NYFF: 'Blade Runner: The Final Cut'

So here's Ridley Scott, once again making like Cezanne going into the Louvre to do a few touch-ups, or something, and promising with his title that THIS IS IT: this no voiceover, Joanna-Cassidy's-face-seamlessly-digitally-superimposed-on-her-stunt-double-in-her-death-scene, two "Too bad she won't live" version closes the book on Blade Runner, and in December we'll have a briefcase of five DVDs to prove it. Now I know a lot of people roll their eyes at this seemingly endless tinkering with the 1982 sci-fi classic, but I look at it rather like Bunuel's Simon contemplates the act of blessing: it's amusing, and harms no one. And it was fun to see the picture again under the optimum projection and comfort conditions the Walter Reade Theater provides.
As with almost all cinematic visions of the future (the notable exception is Lang's Metropolis, which is so irrational it can't date), the older Blade Runner gets, the more a product of its times it seems. The big hair on female leads Sean Young, Darryl Hannah and Cassidy is enough to place the film in a very specific zeit. Also, Leon would have never made it into the Tyrell Corporation headquarters carrying a piece today, so it's rather difficult to believe he will be able to do so in 2019. Also, the shot of Deckard leaning against the window of the electronics shops foreground's the film's failure to predict flat-screen televisions. And those computers in the cop cars! Imagining the future, indeed...

Then there's all the indoor smoking. Of course, that's endemic to the film's mix of sci-fi and noir, which sometimes plays better than others. M. Emmet Walsh's "Talk about beauty and the beast—she's both!" line is still chortle-worthy; on the other hand, the Harrison Ford's fey act, impersonating a "morals" investigator while pursuing Cassidy's replicant, is an apt and funny homage to the Bogart/Malone bookstore pas de deux in The Big Sleep. It's also a sorta sad reminder that Ford, once upon a time, actually seemed to enjoy being a performer. (I noticed something interesting about Ford's character, Deckard, for the first time here: he can't hold his liquor. One cocktail and he's drunk dialing Young's Rachel.)

Of course it all looks great, but I'm gonna leave it to bigger experts to parse exactly what's what in this restoration. (I'm sure said experts will be bountifully represented on the DVD supplements.) I've never been of the gratest-thing-since-sliced-bread school on this movie, but hell, it's a big part of our post-modern mythology and a constant source of visual dazzlement. If the powers that be want to make an event of reviving it every few years, it causes me no pain.