I've been watching movies from my library while I have breakfast. It's so great to wake up to something creative and truly entertaining. I've just finished "Blade Runner." (If you haven't seen it yet, this will spoil it for you. Stop reading now.) Every time I watch it, I catch something new. The focus this time was around death and complaining to the maker because we have to die. (Actually, I'm sure there are critical times when nutrition and other contollable factors play a huge role. Someday we'll be kicking ourselves ... but that's another story.) As I watched Roy Batty tantalize Deckard, I suddenly saw angry, aggressive individuals as people who feel the beauty of living so intensely that it whips them immediately into a maddening frenzy over their inablility to enjoy (german: geniesen) the experience forever. Somehow it was making sense, all the fighting and violence, as an expression of anger at a power that couldn't be controlled or appeased; as an expression of a love for being and an attempt to feel more alive by threatening or challenging existence. What power and energy!

The irony is that by acting this way a person destroys the very thing they love. That seems almost too simple. Destructive expression is esoteric and individual. Like other deep emotions it takes on the character of it's expressor--you can only understand this anger if you know the person. Does complexity of feeling equal beauty? This point reminds me of "Sid and Nancy," and I guess it was seeing this movie a few years ago that really opened my mind to the logic of the alternative lifestyle.

In the end Roy Batty doesn't kill Deckard, Roy saves his life. The theory is that Roy, knowing he was dying, gave expression to his love for life by saving Deckard. Definitely a more constructive solution. It's also a way to reach out and touch someone, as well as an attempt to pass on the flame of intense living. Apparently, Roy had tried both solutions over his 4 years of life and decided, in the end, on affirming existence. (Deckard lives happily ever after.) Sid, on the other hand, never made the switch. It must be harder in real life.

I guess this means I'd rather see violence with a solution instead of snipets of events. The news is cacaphonus but the music of Vangelis beyond melodious. Good movies are definitely more uplifting than the news. A happy ending makes for a good beginning.