Of humans, machines and what lies between them – Part 2
In a series of articles, Forbes India looks at films that have depicted artificial intelligence in unique ways, and raised some profound questions
American actress Joanna Cassidy, as the replicant Zhora, flees the nightclub, where she works, after being identified by 'blade runner' Rick Deckard in a scene from Ridley Scott's futuristic thriller 'Blade Runner', 1982.
Image: Warner Bros./Archive Photos/Getty Images
Blade Runner (1982) & Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Dystopian worlds of the future have been imagined in many forms on celluloid. But none, perhaps, like Ridley Scott’s 1982 cinematic version of Philip K Dick’s 1968 novel Do androids dream of electric sheep? Set in the Los Angeles of 2019—in Dick’s novel it was San Francisco of 1992—the film shows the wretched existence of humans in a high-tech and derelict society. The film’s protagonist Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former policeman, is given the job of ‘retiring’ a bunch of rogue humanoids, called replicants, who are so advanced in their human-like features—physical and emotional—that only a detailed psychological test can distinguish them.
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While Blade Runner seeded the concept of memories being the core of human existence, as distinct from machines, it was its sequel that made memories its focal point. The 2017 film, with Denis Villeneuve as director and Ryan Gosling as its protagonist K, builds on the concept of how memories shape our individual sense of self and gives us an identity as humans in a world where all other identities have fallen by the wayside. Deckard reappears and joins the dots between the two editions of the film, but it is Gosling—in a far cry from his characters in the likes of La La Land and Barbie—who delivers the gut-wrenching role of K, who desperately holds on to the hope of being a human, based precariously on a single, fragmented memory.
While in Blader Runner, replicants were shown to have an innate urge to remain alive and not have their existence cut short in an entirely arbitrary manner—immortalised perhaps in Rutger Hauer’s ‘Tears in rain monologue’—the 2017 edition shows the ability to reproduce as the final distinguishing feature between machines and humans. However, through both films, replicants are made to believe they are humans by having artificial memories implanted in them.
When the sequel of Blade Runner was announced, it was obvious what Villeneuve was up against. And yet, he delivered what was known to be an impossible task. Cinematographer Roger Deakin contributed in no small means to this success, and won his first Academy Award for his work. Although the sequel did not create the shock-and-awe that the visual spectacle of Blade Runner did, it successfully created its own artistic language.
