An Education (UK, 2009)
Directed by Lone Scherfig
Starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike

In my review of Gregory's Girl, I commented that most coming of age films are remembered for the careers they launched rather than their individual merits as pieces of filmmaking. And now that the dust has settled and its BAFTA nominations have become the recent past, it is clear that An Education is part of this truism. Outside of the outstanding central performance by Carey Mulligan, it is an interesting but often ordinary drama, marred by its arch tone and conflicted conclusion.As well as being generally thin on plot, many coming of age films date badly because of the manner in which they invoke their period. Gregory's Girl may have a universal message about falling in and out of love, but it never properly explains why we should feel affection for that particular time period if we didn't grow up in it. In other cases, such as Take Me Home Tonight, the time period may be presented in such a standardised or caricatured way that we don't believe that we are watching the lives of real people.An Education manages to strike a pretty good balance between the flaws and foibles of the Mellor family and the iconic glamour which we now associate with the early-1960s. The film is very stylish, contrasting the washed-out colour scheme of suburban London with the silk-like glossiness of Paris. Lone Scherfig brings an air of continental glamour to Nick Hornby's distinctly English screenplay. Whole sections seem to resemble A Bout de Souffle or Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Carey Mulligan with her hair up does resemble a young Audrey Hepburn.Like many films set in this period, An Education is about rebellion against the old order and the acceptable avenues through which young people may advance themselves. But this is not the same old 1960s story involving Mary Quant and The Beatles; as the saying goes, the 1960s didn't really begin until 1963. An Education is set two years prior to this, with much of British society still unchanged since the war, and where the pioneers of the 1950s, such as The Goons, have become part of the furniture.The central difference between Jenny and her parents is not one of political opinion or social attitudes. It boils down to something a lot simpler: curiosity that there may be another way to live one's life. Jenny's parents are very set in their ways, and have never stopped to consider why it is that they do what they do in the way that they do it. Alfred Molina admits to being scared all his life, which manifests itself in his anti-Semitism and Franco-phobia. Emma Thompson is no better, remarking that she is "sorry for what happened during the war" and dodging the question about the purpose of education.In contrast to her peers, Jenny is not only intelligent but inquisitive about the world around her. She listens to jazz, speaks French and romanticises about the intellectual culture of Oxford. Being only 16 when the film starts, she is both the first of the baby boomers and the last of the previous generation; she may miss out on a lot of the stereotypical acts of rebellion in which her younger friends may eventually partake.What attracts Jenny to David is the freeform nature of the life led by him and his friends. This is not a relationship akin to a teenage girl swooning at a pop concert, so much as a seasoned master encouraging his young apprentice. David and his friends are the cultural elite, swanning around Europe like materialistic beatniks who answer to no-one, living and doing as they please and enjoying the pleasures of life and art via seemingly inexhaustible supplies of money. Their lifestyle is an advertisement, to Jenny and to us, for the way that life should be: filled with pleasure and wonder and the best that the world has to offer.But of course, such a worldview cannot last, and it isn't long before reality begins to intervene. As more details of David's shady dealings come to light, his smile and demeanour take on a creepier quality, until he comes to resemble Harry Lime from The Third Man. Both characters are doing something completely unreasonable and profiting from the despair or misery of others. But more importantly, both David Goldman and Harry Lime remain appealing and attractive characters even as we realise just what complete scoundrels they are. By the time it dawns on us that we have been seduced, it is far too late to escape.The film does a does a very good job in its first hour of balancing the redundancy of the old world with the failings and unhealthy nature of the new one. In both cases there is a risk of Jenny losing her identity, either by becoming boring like her parents and teachers, or by losing herself to the lifestyle of these shady men. Rosamund Pike's character represents what she could become if she commits herself to David, whether sexually or in accepting his principles carte blanche.As well as its occasional resemblance to The Third Man, there is a comparison with Blue Velvet, albeit with the genders all reversed. In place of Jeffrey Beaumout, Jenny is the young, overly curious whippersnapper who is thrown into a dark world and gets more than she bargained for. The men in her life reflect the choice open to her, with David standing in for Dorothy as the attractive symbol of danger, and Graham filling in for Sandy as the safe option which the lead character throws away.The only significant difference, gender roles notwithstanding, is that the heroine finds safety solely in herself rather than her admirers. Carey Mulligan is fantastic as Jenny, creating someone who is flawed and vulnerable and yet resourceful and intelligent - refreshing qualities for a female performance, in a marketplace often dominated by walking clichés in make-up. Mulligan is appropriately understated throughout, and like her subsequent performance in Never Let Me Go, she handles herself with quiet dignity even when the story reaches a moment of heartbreak or hysteria.For all its charm and appealing qualities, An Education is not without its flaws. Outside of Mulligan's performance, there is an irritable quality to most of its characters. To some extent this is intentional: there is little point putting a repressive school on screen if we don't in turn feel repressed by the characters inhabiting it. But Jenny's two closest friends are underwritten and misjudged, coming off as clunky comic relief which jars with the atmosphere of the film.This irritation is particularly apparent with David's friends. Dominic Cooper is a fine actor, but there is an overly arch quality to his character which is at first appealing but loses its lustre very quickly. More annoying is Rosumand Pike, who seems completely undeveloped beyond her symbolic role and ends up as little more than a bimbo. Pike may have made a lot of bad choices in her career, but on the basis of this she deserves better.But the biggest problem with An Education is its final act, where Jenny decides to 'do the right thing', leaving all memories of David behind to re-start her studies. Choosing to go to Oxford after all may indicate a new maturity in Jenny, but she is also allowing herself to fall into the very traps she had tried to avoid - even if it is her decision, she is still doing what is expected of her. It feels like a disappointing cop-out, designed to leave things on an optimistic note but which ultimately reneges on much of the past hour.An Education is an interesting take on a very well-worn story, made interesting by its stylish evocation of 1960s London and the performance of Carey Mulligan, who thoroughly deserved her BAFTA. It never manages to live up to its heightened reputation, and it doesn't have quite the bite it needs when it really matters. But it still makes for a pleasant if forgettable evening's viewing, containing much in the way of promise to cancel out the disappointment.

Rating:
Verdict: A fine performance within a flawed story

Angel Heart (USA, 1987)
Directed by Alan Parker
Starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling

Alan Parker is that most contradictory of characters, the journeyman auteur. In a career spanning four decades he has made a film in almost every conceivable genre, from musicals (Bugsy Malone) to prison dramas (Midnight Express), and from war films (Birdy) to offbeat comedies (The Road to Wellville). While the results have not always been cohesive or agreeable, when he is on form he achieves that rare balance of distinctive directorial vision and respectful treatment of a given story.After working with Peter Gabriel on Birdy, the film which launched the career of Matthew Modine, Parker turned his hand to film noir in the form of Angel Heart. Based loosely on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, it combines the hardboiled pulp fiction of Raymond Chandler with the supernatural threat of The Wicker Man, held together by Parker's sumptuous visuals and a powerful central performance by Mickey Rourke. While not a complete masterpiece, it remains a highly compelling work of 1980s cinema which is more than worthy of its cult status.On a basic level, Angel Heart is a throwback to the classic noirs of the 1930s and 1940s, with a plot straight out of a classic gumshoe detective story. In the film a private detective meets a mysterious client, who offers him a large sum of money to find a man who owes him some form of debt. As the detective snoops around, he finds himself pulled further and further into a dark new world, and eventually comes to realise that he is more closely connected to the client than he previously thought...When written out like this, Angel Heart can seem incredibly hackneyed, the sort of script which had been hanging around studios for years being constantly re-written. But the film is fully aware of its place in the genre, tipping its hat to other recent attempts to reinvigorate or redefine film noir. There is, for instance, a direct nod to Chinatown in the scene on the beach: Harry Angel is given a nose shield which he clips to his sunglasses, mirroring the image of J. J. Gittes with his bandaged nose.Both Chinatown and Angel Heart use the conventions of pulp and film noir to provide a firm grounding for their audience, giving some form of reassurance as they indulge in ideas or flights of fantasy which are uncommon for their genre. In the end Angel Heart is the weaker film, since its relationship to such conventions is so close that, on a narrative level at least, it never manages to rise above it. But there is still much pleasure to be had from watching all the pieces fit together, and much terror to be found in Parker's various stylish indulgences.Judged purely on its visuals, Angel Heart is as memorably full-on and sumptuous as Pink Floyd - The Wall five years earlier. As with that film, there is a contrast between the pale and faded colours of the 'normal' world (in this case New York City) and the richer, fuller tones which gradually emerge as both film and character tip over into madness. Parker's long-time cinematographer, Michael Seresin, floods these sequences with reds and blacks which wouldn't look out of place in the work of Dario Argento, and his capturing of shadows rivals anything on The Third Man.These visuals hint at one of the great successes of Angel Heart as a thriller, namely the level of atmosphere it creates. The three or four scenes involving Robert De Niro are uncharacteristically quiet; they occur in churches, offices and deserted cafés, places in which Parker can play on the pauses and grant De Niro's every word the emphasis it deserves. This, coupled with his threatening characterisation, creates the sense of some great evil hovering over everything that occurs between his meetings with Mickey Rourke. Like the dark shadows on a Francis Bacon painting, we feel threatened by this intangible, amorphous sense of doom, which feeds the paranoia of the audience until we are begging for relief.The plot of Angel Heart is rooted in the age-old story of Faustus, which involves a man selling his soul to the devil in return for success - he gains the world at the cost of the one thing that is truly and inalienably his. The character of Johnny Favourite, who never appears on screen, stands in for Faust as a man determined to have fame and fortune at any price. But where Faust seeks no harm to others in his quest for hedonistic fulfilment, Favourite is "as close to true evil as anyone wanted to come" and is driven to desperation in his bid to renege on the deal.The film is full of religious imagery relating to both Christianity and voodoo. Some of the Christian imagery is obvious: you don't call characters Harry Angel and Louis Cyphre without good reason. In one of their conversations, Cyphre describes how an egg can represent the human soul; he then proceeds to devour an egg he had peeled with his long fingernails, like the devil wearing down a victim and going in for the kill. Other images are more subtle and inventive, like the recurring shot of fans and elevators - ordinary, everyday objects which carry connotations of death and descent into darkness.

As with the paganism depicted in The Wicker Man, the voodoo elements in Angel Heart are not intended necessarily to be taken as chapter and verse. The intention is less to describe exactly what voodoo entails and how it is practised, and more about conveying a clash of cultures, in this case between atheism and the supernatural in general. Angel's contact with voodoo in New Orleans is the first time he entertains the idea that Johnny Favourite was anything more than an elaborate hoax. In a subversion of Christianity, it is faith in a life after death that leads him not to God but to the Devil.Being both a hardboiled thriller and a supernatural horror movie, Angel Heart contains a certain amount of graphic violence. Such scenes include a live chicken being cut open and its blood being poured over Lisa Bonet, Angel being beaten up by anonymous mobsters, and the numerous murders which occur. Though not an out-and-out shocker in the mould of Hellraiser, there is more than enough in Angel Heart to make you wince and shiver.Fortunately, precious little of this violence is salacious or gratuitous. The most terrifying moments in Angel Heart are those which use such imagery in an artier, more abstract way to unnerve the viewer psychologically. As the film goes on, Angel begins to suffer vivid nightmares involving an apartment window, red light and a man screaming - a simple image which becomes steadily more unsettling. There is a further link with Pink Floyd - The Wall in the scene where Angel and Epiphany make love in the leaky apartment. The image of water slowly turning to blood is a close cousin of 'The Thin Ice' sequence with Bob Geldof drowning in the swimming pool.The performances in Angel Heart are every bit as memorable as the imagery surrounding them. Although De Niro hovers menacingly over everything, it is Mickey Rourke who defines the film in what remains his finest performance. Harry Angel may be a dishevelled flatfoot, but Rourke brings so much more to the party, from his snarky facial expressions to a deep world-weariness: whether down-to-earth or downright hysterical, Angel feels so much more than just an archetype. The supporting performances by Lisa Bonet and Charlotte Rampling are also pretty convincing, especially from the former in a full-on big-screen debut.Angel Heart does for the pulp thriller what Black Swan did for the giallos of Dario Argento. It takes a number of familiar elements from a given genre and affectionately cranks them up to a point of near-hysteria, resulting in a film which is intensely atmospheric and deeply unnerving. Like Black Swan, there are moments which are ridiculous, and it's hardly the most consistent film ever made. But when it works, it works beautifully, resulting in a breath-taking balance of art, faith and fear.

Rating:
Verdict: Sumptuous, stylish, strange and scary

The Paradine Case (USA, 1947)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Gregory Peck, Ann Todd, Alida Valli, Charles Laughton

With all the horror stories that come out of Hollywood about studio interference and troubled productions, it is easy to assume that these phenomena are relatively new. Ever since the firestorm surrounding Heaven's Gate, it has been common practice to let producers walk over directors where necessary, even if the finished product suffers artistically. But a quick glance at something like The Paradine Case reveals that this had been going on for much longer, and with the same underwhelming results.The Paradine Case is the final collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick, which had begun with the Oscar-winning Rebecca and recently resulted in Notorious, considered by many to be Hitch's finest film. What had started as a good albeit sparky marriage slowly began to disintegrate as both parties' priorities changed. While Selznick wanted more direct control over the films he financed, playing it safe to assure box-office appeal, Hitchcock wanted to experiment, doing 10-minute takes and shooting simultaneously with multiple cameras.This disharmony behind the camera was present throughout production. Hitchcock and his wife had produced a script adapted from the original novel, which had then been polished by the Scottish playwright James Bridie. But Selznick was deeply unsatisfied with their efforts, so much so that after viewing the rushes each day, he would send re-writes to the set and order Hitchcock to reshoot yesterday's scenes. The film went vastly over-budget as Selznick attempted to assert his authority, right down to him taking over the editing behind Hitchcock's back.

As a result of these shenanigans, The Paradine Case feels like a deliberate duff note, like the bad album that a band releases to fulfil their contact before going off to do something more interesting. Faced with constant interference and with no control over the final cut, it's fair to assume that Hitchcock simply gave up. The film is still technically interesting, and has flashes of both suspense and directorial genius. But these sections of brilliance are counterpointed by long swathes of inconsistent mediocrity, some of it irritating, some it is ridiculous and all of it disappointing.The story of The Paradine Case is very simple: a barrister is asked to defend a woman accused of murdering her husband, and in the process of defending her he falls in love with her. It's the sort of silly, predictable plot which, had the film been made in the 1980s or 1990s, would have formed the basis of a sleazy, straight-to-video erotic thriller. In fact, in its bid to be upmarket and serious despite its cheesy origins, the film could be seen as the long-term influence on Jagged Edge or Basic Instinct.Sidney Lumet once said that "in a well-written drama, the story comes out of the characters. The characters in a well-written melodrama come out of the story." The Paradine Case is a melodrama because our involvement comes less from what the characters do as to the way in which they are drawn. The most obvious example of this is Mrs Paradine herself: we know quite clearly from the start whether or not she did it, but we don't exactly know why she did it (if she did). As the film moves on, her status as a femme fatale or possible black widow becomes clearer, and it is not certain whether the same fate will befall Andre Latour if and when she tires of him.

The Paradine Case does deserve plaudits for its technical execution. Hitchcock, ever looking to push the boundaries of what was possible, captured the majority of footage in long takes, only calling cut when there was no film left in the camera. Because Selznick took charge of editing, there's no way of telling how he would have assembled this mountain of footage, and therefore how similar it would have been to his other such experiments on Rope and Under Capricorn. But the use of long takes, married to some very fine crane shots, give the film a sense of slow-burning flow and poise that it might otherwise have lacked.The other major technical point of interest is in the capturing of the courtroom, which replicated the Old Bailey to the last detail on the strict instructions of Selznick. Unlike a lot of internal sets, the courtroom was built with a ceiling to allow for very low angles, giving the barristers a greater air of authority. These scenes were also unusual for being filmed simultaneously on at least four cameras, which allowed Hitchcock to pick the angles he wanted for every revelation which keeping the energy up on the long takes.But ultimately, all this technical wizardry is in vain, for a number of reasons. Firstly, with the exception of one or two short scenes, there is no real suspense in the story at all. Whether through Selznick's hackery or Hitchcock's disinterest, we can see all the major plot points coming a mile off and there is very little in the characters that pulls us through and keeps us hooked. At 114 minutes, the film is way too long for such a simple story, and it keeps filibustering in a bid to convince us that there is more going on that we realise.In the absence of either a meaty story or genuinely gripping characters, The Paradine Case becomes just another procedural drama. Hitchcock had very little time for mystery as an intellectual process, believing that unless it was married to emotional engagement with an audience, there would be no reason to care. In the courtroom scenes he is a victim of his own argument: even when the characters are at their most histrionic, the drama falls flat because we haven't formed enough of an emotional bond to feel any tension about their predicament.

In Murder!, his only previous courtroom drama of sorts, Hitchcock wasted very little time on the facts of the case: he used the deliberating jury solely to set up the character of Sir John as an emotionally involving protagonist. After that, he could lead the audience through the various twists by putting this character in danger or under time constraints, giving us all the same information but with an emotional attachment to boot. Watching The Paradine Case is like reading a dry case history: all the facts are there in plain order, but we have no psychological connection to it.This lack of engagement we have with the characters is rooted as much in the direction as the central performances. Gregory Peck is good, but nowhere near as good as he was in Spellbound two years earlier; the last in a long line of actors to play the role, he was probably too young for the part. The other male performers are either caricatures (Charles Laughton's judge) or, in the case of Louis Jourdan, have their character traits so clearly displayed that there is nowhere for them to go.The women get dealt an equally duff hand. Ann Todd gives her all but her character is weak, drifting into melodrama way too often and making contradicting statements about her attitude to the case. Joan Tetzel, who plays the precocious daughter of Peck's colleague, gets far too little screen time to demonstrate her intelligence. And then there is Alida Valli (credited solely as 'Valli'), who remains one of the most grating and irritating screen presences of her age. Her typically haughty and preening demeanour may be more at home here than it is in The Third Man, but in either case she comes across as so utterly horrible that you give up caring long before the end.The Paradine Case is a plodding, pedestrian Hitchcock effort which does not deserve to be glowingly remembered. Whether as a cautionary tale of producers' involvement in filmmaking or an example of a bored director, it serves little purpose other than as a stopgap between the commercial success of Notorious and Hitchcock's more experimental works later on. Beyond its technical innovations and occasional moments of brilliance, there is precious little in it that one would care to defend.

Rating: 2/5
Verdict: Occasional brilliance amid a sea of mediocrity

The American (USA, 2010)
Directed by Anton Corbijn
Starring George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli

The American is Anton Corbijn's difficult second album. Having established his reputation as a rock photographer and video director, his full-length debut Control demonstrated his great talent and potential as a feature filmmaker. The American retains the cool artistic edge of that work while using George Clooney's star power to pull in a mainstream audience. While nothing like as remarkable or original as his debut, it is a very solid and capable effort which should cement his career.After a decade in which the spy genre has been dominated by the Bourne series, The American is a throwback to the more downbeat, introspective thrillers of the 1960s and 1970s. It harks back to a time when leading men dealt with their problems and insecurities not by emptying magazines at faceless bad guys, but by wandering through landscapes and lying low in European villages. The title is deceptive to the point of being irrelevant - had it been made in Italian, it could have been called La Farfalla (The Butterfly), for reasons that will become clear.

It doesn't take long to realise that this is not going to be your typical Bond-style action movie. After a slow romantic opening, Clooney is forced to kill in cold blood two assassins who have been stalking him for reasons unknown. Having done so, he promptly shoots his lover in the head, knowing he must get away and leave no trace. It's certainly not what Bond would do, although it would explain how he manages to get through so many girlfriends.With only Clooney to focus on, the film is left to be carried by his performance. And fortunately for us, it's really good. As he demonstrated in Michael Clayton and to some extent Solaris, Clooney is at his best playing emotionally withdrawn, locked-down characters. He is reaching an age where his looks can still sell a film to the rom-com crowd, but there is enough character in his face to read in subtle emotional shifts during all those long takes. His character is a close cousin of Jack Nicholson's in The Passenger, with Mathilde and Clara standing in for different aspects of Maria Schneider.There are other similarities with Antonioni's masterpiece as well. Both films are about characters who trade identities (in this case Jack pretending to be Edward), a decision which is ultimately their undoing. Both are existential thrillers in which the thrills are largely internalised; they are at their most fundamental about the conflicts of a tormented soul and Man's attempts to escape from Himself. And both are incredibly downbeat, relying on the shut-down nature of the performances and subtle camerawork. The famous penultimate shot in The Passenger, which signifies the passing or escape of Jack Nicholson's spirit, is reflected in the ending of The American, as the camera moves from Clooney slumped over the wheel to following a butterfly as it floats off into the sky.

Although it never comes close to the quality of The Passenger, there are a number of impressive scenes in The American which do its genre justice. The plot is a slow-burning one, with the various events unfolding at the same pace as life in the sleepy Italian town. If nothing else the film deserves credit for having the strength of its convictions by not blowing everything up at the end. It feels long, and it requires patience and concentration, but it is ultimately rewarding.The American is a film which takes pride in precision. It celebrates the level of craft which goes into telling a story and which Clooney employs when assembling a gun. The scenes of him designing and assembling the weapon are constructed like a Swiss watch, with every frame fitting perfectly into place and the various plot developments coming along like different machines on a production line. It's as much a film about the art of constructing a thriller as it is about the plot and characters therein, and it succeeds in leaving you guessing about the extent to which various characters are involved and for what reason. The dialogue is clipped and often clinical; the conversations between Edward and Mathilde have a refreshing absence of small talk, opting for something a great deal more constructive.

The American is also a visually beautiful film. As he demonstrated amply in Control, Corbijn has a great eye for composition and for marrying light and shadows. The 'action' moments, where Clooney is being hunted through the cobbled backstreets, are reminiscent of Carol Reed's The Third Man in their use of shadow and claustrophobic architecture to create suspense. But he handles the daylight shots just as well, filling the screen with a drained-out but vivid palette which encapsulates Edward's predicament: his desire to blend in and lie low is juxtaposed with new-found passion in his relationship with Clara.Sadly, the visuals are also the first indication of the problems with The American. Although for the most part the film is beautifully shot, it is occasionally over-directed to the point at which it becomes indulgent. We could have done without a lot of the nude scenes between Edward and Clara, in which the screen is filled with enough red to light the whole of Amsterdam. These scenes are where the film wanders very close to the territory of Le Mépris, with the camera lingering for longer than seems necessary, even considering the tone and pace of the film as a whole.The bigger problem with The American, however, is that not a great deal of it is original. There have been dozens of films about spies or secret agents having to lie low in distant villages, or taking on one last job in order that they may leave the service. In addition to the thrillers of Antonioni or Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, there are many films which focus on the build-up to a mission, the most famous being The Day of the Jackal. This is even referenced directly in the scene where Mathilde tries out the weapon for the first time, with the metal sunflower standing in for the watermelon on which Edward Fox unleashes his exploding bullets.This feeling of overfamiliarity, if not overt cliché, is carried over into the personal dilemmas faced by Clooney's character. Many films of this kind, including those already mentioned, find our character exploring the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds, between the job and his conscience, and ultimately having to choose between the two. The American is almost unashamed in continuing this trend, reducing the conflict to Edward's friendships with a priest and a prostitute, with the former increasingly being marginalised.Once we accept the film as something a lot more hackneyed than we might at first assume, the acid test becomes whether or not Corbijn's creative decision-making is enough to prevent it from either being pretentious or from collapsing under the weight of generic convention. In all, it is a success, with his strong visual style and knack for dialogue carrying us through the dodgier moments. The various twists which surround Edward being betrayed are very well-orchestrated, and like all great thrillers you are made to revisit little details which you dismissed earlier on, which have somehow become key to understanding the mystery. Even if certain elements of the resolution are contrived, there is enough invention or skill at work to prevent us from giving up.The American is an interesting attempt to take a well-worn, cliché-ridden story and update it while paying tribute to the masters of the genre. It cuts the mustard as a film about a man at the end of his tether having an existential crisis and being hunted down by his friends, and the central twist involving the weapon works really well. It's too generic and occasionally too indulgent to be given a clean bill of health. But it is a welcome and refreshing antidote to the many poor rip-offs of Jason Bourne.

Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: A hackneyed but handsome old-school thriller

Blade Runner (USA, 1982)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Joe Turkel

There comes a point in the life of any true-blooded film reviewer when they must plant a flag in the sand and argue their case for the greatest film of all time. It's a daunting task, since the films which we most revere often take on an 'untouchable' quality. They resonate so strongly with us and are so perfect in construction, that we almost daren't approach them, lest our feeble words and platitudes fail to convey their majesty.

Blade Runner is everything you could want from a film, and so much more. It straddles genres ably, incorporating elements of science fiction, gothic horror, film noir and action-adventure. It achieves a perfect balance between style and substance, allowing for a bittersweet examination of complicated ideas amidst a vivid landscape of light and colour. It has the scientific head and cold surroundings of a perfect dystopia, but genuine characters and a heavy human heart. And once experienced in its fully-realised Final Cut, nothing will ever come close again.A quick glance at the production history, however, shows that things could have turned out very differently. The original screenwriter, Hampton Fancher, fell out with both director Ridley Scott and author Philip K. Dick, who resented the very idea of a Hollywood adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Scott had only come to the project because of the pre-production delays on Dune. He took the job to rid him of that burden and to take his mind off the recent death of his brother.

Scott arrived in Hollywood expecting a free rein after the critical success of The Duellists and the ample box office of Alien. What he got instead was a heavy-handed studio and a very difficult Harrison Ford, who had just cemented his megastar status with Raiders of the Lost Ark. What followed were many miserable months of night shoots, funding issues and voiceover recordings, as the studio re-cut Scott's footage and made Ford record endless voiceovers in case the punters didn't get the plot. This disjointed and expository original cut received mixed reviews and underperformed commercially, and that, it seemed, was that.It has taken a long time for the true version of Blade Runner to come to the surface. But with every passing year, and every new cut that has come along, more of the true nature of this extraordinary work has come to light. Now we have the Final Cut, the only cut over which Scott had full creative control. It is Blade Runner at its most personal, complete and immaculate. Scott believes it to be his best and most personal film; on the basis of this cut, that's not about to change.

Most of the critics who praised Blade Runner the first time round were quick to dismiss the film is visually beautifully but lacking narratively. They were half-right. No-one could deny that the film is breathtakingly beautiful, with every shot perfectly composed and a score of both scenes and images which take one's breath away. The opening shots of the Los Angeles skyline are mesmerising, as is the image of a tower of flame arcing and reflecting in the eye of a nameless observer. These scenes embody what is so special about the film - its ability to take the vast, the mechanical and the dystopian, and find the personal, the hopeful and in human in everything we see.The film has been appropriately described as a neo-noir, since it takes the conventions of classic noirs like The Third Man and retunes them to better suit its own particular choices in terms of themes and character development. Scott clearly has great affection for the various noir motifs, filling his scenes with carefully chosen shadows and beautifully lit cigarette smoke. His visual decisions with both lighting and colour really bring out the sense of mystery and ambiguity which is at the heart of all great noirs. Even without the voiceovers, Deckard is a born natural in the role of unreliable narrator.

But there is so much more to Blade Runner than pretty experiments with light and shade. The true strength of the film lies in its myriad themes and complex exploration of ideas, ranging from man's environmental impact and the nature of advanced urban society, to the spiritual and existential quest for self-knowledge and the boundary between what is human and what is not. Scott's greatest trick is to bring out these ideas through the most subtle and intelligent of visual touches; his background in advertising allows him to offer us multi-layered imagery as a guide in place of dry philosophical meanderings.The most prophetic message of Blade Runner is that the future is far bleaker than we could have imagined. The society presented to us in Blade Runner is akin to our own in one key aspect: we are living with the consequences of what has gone before and are uncertain of where to proceed from here. In this Los Angeles, there is social decay, uneasy multiculturalism, widespread crime, prominent sexuality, massive inequality and an intelligent but emasculated underclass, both in our midst and 'off-world'. The predominant mood is one of gloom, struggle and pathos, embodied by the fact that it is nearly always raining.The replicants in Blade Runner make up this underclass, and are symbolic of both the persistence of slavery and the dangers of technological advancement. The twist is that their status as second-class citizens was not forced upon them by circumstances but preconceived before their creation. Just as all the newborns in Brave New World have their class and intelligence predetermined, so replicants are created with varying levels of intelligence and capabilities, and are all given a four-year lifespan - a failsafe against them 'developing their own emotions' and turning on their creators.Roy Batty's rebellion against his 'father', Dr. Eldon Tyrell, is both the monster turning on his master in the manner of Frankenstein and a powerful religious allegory of the distant relationship between God and Man. Roy, played with terrifying presence by Rutger Hauer, is the Prodigal Son whose intelligence and desire for consciousness lead him to his creator (whether literal or metaphorical). Tyrell is both a benevolent father and some form of monster, showing compassion and understanding while never properly accepting his 'son'. 'Man' rejects 'God', doing literally what Nietzsche described symbolically, and condemns Himself to a short life of loneliness and fear.But that is not the end, for one of the greatest themes of Blade Runner is salvation and redemption. Deckard's encounters between both Roy and Rachael are steeped in the idea that, in the midst of all this uncertainly and terrible injustice, hope can thrive and the true goodness of people can come through. The big question at the heart of the film is this: what does it mean to be human? How can we define what is human and what is not? And - perhaps more importantly - does it matter if we cannot?

So much ink has been spilled over whether or not Deckard is a replicant, and there are strong arguments on both sides; Scott believes that he is, Ford believes that he isn't. Perhaps the real answer lies in a third explanation, namely that the boundaries between human and non-human are now so blurred that definitions of what counts as 'human' are little more than irrelevant expressions of power. The concept of being 'human' is so complicated, so ambiguous and so multi-faceted, that to exclude or demarcate any one body from another through codes, whether moral or political, is pointless. In this situation the only thing that triumphs is love - whether the brotherly love of Roy sparing Deckard's life or the romantic love between Deckard and Rachael.Both these relationships begin with the lines between human and replicant clearly drawn; Deckard is down Roy, and the first time Rachael visits him he dismisses her fondest memories as "implants". But eventually both Roy and Rachael prove a certain kind of devotion toward Deckard, saving his life on one occasion each. These acts of compassion render Deckard's preconceptions obsolete. He undergoes the same act of soul-searching and reaches the same conclusion with both parties; replicant or not, so long as there is love, there is meaning. Both the tender love scene with Rachael and the heartbreaking 'tears in rain' sequence with Roy are the consummations of this revelation; as the dove flies into the sky, Deckard puts his old ways behind him, and surrenders himself to the only thing that matters.Blade Runner is by far and away the greatest film ever made. Every aspect of it from the acting to the Vangelis soundtrack is flawless, both in design and execution. The performances of Harrison Ford and Sean Young are mesmerising, and remain the highlights of their respective careers. It is also Scott's best film by a county mile; for all his great work on Alien and Gladiator, he has never bettered this. Most of all, Blade Runner is an extraordinary odyssey through the human psyche, taking characters in the gutter and using them to focus on the stars. It is, quite simply, perfection.

Rating: 5/5
Verdict: The greatest film of all time