Bladerunner Essay, Research Paper

The Fallen Angel: Analysis of the Final Scenes of Blade Runner.

Director Ridley Scott’s Postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot be destroyed, because it’s destruction leads to silence, must be revisited. So memories and emotions are meaningless without immortality. ” Like tears in the rain.” Director Scott has a chilling story to tell, and there is a complex web of allegory and meaning lurking in the background. The final scene of Blade Runner reveal religious and philosophical parallels and these are Milton’s Paradise Lost and humanity itself. God is questioned, mocked and finally destroyed. The use of tightly framed shots, reaction shots, and mise en scene are used to highlite the allegoricall relationship to Christianity.

Humanity itself is brought up for definition in this film, as the Replicants are in many ways more human than the ” real humans” they are interacting with. The mise en scene suggests a vision of the future that is not only a sprawling, technological metropolis, but an empty soulless place. Through it’s characters a sense of quiet desperation. They are withdrawn almost, living in a mellow dream which when disrupted, is painful and struggling. The characters seem random, everyday people of the city, but united by the will to survive because there is nothing else, nothing but fear. Death to the replicants is represented by their own mortality and the outside embodiment of the Blade Runners; stalkers. Roy and his followers: Pris, Zora and Leon are Milton’s fallen angels. They are created by Tyrell ( God ) and given a limited life span. Roy a symbol of mankind is separated by his maker, when he is sent off world ( expelled from heaven ). And like Lucifer, is obessed with the same questions of mortality: How much time do we have? Were are we going? Milton’s battle takes place in heaven. Here it is fought on earth. Roy cannot approach Tyrell directly. He uses an intermediary; Sebastian ( Jesus Christ ) as his link to God. Bibical teachings has it that God can only be approached through His Son, Jesus Christ. Sebastian is the only true human. He is the composite of both man and replicant as Jesus is a composite of God and man. Just as Jesus lived among men, Sebastian lived among the replicants. The Bible syas the score between Lucifer and Christ is yet to be settled, Ridley Scott decides to to take advantage of the liberties afforded him by Postmodernism by deciding to rewrite the future. With God and Christ dead, satan becomes almost a Christ-like figure. Light and shadow is evoked to show Roy in a new role as all knowing and all seeing. Extreme close-up of Roy’s eye reveal a person who is enlightened and empowered with knowledge. A further significance to substaniate Roy’s transition into Christ is that he pierces his hand with a nail, a symbol of Christian crucifixian. The final scenes were Roy becomes the hunter takes place high above the city. The concerns of the people no longer permiate the scenes. Dekkard is filmed from a high angle to suggest vulnerbality and a lack of understanding, with his eye’s closed as his clings to life; a keep of blindness to the world around him. With the end near Roy Batty goes through yet another change. This manifests in the fact that he prevents Dekkard from falling to his death and becomes his savior. As they face each other, the proxemics patterns change and for the first time Dekkard and Batty are frame tightly together. Roy brings himself down to his opponants level of understanding by sitting eye to eye. As they face each other, Roy seemms to come to terms with his own mortality and the inevitability of death. He ceases to struggle against what he cannot change, the hand of death. By the time Roy dies, he has redeemed himself by following in the footsteps of Christ. In order for God to forgive him, he spares the life of the men trying to kill him. As he dies a high angle frames a white dove flying free towards a clear sky. Finally his soul is purified.

Scott, Ridley, dir. Blade Runner. With Ford and Rutger Hauer. The ladd Company. 1982