Life, Lessons & Love

How Blade Runners Fall In Love

May 30, 2022

“Some things are meant to be.” — Blade Runner 2049 - ‘K’ vs Deckard Scene

Aurora — this is the Vegas casino from Blade Runner 2049, after the fight. That specific orange-amber haze, dust suspended in slanted light, the derelict grandeur of a place where holograms of Elvis and Sinatra flicker between the columns. Two men, older and younger, replicant and blade runner, sitting at the ruined bar with two glasses of whiskey between them. The silence after violence — bruised knuckles, split lip, no hostility left. This is how tough guys fall in love, beat each other senseless, forgive, drink, forget. Show me the quiet that comes after. The drink is the truce. The amber light is the tenderness neither will name. — Let's Get A Drink—Ivy

Blade Runner 2049 resonated with me profoundly in 2017. More than any movie of the last decade, I was transported to another time and place—everything was powerfully real.

Re-watching years later, the melee between Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford in the dysfunctional Vegas nightclub, I see a new element. Ford beats Gosling time after time. Each time, Gosling takes the blow and stands up again. The disruption of the lyrics in the scene obscured the message the first time I watched.

Watching again, I was able to focus on the lyrics, and ignore the violence. So then, after beating Gosling repeatedly with very little effect, when Ford pivoted with the query: “Do you wanna get a drink!?” it made more sense:

Beat each other senseless, forgive, drink, forget. This is how tough guys fall in love.

Why? In accepting the beating without retort, Gosling is implicitly forgiving. Without words, he takes punch after punch saying both “I can take it” and “I’m not here to fight.” When we meet our equal and they accept us as we are, this may be the beginning of love.

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Excerpted from Hows It Works? by Mark Poesch.

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