Patrick-
 
I don't think a happy ending is utopian.  Utopian means depicting an ideal
society where everyone is happy, as in the original novel called, I
believe, Utopia, about a sort of communist/anarchist society.
 
I'm not sure what a dystopia is... I'm not sure it's an English word.
Is is an especially disfunctional society?  More than the one we live in?
 
In any case, I don't think Blade Runner is about the social order in
the way Metropolis is.  It's about an android, who has been created with
a short life span to keep him a slave, who turns on his creator in an effort
to get more life; in his efforts to save himself he becomes a murderer and
subjects the one he loves to a violent death.  In the last moments of his
life, he learns to be compassionate, to appreciate the beauty of mortality
that lies in the evanescence of events, and to love all life; this brings
him a greater release than success at extending his life span.
 
Therefore I count it as an optimistic film about the ability of man's spirit
to survive the worst treatment in the most depressing world.  Deckard's story,
his attempt to renounce his job as an assasin, he growing feelings for the
androids, his final acceptance of an android as a lover, mirror in lesser
relief the same themes.  The resolution of the story takes place within
the characters, not within their dark world, which is why we don't need
to know whether Deckard and his lover fly off to fairy-land or just live out
their lives like anyone else.
 
The original novel, IMNSHO, had a different theme; and Deckard was the
main character... it was about his efforts to discover who he was, and how
that seemed to change, and how as that changed the world around him changed.
His own effort to discover himself changed what he was, and he discovered
the appearance of solidity to the world was an illusion.  Typical Dick
psychotic paranoid break material <g>.
 
Only a few hints of this are left in the film; a few more in the director's
cut (see the supplemental material on the laser disk version if you haven't
already).
 
Well, that's what I think, anyway.
 
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Leigh Charles Goldstein         [log in to unmask]
voice: 303-478-5292 (USA)       CIS 70304,211