"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments...will be lost in time... like tears in rain. Time to die." - Roy Batty, replicant
One of the films premiering here at the Sitges Film Festival is the true director's cut of "Blade Runner." Decades ago Ridley Scott lost the rights to his raw footage, and so the so-called "director's cut" that was released on DVD wasn't really. It was just what he could piece together from the available footage. But I guess the legal snafus got resolved, because he's cut what he now calls the definitive version of the film. Sadly, I didn't get to see it. Tickets for this one sold out the day it was announced. This is, after all, a Fantasy-SciFi-Horror Film Festival, and Blade Runner is one of the greatest SciFi films ever made, arguably *the* greatest. I hear that, like the fake director's cut, this one isn't different enough to make you feel as if you have missed out on an essential life experience if you don't see it :-), but that it does resolve the issue of whether Deckard was a replicant or not. Rutger Hauer was in town, and gave a master class that I also missed. That would have been fun. He adlibbed that famous line above -- it wasn't in the script. And it's one of the best lines in spiritual cinema IMO. It describes perfectly the plight of the mystic, the person who has taken the path less traveled and "seen things." You *know* that others won't believe them, for the most part. And if you're smart you keep your big mouth shut about them, or you start getting men- tioned in the same breath as that footballer whose name came up recently. But sometimes you've just *gotta* talk about them, man. They were so *cool*, so magical, that you really can't take the chance that they'll die with you and be lost forever, like tears in rain. They will, of course, whether we talk about them or not. But the "gotta" factor wins anyway :-), and you talk about them anyway. And sure enough, most don't believe you. I wish I had gotten to see the new version. I would like to learn more about Deckard. He had a good attitude. I always liked his last line, as he's soaring off into an uncertain future: "Gaff had been there, and let her live. Four years, he figured. He was wrong. Tyrell had told me Rachael was special. No termination date. I don't know how long we'll have together. Who does?" Who indeed? But you gotta try, because if you don't you won't get to see things that others won't believe. And where's the fun in that?
