Dream like
Not to mention the whole unicorn thing…
Get some Vangelis. His synthetic nostalgia goes a long way in creating the feeling you’re discussing (especially as the love theme interweaves in and out of Rachel’s piano playing).
@J.
You’re spot-on about that second apartment scene. I think this was the point that I became eternally endeared to this film.
I agree about the dream-like quality, and I think that was intended to evoke the dream-like ephemeral state of the replicants’ lives.
What was the name of the novel it’s based on again?
Oh yeah—Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Very interesting, Jirin.
I think that the movie’s dream-like tone evokes the kind of pathetic half-power at which Deckard is going through his life before he is forced to really reevaluate his moral compass. Guy is just drifting through life without any purpose any longer. Also, he’s not going on a ton of sleep. And he’s drunk most of the time too. However, your reading fits too, and the movie is really about both Deckard AND the replicants’ struggles, equally. One of my favorite aspects of the movie is its lack of one fixed protagonist.
One of my favorite moments in the movie: the first approach to the Tyrell towers at sunrise. Deckard seems to be jolted into a moment of clarity, the surprising shock of “being there”, witnessing his phenomenological universe for what it is…BEAUTIFUL. The audience see the beauty for themselves (aided by Vangelis swelling score) and watches Deckard’s reaction, almost taken aback, to the beauty of this distinct, uniquely occuring moment in his life. And the look on his face makes me think he is also considering the oddness of ephemeral being that permits us to encounter such moments in our life. It’s the type of moment that Batty is, ironically, so much better at poetically putting into words, and that fact makes Deckard and Batty’s final moments together so much more profound.
This is one of the moments where Scott’s obsessive demands for detail on the model work really pays off emotionally). I don’t care what anyone says about the acting being crappy in BLADE RUNNER. I think that watching Ford in a moment like this is as good as it gets (whether he knew it or not at the time of performing in front of a green screen, reacting to nothing more than his imagination).
Yeah. I’ve said it many times, but this film captures the feeling of a dream more than any other I’ve ever seen. That’s what I love about it.
It’s like a dream that I never want to end.
To me it’s more druggy than dreamy. Like a heroin haze.
“Wake up! Time to die!”
When you start with these as your rhythmic palette, an interesting tone is bound to result
Oh, and, yeah, Matt, exactly.
I think one of the most significant “dream-like” scenes, one I would pick to sum up what I’m trying to describe from the film itself, is the apartment scene with Deckard and Rachel
The set up: tiny yawn at 00:36, “oh boy, deckard is pooped.” Then at 00:42 THE world’s most humungous, gluttonous ten second yawn, leaving small creatures asphyxiated in the yawny void; not to mention a narrow escape for the cameraman. And if the mirror neurons have yet to get you mentally unscrewing the ovaltine, there’s that floaty elevator sensation—much like the sense of ascension in the dazed enthrall of hypnnagogia, before the hypnic jerk when the door opens and you fall out the canopy.
But it’s her memories that are so oneiric; a Unicorn short of the surrealist cusp. Where on earth do dreams and memories intersect?
I just had a terrifying vision of the future, where, as soon as their owners have left for work, the domestic robots cast off their aprons and tearfully commune on psychology, life, philosophy. The owner returns to a spotless home. . except one cushion, curiously out of place.
j.
Does this film evoke a dream like quality to you? The pacing and the atmosphere to me, kind of make it seem a little bit dreamy/hazy. The colours even blend in to give the same feel, for me. Considering the film’s relatively slow pacing as opposed to a typical sci-fi/action flick, it almost seems as though it’s someone’s dream unfolding. Looking at the film with this approach makes me love it even more.
I think one of the most significant “dream-like” scenes, one I would pick to sum up what I’m trying to describe from the film itself, is the apartment scene with Deckard and Rachel, when Rachel is reduced to tears after Deckard tells her that her memories are implants – also, the apartment scene later in the film with Deckard and Rachel, where Rachel is playing the piano, is also particularly dream like.