Quaint and sweet. An Ode to Blade Runner.

So, my dear husband and I managed to get a sitter so we could go see the new Definitive Blade Runner. There we were, at The Senator Theater, with a premium print of one of the most talked about movies of any decade in what the director calls the "Definitive Cut". It's been re-cut 5 times. I'm not sure what that says about a movie, but I'm sure it says something.

So, we leaned back in our seats, stupid grins on our faces, about to see this movie for at least the dozenth time. All the same, my jaw dropped, and my heart ached a bit as the movie opened and the city began belching those familiar, but inexplicable jets of fire -- Vangelis' plaintive sound track at complete odds with the scene. But it was the sets--the REAL sets that had my eyeballs in a vice grip. Okay so they weren't REAL sets, they were miniatures, but in today's movies, where virtual rules, these miniatures counted as real. They had weight and mass that you don't really get in computer generated sets. The thing is, those computer sets are so good, and you are so entranced by them, that you don't see that that weight and mass--essential for any scene to feel real--has been forgotten. You go back and see a well made real-deal miniatures set, and you regret that the mad rush to computer graphics happened at all. It's like movies, the true voice of our culture, have become airier and less substantial. Like the big Busby Berkley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby_Berkeley) extravaganzas--all escape and air and fluff. Just the stuff to help a nation forget the worries of the depression.

I stared at the Tyrell building and marveled at the detail, the little moving elevators creeping up the sides, and my heart ached. I'm not even sure why. I missed movies like this. Blade Runner made me hate the last 6 installments of Star Wars even more for their overblown computer effects. It made them feel like cartoons compared to the art of these miniatures. But that can't be the whole of it. There was more. More about who I was then and now. Now. I had seen Blade Runner in the theater when it first came out in 1982. All my other viewings of the movie had been by way of VCR or DVD. This time, there I was, in the theater again, sitting next to the love of my life, not the mistake of my life.

I was looking at the movies with the man I should have been looking at it the first time I saw it--if only we had met back then. I was looking at my loss of those amazing years, and wondering what I would have been had I been with THIS man, then. I must be going through a sort of mid-life crisis as my kids are entering school, because I have also been looking at old photos. I see my youth, and how amazing I was. The potential I had, and never knew it. I see the actors, in their blush of youth, and I see myself, as I see myself in their aged forms of today. I see the costumes I made, the awards I won, and I wonder where could I have gone with this had I been with THIS man? If I had been raised in a family that supported and loved each other. In the passing of the miniatures technology, I see the passing of my time to succeed, and make my mark in the world. My time, my chance has passed. Now its time to pass the torch to the next generation of computer generated kids, and I never even got a chance to make my mark. It was a good technology. In many ways it was better that the new technology, but it's lost now, as am I.

I met and married my dear husband at my last blush of youth, spent the remainder on my children, and now I am left with only questions about what I could have been, had I only realized how amazing I was.

How do I communicate this to my children? How do I make it clear that they will not know how amazing they are until that time is over? How do I make them understand that they must push the envelope while they are young so that they will know that they did not waste that time--that they used every last precious moment? How can I make them understand that my old miniature world still has weight and value--things that they can learn from and see the beauty of, and not discard in the technicolor over-the-top world that they inhabit?

Blade Runner is a capsule of my life. Both have been recut many times. I have had many false starts as I tried to find my place and way in the world, and getting it right only too late--past my time. Quaint, and sweet, and just plain too late, and way too old.