The other night, at the behest of my good friend Sean, I finally got around to watching Blade Runner.

Up front: I’m not a Sci-Fi guy. I’m not even SyFy. I don’t do Trek, Firefly, Doctor Who, X-Files – I do original trilogy Star Wars and that’s it. But Sean, knowing my weakness, sold it thusly: “It’s noir!” And, as we previously established, I’m a noir type of guy.

There are approximately 23 different versions of the film available. I watched the original U.S. theatrical release.

For those who haven’t yet seen the film, we follow Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a “Blade Runner,” as he hunts four replicants, which are genetically engineered beings, in 2019’s Los Angeles. Replicants have been exiled from Earth due to their capacity to gain awareness and overthrow their human controllers, but a group of four, led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), have escaped and returned to Earth for purposes unknown. In his investigations, Deckard comes in contact with Rachael (Sean Young), another replicant, whom he falls in love with.

So let’s set up the SPOILER ALERT and get to work.

Visually I found the film to be a collision of noir and kabuki. It’s got noir’s art deco architecture, vintage looking cars, and era fashion with Japanese locations, color schemes, and makeup. The lighting creates the effect of cell bars over everything. Everyone is a prisoner in this world.

The story was reasonably entertaining. Truthfully, if it wasn’t so noir-ish I’d have stopped watching a half hour in. I continue to be baffled how scientists of the future can create flying cars and retina monitoring technology but can’t come up with an effective way to gather trash. I’m surprised the scenes weren’t designed to be ultra-futuristic, cold and alienated, since the majority of characters are, but the characters are also a mess so I suppose having them live in a trash heap is fitting as well.

So the big question about the movie seems to be Deckard: Is he a human or a replicant*? I vote human, though less “human” than the replicants. He’s emotionless, called “sushi” by his ex-wife (helpfully defined as “cold fish” for an 1982 audience who didn’t yet have sushi served everywhere from gas stations to mall food courts). He lacks freedom, forced by his old boss into finding the escaped replicants, as much a slave (more so, we find out) as those he’s hunting. He’s asked if he ever takes the empathy test he gives replicants. One suspects he’d fail.

So what does it teach us about life, because that’s what all great movies do: teach us about ourselves and how we relate to the world. Setting aside SciFi’s obsession with issues regarding genetic engineering, a quandry I personally think uninteresting, and minor themes about paranoia, I found the most rewarding questions the film asks to be about the definition of self.

The primary question of the film, for me, is “who are you?” Deckard is asked this repeatedly, by elevators, cops, and finally himself. He answers mechanically at first, giving his name and ID number, like a replicant answering with its name and incept date, but when he finally takes the question beyond face value, the answers become more profound.

I read the film’s message as: ask who you are because the questions give us our humanity. What defines our humanity? Our memories? In the movie those can be created externally, placed inside our head, thought to be real. And when you’re a self contained entity, as the human characters in this film are, the memories vanish when you die, lost forever. Instead it seems to be the choices we make with the information we know, like Roy saving Deckard, or Gaff letting Deckard and Rachael escape.

Your sense of self is also defined by your interaction (or lack thereof) with others. The replicants interact with each other – they kiss, they love, they mourn the loss of another. The humans live in isolation, secured in their penthouse or their abandoned warehouse, building toys and playing chess by phone. They’ve lost what it is to be human.

Deckard hanging on to the building ledge, a visual representation of his internal grasp to save himself from freefall into the non-emotional world.

At the end Roy, stigmata in one hand (salvation!), a white dove in the other (peace!), Kabuki style white face and red lips (righteousness!), saves Deckard in many ways. His physical life certainly, but also breaking his trance like existence. Deckard is interacting with Roy, experiences emotions (fear, gratitude, wonder), and learns from it – he stops being “sushi” and opens to Rachael. Real emotional interaction too. And he asks the questions of who we are because, even though we don’t know the answers, just asking the questions defines us.

* Yes, I know about the unicorn dream in the director’s cut. If Deckard is a replicant then it adds irony but it removes the main theme of the film. I still vote human.

Movie Trailer:

You can buy the 5 disc Complete Collector’s Edition in both BluRay and regular DVD format. There’s also a single disc Director’s Cut.