“Have you taken the Voigt-Kampt test yourself, Mr Deckard?”

As I am showing Blade Runner as part of my current local film season I wrote these notes for those who attended.   You might find them interesting/useful/whatever.

When Ridley Scott released Blade Runner in 1982 most film critics did not rate it highly and science fiction fans deeply resented the changes made to Dick’s novel.  It has now become a ‘classic’ the Citizen Kane of noir science-fiction movies.  Ridley Scott had invented a whole new visual vocabulary and style, with retro/futuristic designs that have inspired movie after movie in the last 30 years.     It is considered to be the first film noir science fiction film.   

Some critics and theologians have talked about it as a post-modern exploration of the distinction between the natural and the simulacra, the non-human, human and post-human.   For me the film asked a simple question.  What is life?  And it gave a simple answer.  Life is precious.      Thirty years on my affection for it has only been deepened by time and the release of the Director's Cut.   It still rings deep bells.

The ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner have been given a limited life-span, but they passionately want to go on living.      That is why they have come to find their Creator.   What is at stake is the meaning of being truly human.     In the context of the Garden of Eden myth there is the tension between our human capacity for the knowledge of good and evil – which makes us moral, and morally responsible -  and the limits of our mortality.      In Genesis Adam and Eve could not eat of the Tree of Knowledge and also of the Tree of Life, which would give them immortality.    As John Milton pointed out we cannot be fully human without being moral and mortal.   Being human means we have to know the difference between good and evil and be free to choose,  so The Fall is not a curse but a blessing.  

To understand the nature of evil we need empathy, to be able to understand what the consequences of our actions feel like for others. The presence or lack of emotional response is what the Voigt-Kampt is testing for.  In the opening scene of the film,  the replicant Leon fails the Voigt-Kampf test when questioned about his mother.    He had no mother.    He had no one to teach him empathy, no one to make him truly ‘human’. The replicants may have no parents to learn from, but the advanced Nexus 6 are beginning to develop emotions, to care for each other.     They have a sense of selfhood.

In the scene in Tyrell's bedroom Roy weeps, caresses Tyrell's head, and confesses, "I've done questionable things.”   He is judging the morality of his actions.   When he spares Deckard’s life, and then says of himself "Time to die.” he is at his most human.    Moral and mortal.  Deckard’s life has meaning to Roy, and so does his own..

Even though she is a replicant Rachael falls in love with Deckard.   She cannot trust herself, but she has learnt to trust him.     She may be a Nexus 7 but at the end of the film we do not know how long she will live.   We do not know how long Deckard will live either.  

Some things you may not know about Blade Runner.

1.  The first person outside the production team to say the script really should be filmed was Gregory Peck.
2.  Syd Mead, the film’s Future Visualist (designer), also created the interior of the Anglo-French Concord plane, and  the giant spaceship in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.     Blade Runner was made long before CGI (Computer Generated Images).   Everything and everywhere we see on screen was designed and made just for this film.   Old sets of New York streets on back lots in Los Angeles were used, overlaid with new, but trashed, exteriors. 
3.  The film needed a ‘Star’.   Dustin Hoffman was originally set to play Deckard.   The team tried to adapt the script to accommodate him, but it did not work out.    Only when Hoffman  left was Harrison Ford considered.    He had been in Star Wars, and his first ‘star role’ as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark was in post-production.    
4. Unknown faces were wanted for the replicants, so this was the first American role for the Dutchman Rutger Hauer, it was the first major role for the 19 year old Darryl Hannah and Sean Young had only two previous minor roles. 
5. The metropolitan gutterspeak, ‘Cityspeak’, used by the policeman Gaff was invented by the actor who played him, Edward James Olmos.
6. Rutger Hauer wrote Roy’s final speech.   “I have seen things you wouldn’t believe.   Attack ships on fire on the shoulder of Orion.   I watched c-beans glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.  All these …moment will be lost… in time.  Like … tears… in rain.  Time to die.” 
7. When they shot this scene the dove Roy released simply walked away.   Doves don’t fly when it is raining.  
8. The Producers did not think they could call the film Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the title of Philip K. Dick’s novel on which the film is based)  so the working title was first Android, then Dangerous Days.  The final title, Blade Runner, came from a William Burroughs novel. 
9. For the initial version the Studio bosses insisted on a voice-over to ‘help us understand the plot.’   There was also a happy ending added, as Rachael and Deckard fly off into the sunny future, using some shots from Kubrick’s film The Shining.   This was the only ‘daylight scene’ in Blade Runner.  Both the voice-over and ending were later removed from the Director’s Cut and the ‘unicorn’ sequence was inserted by Ridley in the 1995 version.  
10.   In my 1982 review of the film I used the word ‘noctilucous’ to describe the films images .         It means phosphorescent, shining at night. I have never used it since.                                                                                             Most of these facts are to be found in the British film Producer Michael Deeley's book, Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Blood Doors Off.