I often see the DVD case for the movie Blade Runner while rummaging around my stuff. Every time I see it, though, I have a hard time recalling why I actually own a copy of this movie. I’m not usually keen on repeat screenings, but one day out of boredom, I popped it into the DVD player and it all started coming back to me.

I am totally blown away by Blade Runner. Ridley Scott really did put together something that has all the ingredients required to cement its place in the list of all-time classics–Blade Runner has action, drama, thriller and sci-fi elements all rolled up into one masterpiece.  And though it’s release date was 1982, its portrayal of the “distant future” is quite tasteful compared to other ’80s sci-fi films.  It’s one of those movies that can’t easily be pigeon-holed into one genre or style of film, with special effects that are still proving to be timeless and an awesome original score, to boot. Watching the movie gives one the sense of total immersion into a futuristic world of grandeur, with intrigue by a dramatic and undying mystery. To say this movie was way ahead of its time is an understatement.

Perhaps the most stirring of scenes in the film comes at the end (frequently referred to as the “Tears in Rain” scene). Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a detective hired to track down and terminate 4 renegade androids (called “replicants” in the film), and finally comes face-to-face with the leader of the outlaw replicant pack, Roy Batty. Batty, the antagonist of the movie (played superbly by steely-eyed German actor Rutger Hauer), is a replicant frustrated by his inability to comprehend his emotions and plagued throughout the movie by his looming–and now imminent–pre-programmed death. Towards the end of the fight, Batty has the detective trapped in a fatal position, hanging off a building by the skin on his teeth. In a surprise twist, however, he spares the detective’s life, and as they both sit in exhaustion on a building rooftop in the pouring rain, he confesses to Deckard about his experiences of escaping slavery and becoming free.  The music, composed by none other than Chariots of Fire genius Vangelis (I must reiterate that the original score is absolutely incredible), cues perfectly in mid-speech.

“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 dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.”

He gracefully falls into death, and a dove flies in the the air (likely signifying the spirit leaving his body). It is only at this moment, when Deckard hears the replicant’s emotionally-charged and poetic swan song, that he realizes his enemy’s survival instincts were indeed just like his own human desire to survive, and not the result of a pre-programmed behavior (a belief Deckard presumably used as justification to terminate many other rogue replicants in the past).

The viewer is then left to their own devices to debate the philosophical conundrum that stems from the very rigid definitions of what “life” and “humanity” are, and the suspicion arises that Deckard, himself, might be a replicant.

This scene is absolute perfection in film if I’ve ever seen it. It plays on the emotions of the viewer on so many different levels. Batty is not human, but in a shocking glimpse we are able to see that his behavior exhibits characteristics any person would define either as the “epitome” of–or, perhaps something “greater than”–human behavior. He spares the detective’s life, but for what? Either because he values the life of the detective, he pities the detective, or simply because of his desire to have someone to listen to his dying words. It could have been any combination of the three. Whatever the reason, at this ultimate point in the movie, his monologue seems so profound that it is literally a hair-raising, goose bump-inducing moment, to say the least.

The full final scene can be seen here.