One of the greatest science fiction classics of all time, Blade Runner is an act of visual poetry loaded with striking imagery and symbolic meanings. It posits a gritty underworld to trans-human ideals of artificial intelligence and wraps it in a gorgeous dark noir style. Based on the novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by noted author and schizophrenic Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner takes some of the most fascinating ideas of a fundamentally broken but creatively brilliant mind and marries them to the slow and thoughtful arthouse stylings of a young Ridley Scott. And in doing so, the film manages to be more than the very literal joys of flying cars and humanoid robots and works its way into both the philosophical questions and the imaginative possibilities beneath these things. We are not told that we should be in awe of the future landscape of this dystopian Los Angeles - we feel it, and it becomes part of us. And whether or not androids dream at all, this movie proves that we humans do.
Eric Day co-hosts the Murderville Podcast at www.welcometomurderville.com
Give it a listen. Five minutes. Maybe you'll dig it. Maybe you'll hate it. But at least you'll have tried something new.
