24-02-2013, 08:43 PM
Jim DiEugenio Wrote:Jan:
If he lives a hundred years [Ridley Scott] will never make something like Tess. Because the beauty in that film is not there for its own sake or to support something as shallow as an android hunter story.
Blade Runner -- the "android hunter" film to which I believe you refer -- is a masterpiece of its genre. Based upon Philip K. Dick's short story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", the film asks the most profound questions about consciousness and spirituality. Its overt dystopian sensibilities -- brilliantly envisioned and brought to cinematic life -- are counter-argued in the penultimate scene: the generation of a soul within the replicant/android Roy.
Roy's soul announces its birth via the creation of a metaphor and manifests as a white dove, which suddenly appears in his hands as he delivers his own eulogy:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. [laughs] Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like [coughs] tears in rain. Time to die."
When Roy, the artificial life form, creates a metaphor -- "like tears in rain" -- his totality becomes greater than the sum of his parts.
The dove, released, flies toward the heavens.
Sell Scott and Blade Runner short at your own peril.
Charles Drago
Co-Founder, Deep Politics Forum
If an individual, through either his own volition or events over which he had no control, found himself taking up residence in a country undefined by flags or physical borders, he could be assured of one immediate and abiding consequence: He was on his own, and solitude and loneliness would probably be his companions unto the grave.
-- James Lee Burke, Rain Gods
You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
-- Graham Greene
Co-Founder, Deep Politics Forum
If an individual, through either his own volition or events over which he had no control, found himself taking up residence in a country undefined by flags or physical borders, he could be assured of one immediate and abiding consequence: He was on his own, and solitude and loneliness would probably be his companions unto the grave.
-- James Lee Burke, Rain Gods
You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
-- Graham Greene