Ridley Scott
Blade Runner

Supported by the beautiful soundtrack of Vangelis, the film "Blade Runner" inspired by the book by Philip K. Dick "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Visually, it is a haunting depiction of Los Angeles in 2019. Enormous abandoned buildings, streets teeming with merchants, and people of every race thronging the streets like in an Arab Souk, it rains incessantly, and you cannot distinguish day from night. This is how the city appears, gloomy, decadent, and unsettling, where dark tones prevail, much like how dark and pessimistic the film appears to be.

In 2019, it is possible to manufacture Replicants, creatures born from the mind of a genius, built to work in human settlements on other planets, indistinguishable from humans, except for one unique thing, the inability to feel emotions. Dr. Eldon Tyrrell, founder of the Tyrell-Corporation, whose watchword is "More Human than Human" a statement that can be seen as the leitmotiv of the film. The latest generations of Replicants, the Nexus 6, are strong, athletic, and more intelligent than those who conceived them. Four of them, Zora, Pris, Leon, and Roy Batty, the mastermind of the group, have escaped and managed to reach Earth; they desire that their life doesn't extinguish within the little time they were programmed for because they are like human beings, capable of developing real feelings. Deckard, detached and fatalistic, a former agent of the special unit Blade Runner, is called back into service with the mandate to eliminate the rebellious Androids. When he subjects Rachael to an examination based on studying the eye, a test used to identify Androids, the "woman" who has been implanted with a fake memory and doesn't know she is a Replicant, when she realizes she isn't human, shows the most human of feelings, she cries.

Here begins a change in the Android hunter, insecurity creeps into his consciousness, and he begins a journey that leads him to know himself and to question if there is a difference between Human and Replicant. Deckard's adversary is Roy, the leader of the fugitives, together with Leon, they go to the eye-maker Chew, to obtain information to find out who created them. Initially, they are directed to J. F. Sebastian, an Android designer suffering from the Methuselah syndrome, a disease that causes him to age prematurely. He leads Roy to Tyrell himself; the Replicant declares to his creator that he wants to continue living. The man, who sees in him only a machine, responds that they built him as best as they could. Roy presses on, asking if there is a way to halt his death, and when Tyrell makes it clear that his fate is sealed, the Android crushes his eyes into their sockets, killing him. This scene is symbolic as it refers to the test to which the Replicants are subjected to be identified.

Over time, Deckard becomes convinced that the boundary between the real life and the artificial life of the Androids does not exist, it is a way of thinking that doesn't hold up, melting away like snow in the sun. The film finds the solution in Sebastian's house. The Android hunter tries to kill Roy, but the Replicant, aware of his imminent end, at the moment he could settle the score, spares him, rests his head, and lets himself die. At the same time, a dove flies towards the sky, a metaphor for the freedom Roy has achieved, as by dying, he leaves the prison of his sad existence. Deckard leaves with Rachael, whom he has fallen in love with, toward an uncertain future. It leaves us with questions... "Where do I come from? Where am I going? Who am I?" Doubts that lead one to seek the meaning of life, and that thin boundary separating reality from the false.

PS It is imperative to mention the great performance of Rutger Hauer as Roy, and also that of Harrison Ford as Deckard.