Blade Runner (1999) (Movie Review)

     Blade Runner (1999) [D: Ridley Scott. Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young. Based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?] This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen this movie. The first one was the original release, and I remember very little of it. Even this time I was surprised by a few details, and was once again impressed by the thorough design of the movie. Lighting, settings, artefacts, pacing of the scenes, repeated motifs, soundscape, characterisation: this is one of the best movies I’ve seen. Just whose is the single vision that informs and guides every aspect of this movie, I don’t know. It’s customary to credit the director, but this movies feels like an ensemble production. Everyone, from the actors to the most humble technician, subscribed to the same dystopic vision and elegiac ironies of the story.
    That story is well known. Deckard (Ford) must track down and kill four replicants that have come to Earth illegally in order to find some way to extend their built in self-destruct date. That’s enough to guarantee action, and the trick is to make this more than an action movie. Scott and his script writers managed that trick. The story raises serious questions about human rights. The replicants may be manufactured to specifications that natural humans can’t meet, but they are human in every other way.  Even Leon, a labourer type with limited insight, shows a completely human grief for his dead comrade, a grief that drives him to attack Deckard.
     Deckard does what he’s ordered to do, but he doesn’t like it. Maybe he suspects he’s a replicant himself (I think he is). Certainly Rachael (Young) is one. Maybe Deckard just doesn’t like killing people whose only crime is that they were made, not born. They are tools, instruments specially made for specialised jobs in environments where ordinary humans would be ineffective or likely to be killed before they earned the cost of  tranportation. They are the property of the Tyrell Corporation, the company that made them.
     Philip K. Dick’s story then is about the ethics of making artificial humans; or more generally, about demanding that humans shape themselves to suit a particular role they did not choose and which benefits someone else. What’s the difference between a biologically engineered worker and an educationally engineered one? Either way, the worker’s value consists in what he can perform as a tool or instrument. He has no inherent value as a human being. If some object such as a robot can do the work better or cheaper, the worker’s value is zero.
     A great movie, and a great story of ideas. It’s to Scott’s credit, and his team’s, that abstract ideas have been transformed into a story of individual experience and actions that embody those ideas. ****

Ngaio Marsh. Spinsters in Jeopardy (1953)

     Ngaio Marsh. Spinsters in Jeopardy (1954) On a trip to the French-Italian border area for a summer holiday with his family, Alleyn happens to see what appears to be a murder as he looks out of the train window. A fellow passenger falls ill, and Alleyn arranges for emergency treatment at the same chateau at which he, perhaps, saw the murder. His son Ricky is kidnapped; a mysterious cousin of Troy’s turns out to be a surprise, and the drug trade and international police co-operation all figure in an entertainment that doesn’t reach Marsh’s usual level of subtle characterisation, but does serve to pass some time pleasantly enough. ** (2006)

Ngaio Marsh. Overture to Death (1930)

     Ngaio Marsh. Overture to Death (1939) A committee of do-gooders put on a play, but at the first performance, the lady who substitutes at the last minute to provide the opening music is shot dead by the booby-trapped piano. The social comedy interests Marsh more than the crime solving, but the plot is solid enough, and the added mix of melodrama and love romance makes this a satisfying read. *** (2006)

Frank Herbert. Whipping Star (1969-77)

    Frank Herbert. Whipping Star (1969-77) Herbert has the knack for making an alien culture seem alien, yet accessible. His readers must work hard to imagine what he tells them, and even so his worlds retain that not-quite-intelligible strangeness that convinces. Abnethe, the universe’s richest citizen, has captured a Caleban in order to whip it; she cannot stand to see suffering, but she craves its appearance. Jorge X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinaire, has the assignment of finding out what he can. He finds out that all sentient life will die if the Caleban dies. Finally, the forces of good triumph over the forces of evil (and stupidity: in Herbert’s world the two are twins). McKie manages to establish something resembling correct communication with the Caleban, and Abnethe’s plans are thwarted. A bonus is that McKie solves a few riddles, too: The Calebans are multi-dimensional sentients who manifest in our universe as stars. They also run the S’eye, a system of instantaneous transport between any two points in the human universe. True simultaneity has at last been achieved, despite Einstein’s discoveries.
      This book appears to antedate the Dune series, in which Herbert constructed a complete civilisation. In this book, he has certainly imagined one, but he leaves out almost all of the details. Nevertheless, well done. *** (2006)

M. J. Adamson. A February Face (1987)

     M. J. Adamson. A February Face (1987) Balthazar Marten, delayed in the Phillippines, is asked to investigate the dead bodies washing up on the beach. Trouble is, they were dead and embalmed before they were shot. A plot to scare away the squatters? Yes, it turns out, as the shore-line real estate is valuable only if owned as a single large parcel, and they are in the way. So are a couple of other people who also die, and the putative murderer is found floating in an ancient but still very wet cistern. Pleasant but forgettable entertainment. ** (2006)

Marcia Muller, Ask the Cards a Question (1982)

     Marcia Muller, Ask the Cards a Question (1982) McCone’s neighbour, Molly Antonio, is found strangled with a broken bag of groceries and a piece of McCone’s recently replaced sash cord next to her body. McCone eventually unravels a plausible tale of freight theft and pushing of stolen goods, but the murderer is a blinded man who wants his money back. McCone is smart, telling her tale in short takes (tailor-made for a scenario), and neither the reader’s imagination nor intellect suffers from overwork. A pleasant but forgettable entertainment. ** (2006)

Alexander McCall Smith. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

 Alexander McCall Smith. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (2003) Another entertainment about Prof. Whatsisname, an academic resident at some German university. McCall Smith must have something against German academics. True, they are easy to satirise, but so are other academics, and for the same reasons. Chief of which is their conviction that all other mortals are lesser beings. Mildly amusing, but I’ve had enough of this series. I’m going to try the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency series. * (2006)