A Formalist Reading of Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’
In this paper, the ideas of film theorists Hugo Munsterberg and Rudolf Arnheim will be supported by the sci-fi neo-noir (or tech noir, to some) film Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott. The film gives us a futuristic vision of the year 2019 where a few replicants, an off-shoot breed of humans, have returned to Earth and must now be hunted down and ‘retired’ by special cops called blade runners.
At the time, Blade Runner might be considered ambitious in the field of cinema, given the grandiosity of its concept, but with the technology that was already available by then, filmmakers were given the opportunity to produce such outlandish scripts for the screen. The setting of the film introduces flying cars, special high-tech guns, and a science that has allowed human beings to bioengineer a new breed of intelligent lifeforms, among other things. It is also a subversive commentary on the capitalist and commercialist values upheld by society, which is demonstrated in the film through futuristic billboard ads and one of the driving plot points which is the replicant species that the Tyrell Corporation had built an industry upon but has become the main conflict in the film. It also deals with several other things like the hubris of man, mortality, morality, and ethics, which are all so glaringly human that it makes the film look familiar despite it appearing so far from the version of the world that has ever existed.
According to Munsterberg, the reason that people were able to perceive this despite being fully aware of the fact that it is not real is because of the reconciliation of imagined and perceived reality through technology which has allowed the filmmaker to execute this kind of story. For a long time before the birth of cinema, art has only ever been painting, sculpture, architecture, music, dance, and, film’s predecessor, photography. Both Munsterberg and Arnheim agree that film is art because of its unique medium, that which can be viewed on a screen and not in an art gallery (which would render it completely still and in a single plane of canvas) or listened to in a symphony concert (which would be bound by the restriction of time). Film is self- containing and transcendent all at once, qualities that Munsterberg especially places heavy emphasis on, as it never disrupts the reality of the viewer and adheres to the qualities of beauty in art that is, according to Immanuel Kant of whose philosophy Munsterberg subscribes to, is ‘purposiveness without purpose’ (p. 22). Blade Runner, as an example, was essentially created without purpose. As in, there is no practical reason for its existence. But we experience it in spite of and it becomes a world independent from the laws of which we are subjected in this earth in this moment, and its characters as people that do not exist in our reality. And yet, it affirms itself as we experience it and we, as an audience, are inclined to believe it for the entire duration of its runtime, against everything that we know about the world and our lives in it.
Case-in-point: the mere fact that the film is set in Los Angeles in the year 2019 but looks nothing like the real Los Angeles, whether back in 1982 or right now in the ‘real’ 2019 is a testament to its artistic credibility, regardless of whether it had looked convincing or not. This is a defining characteristic of this genre: there is a marriage of science (truth) and fiction (imagined truth), two things that should fundamentally contradict each other but have now formed a union that has become one of the most popular genres in cinema.
That dissonance between the real and the unreal is what allowed Munsterberg and Arnheim to evaluate and validate film as an art form. According to Arnheim, film can only be perceived as art if the artist can distinguish it as far from reality as possible. However, what makes film unique is that while people and nature are captured on celluloid exactly as we see them with our own eyes, the other elements that the filmmaker has the liberty to manipulate is what makes it different from our natural world and, therefore, qualify as art. These elements include but are not limited to color, lighting, framing, and editing. These, and the images that become the center of our attention in this medium — which is largely a visual medium — are also often symbolic, which then creates a ‘unity of plot and pictorial appearance’ (p. 25).
In Blade Runner, the image of the human eyes becomes a recurring symbol throughout the film, not only by way of which it is shown in the frame, but in the role it plays in various scenes: the Voight- Kampff tests, the eyeballs from the jar of Hannibal Chew (who claims to have designed the eyes of Roy Batty as he confronts of him), Pri’s eye makeup, the death of the replicant creator Tyrell, and even the famous ‘tears in rain’ monologue that was delivered by Roy in his final moments, which also in some way alludes to the eyes. And yes, even the way eyes are framed and lit are not how you would usually see them in real life, with all the harsh shadows and the sharp cuts in the editing. There is a poetry in this film that is not typically seen outside of it. The set design, with its the striking neon lights contrasted with its dark, sinister streets, evoke within the viewer a sense of unease or perceived danger that, in retrospect, is ridiculous given that all of this is only presented on a screen. In this way, the film not only becomes a simple recording of motion, but ‘an organized record of the way the mind creates a meaningful reality’ (p. 19). And in the discipline of film, it is all about the mind and how it makes sense of everything we see and hear.
In this example, to merely say that the eyes as an image were shown repeatedly might not mean anything, but to say that lighting, framing, and editing had manipulated this presentation in a way that it creates deeper meaning is to say that it has created a platform for art to exist.
Adhering to Munsterberg and Arnheim’s terms, Blade Runner, in this particular example, is an aesthetic experience that works alongside the mind of man in order to become a meaningful expression of images that are not produced out of thin air but are representations of existing ideas, images, and memories that the mind draws from. Still, despite the brilliance of its imagined world come to life, it will never be a substitution for the experience outside of its confines. But therein lies the beauty of it, the ability of artists to birth such a construct like cinema which, when it all boils down to it, must be ’experienced perfectly and out of context’ (p. 24).
