Tears in rain soliloquy

Tears In Rain is the final soliloquy of the Replicant Roy Batty in the movie Blade Runner. It is much quoted[1] and has been described as "perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history".[2] The final form of the speech was improvised by Rutger Hauer, the actor who delivers it.[3][4]

Contents

Script and improvisation

In Blade Runner, the dying replicant Roy Batty introspectively makes the speech during a rain downpour, moments before his own death:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. [pause] Time to die.

In the Channel 4 documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner, Hauer, director Ridley Scott, and screenwriter David Peoples asserted that Hauer wrote the "Tears in Rain" speech. There were earlier versions of the speech in Peoples' draft screenplays; one included the sentence "I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched c-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tanhauser Gate"[5] In his autobiography, Hauer said he merely cut the original scripted speech by several lines, adding only "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"[6] although the original script, displayed during the documentary, before Hauer's rewrite, does not mention "Tanhauser Gate":

I've known adventures, seen places you people will never see, I've been Offworld and back... frontiers! I've stood on the back deck of a blinker bound for the Plutition Camps with sweat in my eyes watching the stars fight on the shoulder of Orion...I've felt wind in my hair, riding test boats off the black galaxies and seen an attack fleet burn like a match and disappear. I've seen it, felt it...!

Hauer described this as "opera talk" and "hi-tech speech" with no bearing on the rest of the film, so he "put a knife in it" the night before filming, without Scott's knowledge.[7] In interview with Dan Jolin, Hauer said that these final lines showed that Batty wanted to "make his mark on existence ... the robot in the final scene, by dying, shows Deckard what a real man is made of."[8]

When Hauer performed the scene, the film crew applauded and some even cried. This was due to the power of the dying speech coming at the end of an exhausting shoot.[9]

Score

"Tears in Rain" is also the name of the last track of the official score for the film by Vangelis that scores the scene. Elements of the Main Titles theme support Batty's speech, structured with strings, brass, and church bells. Michael Hannan and Melissa Carey describe the feeling of the scene as calm but forceful in its impact:

Here the mood is more serene but the strings and brass orchestration is nonetheless very powerfully scored. Both these cues are examples of monumentalising the drama of near death and death itself. The church bells bring an effective religious dimension to the scenes to strengthen visual imagery such as the dove that Roy releases as he dies.[10]

Critical reception

Sidney Perkowitz, writing in Hollywood science, praised the speech, "If there's a great speech in science fiction cinema, it's Batty's final words...". He says that it "underlines the replicant's humanlike characteristics mixed with its artificial capabilities."[11]

Jason Vest, writing in Future Imperfect: Philip K. Dick at the Movies, praised the delivery of the speech, "Hauer's deft performance is heartbreaking in its gentle evocation of the memories, experiences, and passions that have driven Batty's short life."[12]

Tannhauser Gate

Tannhauser Gate, Tannhäuser Gate and Tanhauser Gate are variant spellings of this unexplained placename which is used only once in this monologue. It has since been reused in other science fiction sub-genres, in popular music and critically reviewed.[13] The name probably derives from Richard Wagner's operatic adaption of the legend of the medieval German knight and poet Tannhäuser.[14] Joanne Taylor, in an article discussing film noir and its epistemology, remarks on the relation between Wagner's opera and Batty's reference, and suggests that Batty aligns himself with Wagner's Tannhauser, a character who has fallen from grace with men and with God. Both, she claims, are characters whose fate is beyond their own control.[14]

Allusions

Other works and media reference the soliloquy. A character in Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (1997) says he has "look'd on Worlds far distant, their Beauty how pitiless", evoking the similar lines in the soliloquy.[15] The actual speech is repeated in whole or in part by characters in the novel And Another Thing..., the television show Venture Brothers, and the film Drillbit Taylor. A reference to Tannhäuser Gate in Soldier (1998) links that film to Blade Runner.[16] Rutger Hauer's speech is sampled in the song "Tears in Rain" by The Retrosic, in the song "Rain" by Horsepower Productions, and in a song titled "Attack Ships on Fire" by London Elektricity.

References

  1. ^ Mark Brake, Neil Hook (2008), Different engines, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 163, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pmioTTM-SDcC&pg=PT163 
  2. ^ Mark Rowlands (2003), The philosopher at the end of the universe, pp. 234–235, "Roy then dies, and in perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history..." 
  3. ^ Ridley Scott, Paul Sammon (2005), Ridley Scott: interviews, University Press of Mississippi, p. 103 
  4. ^ Jim Krause (2006), Type Idea Index, p. 204, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0_c17KnrLvMC&pg=PA204 
  5. ^ Hampton Fancher and David Peoples (23 February 1981). "Blade Runner Screenplay". http://www.brmovie.com/Downloads/Docs/BR_Script_1981.txt. Retrieved 2010-03-11. 
  6. ^ Rutger Hauer and Patrick Quinlan (2007). All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants and Blade Runners. HarperEntertainment. ISBN 978-0061133893. 
  7. ^ 105 minutes into the Channel 4 documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner.
  8. ^ Laurence Raw (2009), The Ridley Scott encyclopedia, p. 159, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NG64WN7WruAC&pg=PA159 
  9. ^ "Batty's dying speech in the rain", The Observer, 6 February 2000, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/feb/06/life1.lifemagazine10 
  10. ^ Hannan, Michael; Melissa Carey (2004). "Ambient Soundscapes in Blade Runner". In Philip Hayward. Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema. Indiana University Press. pp. 155–156. ISBN 0861966449. 
  11. ^ S. Perkowitz (2007), Hollywood science, Columbia University Press, p. 203, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=npB0HPVn44MC&pg=PA203 
  12. ^ Jason P. Vest (2009), Future Imperfect, University of Nebraska Press, p. 24, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ry-JGnxXPBQC&pg=PA24 
  13. ^ Hicham Lasri, Static, ISBN 9789954102619, ff 255
  14. ^ a b Taylor, Joanne (2006). "'Here's to Plain Speaking': The Condition(s) of Knowing and Speaking in Film Noir". Florida Atlantic Comparative Studies 48: 29–54. http://books.google.com/books?id=SWNjsggTUhAC&pg=PA48. 
  15. ^ Frank Palmeri (2009), "Renvisioning history in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon", The Multiple Worlds of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, p. 191, ISBN 9781571134110 
  16. ^ Allon, Yoram; Del Cullen, Hannah Patterson. Contemporary North American film directors, ISBN 978-1903364529, p.14, "the two movies are connected by a single passing reference to Tannhauser Gate."
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