A couple of responses to responses.
 
1) To David Goldblatt, who wrote:
 
 
>Actually, I ( David Goldblatt) wrote that posting not Paul Ryersbach,
>although your reply deletes my reasons for claiming that in the director's
>cut D is a replicant.  No matter, we agree on that much.  I do not say what
>follows to be polite, but I found some of your reasons for saying that the
>director's cut is less interesting, persuasive. I do believe that a love
>affair between a relplicant and human to be an interesting idea.
>Nevertheless, there are other, not necessarily contradictory reasons for
>holding that the director's cut is better and more complex.  First,
>consider the audience from the point of view of reception.  The assumption
>from the beginning of the film is that D is a human being...so the
>discovery, the revelation that he isn't, is a bit of a chill.  Second, our
>interest in replicants takes nothing away from our interest in ourselves,
>which some would say is a bit overdone anyway and the amourous feelings of
>human beings on the screen, have hardly been neglected.  What we do see in
>replicants anyway, is a piece of ourselves, a fragment of our mirror-image.
>We see ourselves in nature, in everything anyway.  Not to worry.  What is
>a double emotional edge in BLADE, (and this is an old story) is that we may
>have created something that is frighteningly close to us and still a
>machine.  What does that make us?  It is the motivation for Descartes to
>HAVE to have claimed that animals are automata.  On the other hand, the
>nearly indiscernible replicant has fulfilled an equally old longing: that
>as a species we are not alone in the universe.  That's the ET, Flying
>Saucer stuff.  Not a single feeling, but a complex and sophisticated web of
>behavior, love between human artifacts, let loose and independent of human
>beings, "runaways" from them, is a kind of ultimate test of how far a
>civilization has gone into the darkness it created.  Anyway, I find that
>more intriguing than a cop falling for a gorgeous face.
 
=46irst, I apologize for atributing your writing to someone else.
Second, I also find some of your reasons persuasive, and I=B4m not trying to
be polite myself. It=B4s true that in the film replicants are a mirror image
from us, and that image is thrilling or chilling. Also, if D discovers that
he is a replicant, this poses the problem of not being who we think we are
(I am not I, according to Rimbaud). Anyhow, I don=B4t follow the last part o=
f
your reasoning. I still find more intriguing a cop falling for a gorgeous
face than the problems of artificial intelligence and the nature of
civilization. At least in the cinema ("a girl and a gun", as Godard once
said). Exaggerating just a bit, a gorgeous face in the cinema *is* the
cinema, and I=B4m not sure about the rest. But, perhaps, this is a matter of
taste.
 
 
2) To Mark Allen, who wrote:
 
>Quintin wrote:
 
>>I don=B4t like director=B4s cuts,in particular this phony one.
 
>What other director's cuts do you not like and why?  Brazil?
 
I wrote that I don=B4t like director=B4s cuts, but I meant that I don=B4t li=
ke
the idea of director=B4s cuts. I would certainly love to see the director=B4=
s
cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, but not a new version (possibly made to
make more money) of almost every film released in history. Regarding
Brazil, I don=B4t know who=B4s cut is it, but I wouldn=B4t care to see a new=
 cut
nor the old one again. Would you?
 
Quintin
 
 
El Amante / Cine Magazine
Buenos Aires
Argentina
 
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