One Word Movie

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

I don't care about the proliferation of different versions of Blade Runner - it's a good film, obviously, but it's not Ulysses. The changes are pretty minimal in any case - the only one I noticed was that Rutger Hauer says "I want more life, father" when he kills Tyrell, as opposed to the more Withnialian original. Which is a shame, because I used to enjoy imagining him shambling around drinking bottles of Haut Brion from the 50s while complaining that the Tannhauser Belt wasn't what it used to be.

Anyway, I didn't think it was that great a film. I don't know if it's because I've seen it, like, infinity times, but I'm not particularly interested if Deckard is a replicant any more. Although when I was a kid that seemed like one of the most amazing conspiracies which turned out to be true - a bit like Skull and Bones, for instance. And I don't rate his pulling technique either.

What I would like to know is why none of the action happens in the horizontal plane. It's almost like a visual tic that they are always getting in flying cars, or running up stairs, and you could make quite a big list of all the times that there are lifts in the movie. I wrote quite a pretentious essay about that in one of my finals papers, and while it's something that's certainly observable in the film, I couldn't come up with a good reason why. So if you have any good ideas that don't involve the word "stratification" I would like to hear them.

posted by Chairman Peyote @ 6:21 PM