This past weekend I sat down to watch “Blade Runner” again, this time around taking the opportunity to bring my wife along for the ride. She had never seen the film before so we both agreed that a bitter cold Brooklyn afternoon was as good a time as any to illuminate this rather egregious pop culture blindspot.
By now I’ve seen the film countless times and every single viewing has left me falling in love with it all over again. It’s been 34 years since “Blade Runner’s” 1982 release and there is little question as to how well it continues to age. Even in today’s CGI saturated landscape Ridley Scott’s dystopian future-noir can easily be held up against any number of today’s science fiction favorites and come out victorious on the visuals alone. Not a big surprise since in many cases a precisely crafted practical effect will beat out a computer generated one hands down.
For me of course it’s all about the lighting. Director of Photography Jordan Cronenweth’s meticulous work made for a film in which every frame could be dissected and studied as a masterclass in the craft. In fact, so much has been written about “Blade Runner” I considered not writing about it at all, feeling that there wasn’t much I could add to the conversation.
I settled on the idea of discussing my favorite shot of the film, the one shown above – a close-up of Sean Young’s Rachael while being questioned by Harrison Ford’s Deckard to discover whether or not she is a Replicant. There was something about this sequence that really stopped me in my tracks during this viewing. The entire scene is not only a pivotal moment for both characters, it is also a proclamation by the narrative, a chance to emphatically stake out its own territory within the grounds of noir history.
In this scene we watch as the narrative offers us a variation on the well worn “mysterious woman walks into a private eye’s office” trope, with Young’s Rachael playing dual roles – the naive good girl and more metaphorically, the femme fatal. She enters the scene with relative confidence, her banter with Deckard controlled and precise, however the close-up reveals more. That sharp edge light on her right check, blown out and sculpted to an almost unnatural perfection sets her apart from everything around her, while the lefthand side of her face falls into enigmatic shadow. Hers is an identity posing more questions then providing any answers, all further obscured by the billowing smoke of her cigarette. Much of the cinematography of “Blade Runner” can be described as hazy, and Rachael’s cigarette smoking in the scene pushes this stylistic choice as far as it can go, at times further obscuring her face behind a veil of smoky luminance.
Then there are the strategically placed eye lights, globe-like in their execution, giving her a look which could be described as subtly alien. From the beginning of the film eyes are established as a key narrative element, and this scene offerers yet another occurrence of that. In cinematography circles there has been quite a bit written about how Cronenweth accomplished the laser precise lights in Rachael’s eyes, a very challenging as well as time consuming exercise which went the extra mile in offering the audience another substantial hint that the character is not who she says, (or believes) she is.
Young’s performance should no doubt be mentioned as well. Her portrayal of Rachael perfectly walks the line between confident and naive, a lost soul who is never certain just how lost she is. Pausing to take a deeper look into that shot one can’t help but to be drawn in by her. Her flat expression betrayed by a universe of emotions swirling behind those eyes.
Scenes From An Imaginary Film 