Caitlín R. Kiernan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greygirlbeast) wrote2007-12-25 10:55 am
greygirlbeast) wrote2007-12-25 10:55 am
Entry tags:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."
Yesterday, I did a very respectable 1,522 words on "The Crimson Alphabet," managing to get from F to H (futanari, gallery, hive, and inhuman). F was the best of the four. Today, I'll do J through M and finish the first half for Sirenia Digest #25.
Afterwards, Spooky made spaghetti for dinner, and then we went out into the cold and the dark to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut at the Plaza on Ponce. Thing is, I'm probably one of the biggest damn Blade Runner geeks on the planet. I've long since lost count of how many times I've seen previous incarnations of the film, but would not be surprised if it were close to two hundred. It's one of those films I love so much I can recite it in my sleep. I was there on opening night on June 25th 1982. I was 18 years old; that particular theatre (Eastwood Twin at Eastwood Mall) was long ago torn down. I was there in 1994 when the "director's cut" was released (this time I saw it in a theatre in Athens, GA), and I thought, Yes, finally, they've put it back together (though, in truth, it was a rush job that Scott wasn't happy with). I've gone through a VHS of the film and two DVDs. All of this is just to say that I was very excited about seeing the "final cut" last night, more than twenty-five years after its initial release. And I was not disappointed. More than anything, this is a cleaner, tidier cut, not so much narratively different film from the 1994 release as cinematographically different. Some really annoying shots have been fixed. The best example, offhand, is when Roy Batty releases the white dove, and we get the shot of it flying away. Before, it was always this ugly, muddy blue shot that never made much sense, like we were seeing a shot that didn't really belong in the film. Now, we see the dove rising up towards the lights of the city skyline. The only thing I found jarring was one of Batty's lines during his confrontation with Tyrrell. In the previous two cuts I've seen, he says "I want more life, fucker." It sounds like he's about to say father, but changes his mind. In the "final cut," he says "father," instead. It's a somewhat inexplicable change and absolutely the only one I disagreed with. Overall, it's a gorgeous cut, and the sound (even at the Plaza, which does not have the best sound system in town) is crisp and possessed of more depth than I ever before noticed. It was just about the best way I could have imagined spending dratted Xmas Eve (short of getting that modest harem of nubile young Asian cyborgs with tentacle implants in just the right places that I mentioned a several days ago). I even took a few photos to mark the day:
Waiting for the curtain to rise.
But that's about it for yesterday. The next four letters of the alphabet await, as does coffee.
Afterwards, Spooky made spaghetti for dinner, and then we went out into the cold and the dark to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut at the Plaza on Ponce. Thing is, I'm probably one of the biggest damn Blade Runner geeks on the planet. I've long since lost count of how many times I've seen previous incarnations of the film, but would not be surprised if it were close to two hundred. It's one of those films I love so much I can recite it in my sleep. I was there on opening night on June 25th 1982. I was 18 years old; that particular theatre (Eastwood Twin at Eastwood Mall) was long ago torn down. I was there in 1994 when the "director's cut" was released (this time I saw it in a theatre in Athens, GA), and I thought, Yes, finally, they've put it back together (though, in truth, it was a rush job that Scott wasn't happy with). I've gone through a VHS of the film and two DVDs. All of this is just to say that I was very excited about seeing the "final cut" last night, more than twenty-five years after its initial release. And I was not disappointed. More than anything, this is a cleaner, tidier cut, not so much narratively different film from the 1994 release as cinematographically different. Some really annoying shots have been fixed. The best example, offhand, is when Roy Batty releases the white dove, and we get the shot of it flying away. Before, it was always this ugly, muddy blue shot that never made much sense, like we were seeing a shot that didn't really belong in the film. Now, we see the dove rising up towards the lights of the city skyline. The only thing I found jarring was one of Batty's lines during his confrontation with Tyrrell. In the previous two cuts I've seen, he says "I want more life, fucker." It sounds like he's about to say father, but changes his mind. In the "final cut," he says "father," instead. It's a somewhat inexplicable change and absolutely the only one I disagreed with. Overall, it's a gorgeous cut, and the sound (even at the Plaza, which does not have the best sound system in town) is crisp and possessed of more depth than I ever before noticed. It was just about the best way I could have imagined spending dratted Xmas Eve (short of getting that modest harem of nubile young Asian cyborgs with tentacle implants in just the right places that I mentioned a several days ago). I even took a few photos to mark the day:
Waiting for the curtain to rise.
But that's about it for yesterday. The next four letters of the alphabet await, as does coffee.
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Show that alphabet who's boss, and thank you for continuing that story. I really liked "The Black Alphabet"; I was glad to see your funnier side come out in some of those story's letters.
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I'll be heartbroken to hear "fucker" changed to "father". That dialogue between Tyrell and Roy is my favourite. "Father" changes Roy's stance entirely in the power equation playing out between them.
It's not as bad as all that, but is does diminish the anger and tension a bit. I'm hoping to hear, from somewhere or another, why Scott made the change.
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And Deckard isn't a friggin' replicant. I'm in the minority there, though. Harrison Ford thinks Deckard is human. Rutger Hauer thinks Deckard is human. Philip K. Dick thought Deckard is human. The screenwriters thought Deckard is human. But since Ridley Scott decided Deckard is a replicant, that overrides everyone else who worked on the film, or wrote it, or wrote the original novel, or played Deckard, etc.
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And Deckard isn't a friggin' replicant. I'm in the minority there, though. Harrison Ford thinks Deckard is human. Rutger Hauer thinks Deckard is human. Philip K. Dick thought Deckard is human. The screenwriters thought Deckard is human. But since Ridley Scott decided Deckard is a replicant, that overrides everyone else who worked on the film, or wrote it, or wrote the original novel, or played Deckard, etc.
All I can say is that this is the ending that has always felt truest to me. Had I been the screenwriter, director, or Philip K. Dick, I think it's what I'd have done. And I hated the voiceover in the original cut so much it's a miracle I ever fell in love wuth Blade Runner. But we've been through all this before, you know...
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So it's not the fans' Deckard-as-replicant interpretation I take issue with so much as Ridley Scott deciding for us what the movie means and announcing it as The One True Interpretation. It cuts off debate; it's as if Lynch told us exactly what everything means in the final reel of Mulholland Drive.
Then again, I don't have a lot of respect for Scott anyway — his true talent is in hiring brilliant set decorators and production designers and special-effects artists, I've always felt. And in not screwing up the few good scripts he's lucked into directing. There are very many others who were equally responsible for the magic of Blade Runner. I have a tough time accepting the director of G.I. Jane and Black Rain as the final voice of authority on how I should respond to such a beautifully ambiguous film.
That said, I wonder if you've always read Deckard as a replicant, or if that came with the 1992 version with the unicorn stuff. If the former, then my argument really isn't with you, but with Scott for ham-handedly nailing down his take on the meaning.
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That said, I wonder if you've always read Deckard as a replicant, or if that came with the 1992 version with the unicorn stuff.
Yes, I always believed Dekard was a replicant. Even in the mangled 1982 cut, there's his "peculiar obsession" with old photographs and the fact that he's able to survive the replicant's attacks. And there was always the origami unicorn in the original, pointing to the director's intended interpretation and the missing footage.
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We have. But it's the sort of film that's fun to return to and have good-natured debates over. As I said in the other comment, my ire is reserved for Scott, not for fellow fans whose reading is different from mine.
I'm also a contrarian by nature, so when 95% of the fans said 'Good, I hated the narration and I'm glad it's gone,' my response was 'But I liked the narration...' I know it was as tacked-on as the happy ending that at least everyone can agree sucked ass, but, as I've probably bored you with seven or eight times before, the narration pleases me as a tip of the hat to the film noir detective flicks the movie is partially modelled on. It also has some surprising little insights, as when Deckard shoots Zhora and says 'It didn't make me feel better about shooting a woman in the back.' Not a skin job, a woman. (Which might support the Deckard-as-replicant theory. Ah, well.)
You can at least take solace in the knowledge that I won't be holding forth on this again unless Scott pulls out an Ultimate Final Cut, Really, And We Mean It This Time in 2012 for the 30th anniversary. In which Gaff is revealed to be Rachael, since Scott always intended it that way.
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But it's the sort of film that's fun to return to and have good-natured debates over.
I am genetically incapable of having good-natured debates. True fact.
I'm also a contrarian by nature,
And, though it comes as a surprise to many people, I am not. I hate to argue, or debate, or deliberate, or whatever.
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There's the cop-show scenario of "he hunts them so well because he thinks like them, and the thinks like them because... he's one of them!" that I think people like. But it's far more overwhelming for me to think of the larger questions of death and memory in the story, as they apply to everyone.
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There's the cop-show scenario of "he hunts them so well because he thinks like them, and the thinks like them because... he's one of them!" that I think people like.
I don't think this was Scott's intention, but rather to strike a note of existential horror at the end, driving home just how unreliable memory and identity. To me, Dekard's confirmation of suspicions he clearly has earlier in the film (the impossible unicorn memory, his obsession with old photos, etc.) is a far more sobering conclusion.
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As Rutger Hauer put it, there's more power when a replicant saves a human than if a replicant saves another replicant. As he also put it, it's about a man who wants to fuck a machine.
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And what beautiful machines. (The cast just looks beautiful; even het-o me can see that Rutger Hauer's beautiful in the film.)
But it's far more overwhelming for me to think of the larger questions of death and memory in the story, as they apply to everyone.
And the film pulls that off with depth. It's one of the reasons we're still talking about it 25 years later, to state the obvious. Bless this film.
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As Rutger Hauer put it, there's more power when a replicant saves a human than if a replicant saves another replicant.
Here you miss a crucial point (as does Hauer). So long as Batty thinks Dekard is human, as he clearly does, then the scene essentially does depict a human being saved by a replicant.
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I intend to venture Outside sometime this week to take in Sweeney Todd. My movie budget is miniscule, hence only one film, Last month it was Beowulf (3d IMAX). I hope Blade Runner hangs around until January.
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Did Hubero enjoy his spaghetti? Spooky told me of his dining adventures.
Somehow, I missed that.
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You missed nothing.
Lastnight, Hubero had no uncooked spaghetti to gnaw upon.
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Also, I'm looking forward to more details about your appearance in MD when you have them. I don't know for sure if I would be able to make it (if any portion of it is even open to the public)... but I'm still looking forward to hearing more about it. If nothing else, perhaps they'll transcribe or record some portion of things.
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(if any portion of it is even open to the public)...
No one has told me yet whether it will be or not.
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Also, wanted to add my vote to "Deckard is human." To me, the story works much better if Deckard is a human -- especially the pathos of the ending. In my mind, the horror of living for years, possibly decades, after he watches the woman he's come to love (as much as he loves anyway -- another irony, that these machines love and feel more deeply than Deckard allows himself to) die in a few short years is more in keeping with the film's themes about just what defines humanity.
I think, in part, this "argument" (which is really pretty silly, I think), comes down to a disagreement over what different people think the film ought to be about. Myself, I see a film about slavery and bigotry and an inability to trust memory and identity. Dekard is, in that film, the ultimate tool (machine) of the corporate establishment: a more or less compliant replicant with mnemonic implants doing the work of his creators.
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That ambiguity is, I think, why the film stays with you after you see it, why it matters in the language and issues of science fiction (which, to me, has never been about laser guns and spaceships, but casting the questions we already face in new light); whether one interprets it to mean Deckard is a replicant or that he's a human, he's still fundamentally a creature of pathos, and still facing the same questions about identity, purpose, and humanity. Just what those questions mean for him, personally, depends greatly on what he really is, and while I'm personally of the opinion that he is a human, that's probably influenced strongly by having read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? first, in which Deckard is almost certainly human.
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Did you mean futanari?
Actually, yes, I did.
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http://www.amazon.com/Blade-Runner-Five-Disc-Ultimate-Collectors/dp/B000K15VSA/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1198651418&sr=8-1
Or this:
http://www.amazon.com/Blade-Runner-Trilogy-Anniversary-Amazon-com/dp/B000Z0OX9O/ref=pd_bbs_sr_7?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1198651418&sr=8-7
C got them for me for Xmas.
It's pretty nice.