>Paul Ryersbach wrote:
>>In my opinion the answer is clear in the director's cut: Deckard is a
>>>replicant. (...) I do not think this was in the originally released
>>version and in my view was one of the factors that made the director's cut
>>a much more
>>complex and interesting film.  But it has been awhile since I've seen
>>either cut.  Does anyone else agree with this?
>
>I agree with everything, except with the idea that the director's cut is
>more interesting. The other cut (let's call it producer's cut) tells the
>story of a man that discovers more humanity in replicants than in humans,
>even falls in love with a replicant. In the director=B4s cut we are told
>about the feelings of a replicant. How possibly would we know something
>about those feelings without the aid of a human mind? And why should we
>care about it? The director=B4s cut becomes the story of replicants told by
>replicants. Then is trivial that they fall in love to each onother, and
>nothing really disturbing happens, while in the producer=B4s cut it does.
>By the way, what if I manage to convince Riddley Scott of the soundness of
>the above paragraph? Then he can make another version, perhaps called
>"seconds thoughts of the director" cut. This would probably open the gate
>for an endless chain of cuts. The result will be that nobody in this list
>or elsewhere would be able to discuss about Blade Runner, because everybody
>would be talking about a different version. I don=B4t like director=B4s cut=
s,
>in particular this phony one.
>
>Quintin
>
>El Amante / Cine Magazine
>Buenos Aires
>Argentina
>
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Quintin:
 
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.
 
David Goldblatt
 
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