Tears in rain monologue

The dying replicant Roy Batty, as played by Rutger Hauer, after the "Tears in Rain" monologue in Blade Runner.

"Tears in Rain", also referred to as "The C-Beams Speech",[1] is a brief monologue delivered by replicant Roy Batty (portrayed by Rutger Hauer) in the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner. The final form, altered from the scripted lines and improvised by Hauer on the eve of filming,[2][3] has entered popular culture as "perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history"[4] and is an often quoted piece of science fiction writing.[5]

Script and improvisation

In the film, the dying replicant Roy Batty makes this speech to Harrison Ford's character Deckard moments after saving him from falling off a tall building. Deckard had been tasked to kill him and his replicant friends. The words are spoken during a downpour, moments before Batty's 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 Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost, in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

In the documentary Dangerous Days: Making 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's 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 Tannhäuser Gate"[6] 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"[7] although the original script, displayed during the documentary, before Hauer's rewrite, does not mention "Tannhäuser Gate":

I have 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.[8] In an interview with Dan Jolin, Hauer said that these final lines showed that Batty wanted to "make his mark on existence ... the replicant in the final scene, by dying, shows Deckard what a real man is made of."[9]

When Hauer performed the scene, the film crew applauded and some even cried.[10]

The speech is the final track on the 1994 official release of Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack.

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]

Writing in The Guardian, Michael Newton noted, "In one of the film's most brilliant sequences, Roy and Deckard pursue each other through a murky apartment, playing a vicious child's game of hide and seek. As they do so, the similarities between them grow stronger – both are hunter and hunted, both are in pain, both struggle with a hurt, claw-like hand. If the film suggests a connection here that Deckard himself might still at this point deny, at the very end doubt falls away. Roy's life closes with an act of pity, one that raises him morally over the commercial institutions that would kill him. If Deckard cannot see himself in the other, Roy can. The white dove that implausibly flies up from Roy at the moment of his death perhaps stretches belief with its symbolism; but for me at least the movie has earned that moment, suggesting that in the replicant, as in the replicated technology of film itself, there remains a place for something human."[13]

Tannhauser Gate

Tannhauser Gate, Tannhäuser Gate, and Tanhauser Gate are variant spellings of this unexplained place name which is used only once in the film. It has since been reused in other science fiction subgenres.[14] The name probably derives from Richard Wagner's operatic adaption of the legend of the medieval German knight and poet Tannhäuser.[15] 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 Tannhäuser, a character who has fallen from grace with men and with God. Both, she claims, are characters whose fate is beyond their own control.[15]

References in other media

References

  1. ↑ Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Commentary Track). Ridley Scott. Warner Bros. 2007 [1982].
  2. ↑ Ridley Scott; Paul Sammon (2005), Ridley Scott: interviews, University Press of Mississippi, p. 103
  3. ↑ Jim Krause (2006), Type Idea Index, p. 204, ISBN 9781581808063
  4. ↑ 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...
  5. ↑ Mark Brake; Neil Hook (2008), "Different engines", Scientific American, Palgrave Macmillan, 259 (6): 163, Bibcode:1988SciAm.259f.111E, ISBN 9780230553972, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1288-111
  6. ↑ Hampton Fancher & David Peoples (23 February 1981). "Blade Runner Screenplay". Retrieved 11 March 2010.
  7. ↑ Rutger Hauer & Patrick Quinlan (2007), All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants and Blade Runners, HarperEntertainment, ISBN 978-0-06-113389-3
  8. ↑ 105 minutes into the Channel 4 documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner.
  9. ↑ Laurence Raw (2009), The Ridley Scott encyclopedia, p. 159, ISBN 9780810869523
  10. ↑ "The top 10 film moments - 6: Blade Runner — Batty's dying speech in the rain", The Observer, 6 February 2000, retrieved 6 October 2014
  11. ↑ S. Perkowitz (2007), Hollywood science, Columbia University Press, p. 203, ISBN 9780231142809
  12. ↑ Jason P. Vest (2009), Future Imperfect, University of Nebraska Press, p. 24, ISBN 0803218605
  13. ↑ Newton, Michael (14 March 2015). "Tears in rain? Why Blade Runner is timeless". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 26 July 2017.
  14. ↑ Hicham Lasri, Static, ISBN 978-9954-1-0261-9, ff 255
  15. 1 2 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, ISBN 9781581129618
  16. ↑ Allon, Yoram; Del Cullen, Hannah Patterson. Contemporary North American film directors, ISBN 978-1-903364-52-9, p.14, "the two movies are connected by a single passing reference to Tannhauser Gate."
  17. ↑ Fforde, Jasper. Something Rotten: A Thursday Next Novel. Retrieved 28 May 2015.
  18. ↑ Kross, Karin L. "Cyberpunk is the New Retro: Rosa Montero’s Tears in Rain". Retrieved 28 May 2015.
  19. ↑ "The Venture Bros. Wiki — Venture Libre". teamventure.org.
  20. ↑ Kotowski, Timo (13 April 2009). "Easter Eggs: Eiablage im Datendickicht". DER SPIEGEL. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
  21. ↑ "Find Hidden Features and Easter Eggs on Firefox’s About: Pages". Retrieved 16 April 2016.
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