Blade Runner

Blade runner is a film which was inspired by the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?"

written by Phillip K. Dick, and directed by Ridley Scott. this movie quickly became a cult classic,

with a large follwing of loyal fans, but as with all cult classics it has also had many critics, and

most of these critics have a very similar Critisism of the film. they dismiss it as being a good-loooking

film built on the flimsiest of narratives, a triumph of production design over substance. this statement

allthough very critical and bold, is not completely without substance, with many plot twists and changes in dirrection, the themes are often hard to follow, as is the character

dialogue and the general flow of the plot. which can frustrate many people and therefore result in such bad critisism. when discussing this statement, you must look at

a number of majour scenes in the film itself, and analyse both the narrative content and the production design, and make close reference to both. u also, must look at how the

narrative, production design, and

The first scene of majour importance to both the narative and the production design, is the scene in which the viewer is first introduced to Racheal. Racheal is introduced into

the narrative as tyrells secretary, and also a new form of replicant which is almost as human as humans are. but she later becomes deckards love interest, which is quite an

ironic juxtaposition due to the fact that it is deckards job as a blade runner to kill replicants. but the dialogue is complicated, and assumes to much of the viewer, in the

sense,

that it assumed that the viewer knows more about the new world than is actully told. The visuals in this scene a quite amazing, and capture the eye of the viewer easily. there is

a shot from the far end of the room, looking out of the floor to celling retractable window at the sunset, of an almost acient looking landscape, with pyramids and other ancient type

buildings. the room itself has a destinct mediteranian feeling to it, and is in starck contrast to the arcietectual feel of the film so far. which has mostly been of grey drab buildings

and dark uninviting streets. this is used to show the extreme difference in wealth between tyrell, and the rest of the world. this scene is full of quality narrative, but this narrative is

often hard to decipher and the knowledge that is expected of the viewer is far to much, and hard to pick up. these two detract enough from a first time viewing of the film, and make

the narative to hard for and average viewer to pick up. but the visuals of the scene are outstanding, it is a beautiful back drop and a visually stunning scene, which also distracts the

view from the character dialogue, and makes it hard to pick up the subtle plot details in the scene. overall this scene is geared towards the production design side of the film, and

needs to spend more time on the narative side

Another scene of majour signifgance is the scene in which Deckard dreams about the unicorn. in this scene deckard falls asleep while playing his piano, and has a dream of a unicorn

running free through a forrest. looking at this scene as a part of the narative, it is not completely clear what the director wants the viewer to take away from this scene at first. The unicorn

is a mythical beast which can have many different meanings. in mythology the unicorn is the one beast that can never be caught, it can also represent freedom and majesty, this makes

this scene quite confusing in the sense of the narative. it could mean that deckard is chasing an uncatchable quarry, frank batty, or it could mean that he is seeing in the repliacnts a

freedom and majesty that he himself is longing. the purpose of this scene does become apparent at the end of this film when he finds a unicorn origami, made by gaff, one of the police detectives

this implys that deckard himself is a replicant. The production design of the unicorn scene is very stunning, as with many of the scenes in the movie it is visually mind blowing, but as with all scenes we must ask, is this scene more concerned with the visual aspect of the film, or does it give adequate attention to the narative side. the first shot of this scene is a panning shot through deckards appartment, which is cramped and dark, and cluttered with lots of "junk" and old photo's, but this "junk" captures the eye of the viewer and gives them an insight into the life of deckard. then part in which you get to the see the