to be classic boogie. Even in the future we cannot escape the look and feel that we have been here before. And that the still iconic look and feel of classic noir is alive and well in the future.

 

Abrams, Jerold J.  Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Neo-Noir Cinema (2007): 1-14. Ebscohost. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.

        When it comes to the true essence of the Neo-Noir character conflict. Jerold Abrams really connects the meaning of this in his article Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Neo-Noir Cinema. In whereas he states “rather than looking for a criminal in the city that surrounds him, now the detective’s search is for himself, for his own identity and how he may have lost it.” (1). Blade Runner takes that’s who am I really and goes that one step further by asking the question am I even human? In neo noir we know that there may be some kind of amnesia element that the protagonist is trying to solve but Ridley Scott takes that one step further and shocks us with the reality of is this all a dream? Humanity has evolved into machines that look and feel like the real thing with memories of the past that are someone else’s. And even if they are not human they still have the overall same problems as humans and that is they want to live, feel, and love.

 

Film Clip

        The film clip is from the interview between Deckard and Rachael and is being done at the Tyrel building. The film clip display’s classic Noir shadows and low lighting, along with showing the classic noir dress and attire of both Deckard and Rachael. The interview is being done by the way of a machine called a Voight-Kampff test; this tester resembles the modern day lie detector test as thus leads into present day noir. Deckard discovers during this test that Rachael is a replicant and at the same time by the reaction that is given by Deckard, Rachael now has suspicions about her own humanity.  After the test is given Deckard asks Tyrel the question that starts the whole ball rolling “how can it not know what it is.”  This clip transform’s not only Deckard but also Rachael from the traditional style Noir protagonist and femme fatale to the Neo Noir divided detective trying to figure out who or what he is. 20:20 to 22:27