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Angels fall rather than rise, says the android in a key inversion of Blake, imitation of life has its own poetry. "It's artificial?" "Of course it is." Los Angeles in the future is an amalgamated megalopolis, part Chinatown and part Casbah and all grunge. Replicants on the run, born fully grown with synthetic flesh and manufactured memories, "more human than human" until the warranty expires. Rutger Hauer's resemblance to Kubrick's Spartacus as the leader of the rogue automatons is not accidental, Daryl Hannah's "standard pleasure model" amid the dolls adduces a striking note from Offenbach. The strapping odalisque (Joanna Cassidy) and the hair-trigger brute (Brion James) round out the fugitives, the most vivid creatures in the miasma of smog and rain. By contrast, the hero (Harrison Ford) is a stolid gumshoe torn between eliminating the machines and falling for one, namely the doleful fembot done up in Joan Crawford shoulder pads (Sean Young). Above the clouds and down in the puddles, eye to eye with the scarlet gleam of revolt. "Painful living in fear, isn't it? That's what it is like to be a slave." Philip K. Dick themes for Ridley Scott to visualize, a sumptuous baroque sheen (gargantuan holographic billboards, rotating sources of light, architectonic shade and steam) over a raging vision of decay—a crucial work of the Eighties. Humanity is a nerdy toymaker (William Sanderson) suffering from accelerated aging while marveling at the acrobatic courtesan he's sheltering, and a police officer (Edward James Olmos) who blurs race and language and communicates best through origami figurines. The techno-overlord (Joe Turkel) reigns with candelabra and chessboard, his persistence of vision is gouged out by the Prodigal Son. "It's not an easy thing to meet your maker." Metropolis and Milton, Things to Come and Shelley, the mecha-soul like "the thing with feathers." Scott pursues the oneiric unicorn into Legend. Cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth. With M. Emmet Walsh, James Hong, Morgan Paull, and Hy Pyke.
--- Fernando F. Croce |