“The irony of man’s condition,” wrote Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death, “is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.” Roy Batty becomes our champion, and we become companions on his search for immortality. It’s about the search for meaning in postmodern life. He “want more life.” It’s a moment reminiscent of Pinocchio, Geppetto’s wooden puppet who wants to be a “real boy,” or of Luke Skywalker’s confrontation with Darth Vader – archetypal scenes of sons challenging fathers in order to become more fully alive.Īnd it’s in this that Blade Runner’s genuine spiritual dimension – its existential gravitas– separates it from many other films. Tyrell asks, “What seems to be the problem?” Batty responds simply, “Death.” ![]() The tragic prodigal son confronts “Father.” He has returned from an off-world colony with a group of other rogue replicants to persuade their creator, Tyrell, to extend their lifespans. artificial), and he has a limited emotional capacity. Batty is a replicant – an android in a human body with superior strength and intelligence, but also with a pre-programmed four-year lifespan. In Blade Runner, Hauer’s Batty is locked in a struggle with Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford). Anything that is essentially good or true, he insists, must first be deeply, fundamentally beautiful. The concept of Theo-Drama, as developed in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s seminal five-volume work of that title, flips the construct in Western philosophy of the pursuit of “the good, the true, and the beautiful.” Balthasar reverses that order of exploration, treating beauty as the primary object of study, and rejecting the notion that beauty is merely an aesthetic appendage of goodness and truth. As the author of Ecclesiastes chillingly laments, “the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.” (9:5) ![]() Without this theological dimension, we are plagued by a sense of rootlessness and existential dread. Its premise is that all men and women long to be part of a story greater than their own individual experiences and memories. His light has gone out, but his career still burns bright.īlade Runner is a theo-drama. Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor and activist most famous for his role as Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic, Blade Runner, passed away on July 19 that the age of 75. The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long – “Dr.
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