piano. He begins to play just one key with his
finger,
which is synchronised with the first
notes of the accompanying
sound-track (composed
by Vangelis). By the melancholy mood of
the
music and the gesture of the character, it is
obvious that he is
thinking about his personal
involvement with Rachael and his empathy
towards
the other replicants.
Nothing in the original novel obliged the
director to include this
action in the sequence
of integrating the character’s live action
with
the film's sound-track. It was invented to
convey a particular
mood or theme for the
character. But we can respond to it simply
as
information within the film.
The (images of) photographs on Deckard's
piano have also another
very important meaning,
which was changed during the early drafts of
the
screenplay, because of pressure from the
producers. But evidence
of its existence can
still be clearly seen in both the 1982 and
1992
versions of the film. The original screenplay
has the character
of Rick Deckard posing as a |
replicant, but he is programmed with special
built-in
memories, like his Nexus-6
counterparts, and is unaware of this fact.
There are two scenes in the film which give
clear reference to his
identity. The scene in
which Deckard is searching the replicant
Leon's
(Brion James) flat with his blade runner partner
Gaff
(American actor Edward James Olmos), who is
jealous of Deckard's
expertise at tracking down
replicants, but knows of his true
identity.
Deckard finds some photographs in a dresser
drawer. The
accompanying voice-over by Deckard
states: "Family photos, Replicants
didn't have
families either". This obvious link between
the
photographs of Deckard's and the replicants is
repeated again in
an earlier scene with Rachael.
This takes place in Deckard's flat, again
at night, after he has
been to the Tyrell
Corporation building, where they specialise
in
genetic engineering, to try a Voight-Kampff test
machine (a
special empathy test: the machine
records involuntary dilation of the
iris, the
fluctuation of the pupil and capillary dilation
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