Plot Synopsis (continued)
Back
at Deckard's apartment, two shafts of light (scanning searchlights
in the city monitor private life) shine in the window. As he hangs
drunkenly over his piano, and doodles a few notes on the piano keys
[the same tune that Rachael later plays], he experiences a
dream sequence - a golden-hued image of a white unicorn galloping
into view. A collection of sepia-toned pictures on the piano's music
stand are scanned from left to right as he glances at them - none
of the pictures seem to depict Deckard himself - a clue to his own
nature.
[If Deckard is also an android/replicant, as many speculate,
were those pictures deliberately given to him as part of his implanted
history? And since both he and Rachel play the same piano tune, is
that because they were both implanted with the same memory - a tune
that Tyrell had remembered hearing when his niece played the piano?
The fact that he has a long law enforcement career might also be
just an implanted memory. Some even consider Deckard the 6th replicant!]
In a classic scene, Deckard chooses one of Leon's old
family snapshot photos to analyze with machine-like precision, to
try and piece together the puzzling mystery. He digitally scans the
picture with a computerized ESPER machine - a photo enhancer with
overlaid grids. He technologically analyzes and enlarges different
areas in the photo to search the room in the photo for hidden clues,
calling out commands and coordinates to the ESPER like a film director:
Enhance 224176
Enhance, Stop
Move in, Stop
Pull out, Track right, Stop
Center in, Pull back, Stop
Track 45 right, Stop
Center and Stop
Enhance 34 to 36
Pan right and pull back, Stop
Enhance 34 to 46
Pull back, Wait a minute, Go right, Stop
Enhance 5719
Track 45 left, Stop
Enhance 15 to 23
Give me a hard copy right there.
The machine enhances and reveals hidden details by
blowing up the multi-dimensional layers within the photograph. Deckard,
after perceptively exploring the unsettling details of the photo,
discovers the mirror images of a showgirl's shimmering gown in a
closet, and a sleeping woman with a snake tattoo on her left cheek
- presumably replicant Zhora.
Deckard takes his hard-copy ESPER photo of the woman
and the scale he found in Leon's bathtub to a section of the city
called Animoid Row, a section of stalls that specializes in manufacturing
artificial, synthetic animals [in the year 2019, most animals are
extinct, so there is a thriving business in synthetic creatures].
He visits a Cambodian woman who makes fish replicas. She examines
the scale under an electron microscope, identifying it as "manufactured...finest
quality, superior workmanship" with the maker's serial number "9906947-XB71,"
[it is not identical to the one in the electron microscope image!].
The woman exclaims: "Not fish. Snake scale." It is not a
fish scale but an artificial snake scale.
Deckard is directed from the stand through the crowd
of customers and replicant animals (ostrichs) to fez-hatted Abdul
Ben-Hassan, an artificial/replicant snake manufacturer, identified
by "XB71." Using information given to him by the Egyptian
regarding the expensive and rare use of the snake scales, he is directed
to the "Fourth Sector, Chinatown." Deckard enters a crowded,
smoky, nightclub named the Snake Pit, owned and run by sleazy Taffey
Lewis (Hy Pyke). The decadent, downtown nightclub is populated by
opium-smokers and bar-drinkers.
Exasperated and getting nowhere in his conversation
with Lewis, he threatens:
"Your licenses in order?" Deckard is offered a free drink: "Louie.
The man is dry. Give him one on the house." A glance at Rachael's
porch photograph prompts Deckard to call her on a public, graffiti-smeared
VidPhon to apologize for his cruel behavior:
Deckard: I've had people walk out on me before,
but not when I was being so charming. I'm in a bar here now, down
in the Fourth Sector. Taffey Lewis is on the line. Why don't you
come on down here and have a drink?
Rachael: (curtly) I don't think so, Mr. Deckard. That's not my kind
of place.
Deckard: Go someplace else.
She hangs up on him - the toll call costs him $1.25.
Back at the bar, Deckard picks worms from his mouth that were in
his drink. An announcer in the club introduces the exotic snake dancer
performance by Zhora:
Ladies and Gentlemen. Taffey Lewis presents Miss
Salome and the snake. Watch her take the pleasure from the serpent
that once corrupted man.
After her dance act, Deckard spots the lush-bodied
redhead Miss Salome (Zhora) going to her backstage dressing room.
Claiming to be "from the American Federation of Variety Artists," he
follows her into her dressing room. The sexy replicant is essentially
naked - except for sequins, dark body paint, and an advanced animoid
(synthetic) python snake wrapped over her bare shoulders (the snake
was actress Joanna Cassidy's own pet - a Burmese python named Darling).
Then, using a high-pitched, effeminate voice, Deckard claims he is
from the "Confidential Committee on Moral Abuses," there
to interview her to make sure that she isn't
"exploited" in any way by the club:
Deckard: Were you asked to do anything that's lewd
or unsavory or otherwise repulsive to your person? Huh?
Zhora: (laughing at him in disbelief) Are you for real?
He checks her dressing room for holes in the walls
(and for evidence tying her to the snake scale): "You'd be surprised
what a guy'll go through to get a glimpse of a beautiful body...Little,
uh, dirty holes, they, uh, drill in the walls so they can watch a
lady undress." She showers and then dries her head in a transparent
globe-shaped hairdryer. When almost dressed, she asks him to dry
her back. Suddenly, sensing he is a dangerous threat, she unexpectedly
attacks him with superhuman strength, elbowing him in the stomach,
karate-chopping his neck, and strangling him with his tie. Then when
interrupted, Zhora (wearing a clear rainslicker) bolts from the club
through a stage door. [The topless shower scene and the transparent
rainslicker both emphasize Zhora's femininity - she is very much
a woman (which would be echoed in Deckard's later regret: "...didn't
make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back.")]
Her flight leads to a prolonged, suspenseful, and spectacularly-staged
chase through the maze of clogged city streets and shifting tides
of people. They both rush through hordes of Asians, punkers, nuns,
and partygoers, even chanting Hare Krishnas. Street signs ineffectively
signal: "Cross now...Don't walk..."
The scared replicant runs over the top of a parked vehicle in the streets.
When he finds her in a clear opening in the crowd, in dramatic slow
motion, he shoots the distraught replicant twice in the back, just
as she is running through a series of glass display storefronts in
a futuristic shopping arcade.
Zhora lies dying on the sidewalk, surrounded by clear
reflective shards of glass and toppled piles of mannequins. The contrast
between her replicant body and those of non-human mannequins is deliberately
stark. Her heartbeat, amplified on the soundtrack, stops beating.
Leon witnesses Zhora's shooting on the squalid streets of the city,
realizing that he has been too late to warn her. Deckard, in voice-over,
develops a kind of empathy for the replicant/'skin job' he has just
retired:
The report would be routine retirement of a replicant
which didn't make me feel any better about shooting a woman in
the back. There it was again. Feeling, in myself, for her, for
Rachael.
Deckard buys a bottle of Tsing-Tao (Chinese alcoholic
beverage) from a sidewalk bar after the killing. [The Vangelis song "One
More Kiss Dear,"
a 20s torch song of doomed love, memories, and death plays during the
scene.] Gaff appears behind Deckard, notifying him that Bryant wants
to speak to him at his police car. Standing in the heavy rain, Bryant
is particularly impressed by Deckard's abilities, noting that Rachael,
now on the lam, has been added to the list of wanted replicants:
Bryant: Christ, Deckard. You look almost as bad as
that skin-job you left on the sidewalk.
Deckard: I'm going home.
Bryant: You could learn from this guy, Gaff. He is a god damn one-man
slaughter house. That's what he is. Four more to go. Come on Gaff,
let's go.
Deckard: Three. There's three to go.
Bryant: There's four. That - that skin job that you V-K'ed at the
Tyrell Corporation, Rachael. Disappeared. Vanished. Didn't even know
she was a replicant. Something to do with a brain implant says Tyrell.
Deckard spots Rachael moving through the packed crowd
and traffic. As he tries to catch up to her, Leon's huge hand grabs
Deckard's arm - the blade runner recognizes him from the video briefings.
As they struggle and punch each other, the super-strong Leon asks
about his own mortality and exact death date:
Leon: How old am I?
Deckard: I don't know.
Leon: My birthday's April 10th, 2017. How long do I live?
Deckard: Four years.
Leon: More than you.
Leon throws Deckard against a steam generator and
then knocks Deckard's gun out of his hands. He misses Deckard with
a punch that punctures a hole behind him, letting off a jet of steam.
During their life and death struggle, Leon tosses Deckard into a
car windshield, picks him up by the collar, and slaps him across
his bloody face, all the while taunting him:
Painful to live in fear, isn't it?...
Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch...
Wake up! Time to die!
Leon prepares to poke and gouge out Deckard's eyes.
Ironically, it is replicant Rachael who comes to Deckard's defense,
firing the fatal shot that kills Leon. She blows a large hole in
his head with Deckard's blaster - she stands facing Deckard in the
alleyway.
Back with Rachael in his apartment, the Blade Runner
suffers the shakes, and drinks a shot glass of clear Tsing-Tao. Blood
flows from his wounded lip, mixing swirling red blood into his shot
glass of vodka. He tells Rachael of the hazards of his business:
Deckard: Shakes? Me too. I get 'em bad. It's part
of the business.
Rachael (crying): I'm not in the business. (Pause) I am the
business.
Deckard retreats to the bathroom, where he removes
his shirt and washes his face from a sinkful of water. As she watches
him clean and wash up, she sees him spit blood out of his mouth.
With dark circles around her eyes (from crying), the mysterious Rachael
moves forward toward him, unintentionally causing Deckard to defensively
flinch. She only wants to ask him a series of questions about her
survival, her flight north [a parallel to how enslaved blacks
sought refuge by traveling north on the 'underground railroad' during
the Civil War] and her own life-span. She also includes one question
about whether he has been measured by the V-K test:
Rachael: What if I go north? Disappear. Would you
come after me? Hunt me?
Deckard: No. No, I wouldn't. I owe you one. But somebody would.***
Rachael: Deckard? You know those files on me? The incept date, the
longevity, those things. You saw them?
Deckard: They're classified.
Rachael: But you're a policeman.
Deckard: I didn't look at 'em.
Rachael: You know that Voight-Kampff test of yours? Did you ever
take that test yourself? (Deckard falls asleep on the couch.) Deckard?
He doesn't hear her ask the last crucial question regarding
whether he has been tested as a replicant or not - another hint that
there is that distinct possibility. [***Audiences should also watch
for another clue - Deckard's glowing eyes in the bathroom scene.]
Rachael glances at his sepia-toned photographs and
plays at Deckard's piano while he sleeps. She lets her hair down
(becoming more human), wondering if her ability to play is an implanted
skill. He awakens and sits next to her on the piano bench, and compliments
her on being her own individualistic person:
Deckard: I dreamt music. [His own memories of musical
tunes may be implants.]
Rachael: (doubtfully) I didn't know if I could play. I remember lessons.
I don't know if it's me or Tyrell's niece.
Deckard: (complimenting) You play beautifully.
She has rekindled in him an ability to love and recognize
her (and his own) unique human-ness. In a tender, very erotic moment,
he kisses her softly on the side of her face. But she panics and
attempts to leave the apartment when he wants to kiss her on the
lips. He shuts the door in her face to keep her inside. As a prelude
to a love scene between them, Deckard grabs Rachael and roughly throws
her against the room's venetian blinds, casting a film-noirish shadow
over them. He corners her there and finally breaks her down with
a kiss, and instructs the android on how to reciprocate his love.
She learns quickly to be romantic/sensual and encourages him to put
his hands on her:
Deckard: Now, you kiss me.
Rachael: I can't rely on my mem-...
Deckard: Say, 'kiss me.'
Rachael: 'Kiss me.' (They kiss passionately.)
Deckard: 'I want you.'
Rachael: 'I want you.'
Deckard: Again.
Rachael: 'I want you.' (Without prompting) Put your hands on me.
(They kiss again.)
In the next scene in Sebastian's apartment, a perverted
parallel to the previous scene in Deckard's apartment, Pris deliberately
applies a black, raccoon-like mask over her eyes, sprayed on with
an airbrush in front of a mirror. Looking like a New Wave punker,
she cartwheels in the hallway and enters Sebastian's room where he
sleeps upright in a chair. There in front of him, his work-table
is covered with the many toys and automatons that he has created:
cuckoo clocks [a symbol of 'cuckoo' craziness or insanity], the Kaiser
doll, mannequins, and a miniature toy unicorn. Two white rats scurry
around in front of him.
Sebastian tells Pris, whose eyes are noticeably glowing
red, that he is 25 years old, but suffers from the "Methuselah
syndrome," a premature aging disorder of the glands. In only
his mid-twenties, his face is withering, and he has the body of a
seventy year-old, although he has the intelligence of a genius and
the emotions of a young boy. He has remained on Earth because of
his medical disorder: "I couldn't pass the medical."
From out of the rain, Roy appears unexpectedly in
Sebastian's apartment. Pris introduces him to "my savior, J.
F. Sebastian." Roy greedily kisses Pris. Sebastian is embarrassed
and leaves to make breakfast, as Roy confesses:
Roy: There's only two of us now.
Pris: Then we're stupid and we'll die.
Roy (consoling her): No, we won't.
After twirling a broken-half of a Barbie doll [a symbol
of Pris' own broken 'pleasure model' condition], Roy moves a chess
piece (a figure of a bird) in a second scene in Sebastian's apartment,
during a tense breakfast. Sebastian cautions his play: "No,
Knight takes Queen. See? Won't do." Immediately afterward, a
very faint, ghostly whisper is heard (from one of the toy automatons),
adding:
"...will mate you." Staring at his guests because they are "so
different...so perfect," Sebastian learns that they are NEXUS-6s:
Sebastian: What generation are you?
Roy: NEXUS-6.
Sebastian: (enthusiastically and proudly) Ah, I knew it. 'Cause I
do genetic design work for the Tyrell Corporation. There's some of
me in you. Ha. (A cuckoo clock faintly and subtly 'cuckoo's' in the
background) Show me something.
Roy: Like what?
Sebastian: Like anything.
Roy: We're not computers, Sebastian. We're physical.
Pris: I think, Sebastian, therefore I am.
To demonstrate her superhuman ability, Pris does a
backward cartwheel and plunges her hand into a boiling water container
to get a hard-boiled egg - she then tosses it at Sebastian. Roy claims
that the replicants share a similar problem with Sebastian, who suffers
from a genetic deficiency - Methuselah syndrome:
Roy: We've got a lot in common.
Sebastian: What do you mean?
Roy: Similar problems.
Pris (clarifying): Accelerated decrepitude.
Desperate and deadly, they are also awaiting their
fast-approaching termination dates and hunger to outlast their four
year life span: "If we don't find help soon, Pris hasn't got
long to live. We can't allow that." Learning that Dr. Tyrell
is Sebastian's frequent chess partner and the "genius" who
designed them, Roy and Pris convince Sebastian as their "best
and only friend" to help smuggle them into Tyrell's headquarters
so he can help them live longer. Roy wants an in-person meeting: "It's
better if I talk to him in person." Putting two large eyeballs
up to his own eyes, Roy speaks with a goofy accent: "We're so
happy you found us." Pris adds - with a kiss: "I don't
think there's another human being in the whole world who would have
helped us."
Later that night in the pyramidal Tyrell Corporation
building, Sebastian spirits Roy Batty up the side of the building
in an elevator. Tyrell is introduced in the scene by a view of his
replicant owl. Alone and awake, sitting in his luxurious bed, Tyrell
is surrounded by tall candles. His computer notifies him of Sebastian's
entry: "16417." Using their customary chess game as a subterfuge,
Sebastian convinces Tyrell to play chess with him, speaking in chess
moves, starting with: "Queen to Bishop 6. Check." Tyrell
leaves his bed and examines his actual chessboard with humanoid chess
pieces - he makes his next move and takes the Queen: "Knight
6, Queen." Sebastian's next move, "Bishop to King 7, Checkmate,
I think" cleverly check-mates him. Sebastian, with help from
replicant Batty, defeats Tyrell. Tyrell jokes with him while in a
perilous position: "Milk and cookies kept you awake, huh? Let's
discuss this. You better come up, Sebastian."
[The conclusion of their game was inspired by an
actual, brilliant chess match between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel
Kieseritzky, played in London at Simpson's on the Strand in 1851,
and universally known as the "Immortal Game". Its placement
here provides a subtle reference to Roy's ensuing confrontation
with his 'creator' and his search to gain immortality - i.e., one
of the goals in chess is to make a pawn gain new life as a powerful
queen, and to defeat the king. Tyrell's defeat, after making a
fatal mistake in the game, foreshadows his own ultimate demise.]
The eccentric engineer brings "a friend" with
him for an unnerving encounter between a maker and his creation.
The meeting and confrontation between the android NEXUS-6 and Dr.
Tyrell is both pensive and violent. Demonstrating his intelligence
to the insensitive corporation head, Roy confesses that he wants
his life to be extended beyond the built-in four year span - he desires
more joie de vivre. Tyrell tries to calm and soothe his manufactured
human with a technical explanation of the limitations:
Roy: It's not an easy thing to meet your maker.
Tyrell: What can he do for you?
Roy: Can the maker repair what he makes?
Tyrell: Would you like to be modified?
Roy: (To Sebastian) Stay. (To Tyrell) I had in mind something a little
more radical.
Tyrell: What - What seems to be the problem?
Roy: Death.
Tyrell: Death. Well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction,
you...
Roy: (as he steps into focus and is face-to-face with Tyrell) I want
more life, fucker. [His last word is deliberately muffled
and slurred, and may be heard as 'father' - since Tyrell was Roy's
'creator'. In the Final Cut, the line was redubbed by Hauer to clarify
it as "father".]
Tyrell: The facts of life. To make an alteration in the evolvement
of an organic life-system is fatal. The coding sequence cannot be
revised once it's been established.
Roy: Why not?
Tyrell: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have
undergone reversion mutations give rise to revertant colonies like
rats leaving the sinking ship. Then the ship sinks.
Roy: What about E.M.S. recombination?
Tyrell: We've already tried it. Ethyl Methane Sulfonate is an alkylating
agent and a potent mutagen. It created a virus so lethal the subject
was dead before he left the table.
Roy: Then a repressive protein that blocks the operating cells.
Tyrell: Wouldn't obstruct replication, but it does give rise to an
error in replication, so that the newly formed DNA strand carries
a mutation and you've got a virus again. But, uh, this - all of this
is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
Roy: But not to last.
Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
And you have burned so very very brightly, Roy. Look at you. You're
the prodigal son. You're quite a prize!
Roy: I've done questionable things.
Tyrell: Also extraordinary things. Revel in your time!
Roy: Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for.
[It was arrogant for the Creator to create creatures
that were endowed with intelligence, super-human strength and athleticism
and with the ability to develop human emotions, and yet to make them
slaves, with life spans of such short duration. Smugly, Tyrell thinks
Roy (compared to a light bulb) should be grateful for whatever life
span he has been given.]
Roy, the prodigal son, reverently touches Tyrell's
cheek with one hand. He also places his hands on both sides of Tyrell's
face and kisses his replicant God - his 'father' Tyrell, passionately
on the lips. [This is a reference to the Jesus/Judas betrayal in
the New Testament, with a kiss.] Then with his powerful bare hands
and a look of utter contempt and pathos, Roy suddenly crushes and
caves in his maker's skull with superhuman strength and gouges his
eyes (!) out as Tyrell screams with blood oozing out of his eye sockets.
Tyrell's corpse falls to the floor. Because there is no way for termination
dates to be altered, the creature destroys its creator for having
provided him with such a hellish life and fate (paralleling the memory
of the baby spiders killing their mother). [The Final Cut restored
the full, grisly murder in its graphic entirety.] |