Nowadays, cyberpunk is no longer a new term. The rise and popularity of the cyberpunk world in novels, games, and movies has made it a more mature subculture.
Unlike other sci-fi worlds, the world under cyberpunk is often dark, oppressive and cold. The technology is highly developed but it has not reached the point where it can cross galaxies at will. Humans and machines continue to combine, the loss of humanity, and the endless emergence of crimes seem to have become Characteristics of the cyberpunk world.
We turn the time back to 1982, when a film "Blade Runner" directed by Ridley Scott was born. The film is considered to be the originator of cyberpunk movies and directly influenced the other later. A classic movie "Ghost in the Shell".
Such a question was raised in "Blade Runner", in the future technological era, where is the boundary between humans and clones?
Due to the bloody riots of the clones, the protagonist Deckard (Harrison Ford) as the Blade Runner is ordered to execute all clones on the planet.
The replicator has all the characteristics of human beings. The difference is that the replicator is designed by natural humans, and the means to distinguish the replicator from the human being is to judge through a series of questions and their reactions. This is a kind of test, but one cannot help but doubt its reliability. In the future, the technology of copying humans has been quite developed. They have a human appearance, memories and even emotions. It is difficult for us to boldly say that the person in front of us is just a pure technological product.
There are some copy people who didn't even know that they were copy people before they were tested, such as the heroine of the film Rachel.
After Deckard casually confided her childhood memories, her world collapsed. Her own memories were only implanted by others, and those living objects and photos of her mother were only artificially arranged.
And if memories can be implanted, the body can be forged, and emotions can be simulated, and none of these can be noticed, how can we recognize ourselves and our identity? How can we be sure that we are not clones?
On the other hand, Roy, the defecting clone, has already begun his journey of redemption. He wants to find his creator, he wants to seek answers, and more importantly, he wants more lives, not the designed lifespan. .
Where does the human soul come from? Is it inborn or based on actual memories and feelings? And when the copyists have all this, can they be regarded as natural people? We cannot enter them, how do we judge from the outside? This is like a question of "You are not a fish, you know the joy of fish". If you keep asking it, you will never get an answer.
Humans imitated themselves and created clones, just as gods imitated themselves and created humans. In the dreamlike eyes of each other in the gloomy palace, the relationship between humans and clones becomes more and more blurred.
Like the mysterious doll in Borges’ poems:
"At the moment of pain and confusion,
His eyes fell on the dummy,
Who can tell us that God looks
What did the Grand Rabbi of Prague feel? "
Human beings are to gods what a dog is to heaven and earth. Man cannot attack God, man can only accept the given life.
But clones can attack humans. Roy killed his creator with his own hands. In a sense, he is a true "god killer", and he has more human power.
In this way, clones not only have a more beautiful appearance, they are also smarter, braver, and more powerful than humans, which once again challenged the status of human existence.
In the confrontation between Deckard and the clones, Deckard maintained his usual coldness and violence, but the clones gradually showed their delicate feelings and showed a more human side.
At the end of the film, Roy sat in the rain and died, speaking the most influential line of the whole film, and then passed away quietly. The white dove flying away in his hand, like a free soul, left this body.
The dazzling light that burns fiercely is doomed to the shortness of life, after which everything will become history. In such a dark night, no one can save anyone.
I think Deckard finally understood something at this time, and tears flowed from his eyes, but we couldn't distinguish clearly because they all disappeared in the rain.
The things that humans are proud of that they consider themselves to be more advanced have all disappeared at this moment. We think that cloners are inferior to us, they are just some soulless products. We see ourselves as creators, but in the end, those clones are more like humans than humans. Perhaps in the presence of God, there is no difference between humans and clones.
"Tang Huai Se" is an opera based on medieval legends, and the general idea is as follows:
Don Wise leaves the illusory world of Venus, the goddess of love, and returns to the Waltburg Valley in the real world to reunite with the holy Elizabeth. Tang Huaise sang the pleasures of the flesh and Venus and was not allowed to belong to the group he belongs to. It was Eliza who made him realize his sins and went on a pilgrimage to Rome. The Pope rejected his repentance, but God himself was willing to forgive: the smooth wooden staff that would never change suddenly sprouted again, symbolizing Don Huaise's rescue.
The conflict between illusion and reality.
What is the composition of human beings? I think it is difficult to answer this question positively, but what we can know is that human beings are definitely not a simple addition of body and spirit.
At the end of the film, an origami of a unicorn appears, which corresponds to the unicorn in Deckard's previous dream. This leaves the biggest suspense of the film: Is the memory of the protagonist Deckard implanted? Is he also a clone?
Then Deckard took Rachel and escaped, and the film ended.
I have to say that this is indeed a slow movie. The sci-fi world under slow motion is accompanied by soothing and long classical music. We need to feel it carefully.
In the smoky and humid streets, neon lights flicker and weird, and people like canned sardines swim in the cold steel city. While the physical body is getting stronger, the heart is getting more and more fragile. Is it to choose to sink into the psychedelic technology, or to find another way to seek the light of human nature, even if it will inevitably end up in the end?
It is worth mentioning that the story time set in the film took place in November 2019.
And Rutger Hall, the actor who played the copy of Roy in the film, died in real life in July 2019. Such a fascinating coincidence makes people once again sigh the charm of the film.
It’s already November 2019. I think it’s time to step into the bizarre world in the movie again, to reminisce about the black technology that can be seen everywhere, the love of the copy, the flying dove, and, that An endless rain.
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