Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner[i] follows Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, an ex-cop and Blade Runner, tasked with hunting down four fugitive replicants. Replicants are bio-engineered androids designed to imitate humans and perform work such as manual labor, entertainment, and even combat, which makes the Blade Runner's job of "retiring" them a particularly difficult situation to handle.

The year is 2019 (almost there!) and the city of Los Angeles is a sprawling urban megaplex packed full of tall skyscrapers, flashing fires, and endless lights, so it’s not very different from Los Angeles today (2 points for easy jokes).

 Screenshot from the movie, or snapshot taken yesterday? You decide.[ii]

The production values[iii] behind Los Angeles 2019 are beautifully dark. The night sky is lit up with the “natural” lighting emanating from the only source, the futuristic cityscape below, effectively acting as a flood light. The more intimate scenes are filled with low-key lighting, making high contrast between lights and dark. All of these lighting tropes are a clear indicator of Blade Runner’s film noir roots.

Furthering the connection between Blade Runner and that particular genre is the main plot following a rugged detective struggling to solve the case in the gritty world of the urban streets. The scale between Deckard and the gigantic looming towers plastered with advertisements creates a sense of being trapped, crowded, and watched; this is constantly reinforced through the dense crowds of people who flock the street shops and dark neighborhoods Deckard investigates.

Another great example of lighting and set design in the movie comes when Sebastian (William Sanderson) leads Pris (Daryl Hannah) to his apartment. The building is abandoned by all except Sebastian and the robotic friends he engineered; the dilapidated staircase and exterior hallways are lit up solely by the roving spotlights creeping in through windows and holes in the wall. Sebastian’s apartment is littered with toys and other mechanical things, all covered in dust and cobwebs, which reinforces Sebastian’s character as an eccentric inventor.

On the subject of Pris, the makeup she applies after being allowed into Sebastian’s apartment is haunting. The combination of her short blonde hair puffed up around her head, pale white face, and black eye shadow creates an image of a clown. This makes sense, since she was designed to act as an entertainer and is an excellent acrobat; this makeup helps her hide among the toys when Deckard comes to investigate the apartment later in the film.

 

Not freaky at all[iv]

I was surprised to find out that it was Edward James Olmos who played Detective Gaff, the man who initially brought Deckard to the police station and who always made little origami sculptures. I didn’t recognize Olmos, although really the only familiarity I have with him are the few episodes of Battlestar Galactica I’ve seen. This type of role Olmos fills in this movie is a supporting one, but given the length of his career at this point, I would not hesitate from calling it a cameo as well.

20 years later, and he still looks basically the same[v]

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[i] Blade Runner Dir. Ridley Scott Prod. Michael Deeley. Warner Bros. 1982

[ii] http://www.bandejadeplata.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Blade.Runner.-vista-area-ciudad.jpg

[iii] Barsam, Richard, and Dave Monahan. Looking At Movies: An Introduction to Film. 4^th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. Print

[iv] http://www.devo.com/bladerunner/sector/7/pics/pris_hiding.jpeg

[v] http://www.prophouse2000.com/gaff6.jpg & http://thetimewarriors.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/edwardjamesolmosbsgsequels-thumb-500x332-47370.jpg

Groundhog Day (1993)

Groundhog Day follows arrogant weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) as he reports on the Groundhog Day festivities and is subsequently stuck in a time loop, repeating the day over and over again. Phil is the only person who is aware of the time loop, and uses it as an opportunity to do whatever he wants. Eventually, he realizes that the time loop offers him more than just freedom to act as he pleases, but also acts as a platform to stage personal growth on.


First off, the mise-en-scène: The city of Punxsutawney is blanketed in snow and buzzing with foot traffic as people are bustling to and fro the various groundhog day attractions. We're talking your basic small town feeling, where everyone knows each other. The wardrobe utilized in the movie is also totally 90's. Obviously at the time the wardrobe was designed to reflect the then modern world, but viewed today, the wardrobe clearly defines the movie as taking place in the 90's; one look at Andie MacDowell's large hair is enough to give flashbacks to another time. The props also keep the movie grounded in the 90's: Phil makes a call from a payphone at the beginning of the movie; Larry's camera is huge and unwieldy. Once again, the choice of props at the time was made to be as "current" as possible, but twenty years later they shoehorn the movie into a clear time frame.

Repetition was obviously at the core of the movie. "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher is the audience's cue that Phil's day has started over again, waking him in time to hear the radio DJs chatter incessantly about Groundhog Day. One well framed sequence involves Phil being repeatedly woken by his alarm, only to instantly remove the sound through increasingly severe attempts as the toll of the repetition begins to wear on him. First he sort of slams the button to turn the alarm off, the next day he smashes the alarm with a clenched fist, and on the next he picks up the clock and smashes it into the ground, representing his growing frustration with the time loop.

The duration of the story is much harder to pin down. When it comes to the plot duration, there's the initial scene in the Pittsburgh newsroom used to define both Phil's arrogant nature and Rita's sweet, more relaxed demeanor. Where duration gets tricky though is once the day starts to repeat itself. At that point, the plot duration lasts for only that one day, but in terms of story duration, is much longer. Phil himself states that it took months to learn how to properly throw playing cards. From this, we can extrapolate that the story duration of Phil's experience in the time loop covers several years at least, as there are multiple activities like ice sculpting and piano playing that would also require several months, if not years, to master. We must also take into account the numerous suicide attempts Phil makes; the audience is only presented a few choice ones, but in a later conversation with Rita Phil lists many other methods of suicide that he has attempted, adding multiple more days to the story duration, but ultimately still only occurring on the same day of the plot duration.

References

Barsam, Richard, and Dave Monahan. Looking At Movies: An Introduction to Film. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. Print.

Groundhog Day Dir. Harold Ramis Prod. Harold Ramis & Trevor Albert. Columbia Pictures, 1993.