Meditations
In the
heat shimmer of the deserts the silhouette of a weary traveler appears before
you like a merging orbit of inkblots. This dusty wayfarer hails from far away,
venturing this parched and desperate land to flee to his kindred. Behind in Canaan he leaves a dramatic tale that goaded him hither;
a slighted brother, a stolen birthright, and a desperate flight as a pauper
before the mercies of the frontier. Cue the sheer panoramas of deep desert,
whipping wind, and all the B-reel our minds conjure. That’ll do.
The
man’s name is a bit of an oddity in and of itself, probably one that his father
bespoke and his mother detested. It resembles the Hebrew word meaning “heel,” a
crooked organ emblematic of a crooked mind and life. Yes. This man is a Hebrew,
and an underhanded one at that. Time and again the heel-holder would abuse
trust, leverage, dissemble, lure, and switch in order to obtain. And at the end
of each stratagem he would always come up short in clasping all of what he thought he wanted. Every
challenge he met with legerdemains and end-runs to grasp and get, seldom on the
up-and-up, and rarely head-on. Hook-and-crook was normally enough to win this
stranger the largest wishbone of whatever he prized, tearing away just enough
to claim the win. And his crooked heel would serve him reliably enough until he
wrestled the Living G-d. For it was G-d who would teach him to trust.
The
man’s name is Yaakov. Jacob.
…
Beauty
is perhaps the cruelest element in both the dreamverse and that porously
separated obligation we call life. It
alights into the drear from some gilded beyond that eludes us, torturing and
consuming all who can appreciate its rare, entrancing glow. Beauty turns heads.
Beauty launches a thousand ships and sorrows alike. And like a chambered
nautilus, you can never truly squeeze into the core of it, try as you may. It
vanishes – or worse, it fades into the common. Yet often enough, this dark and
bitter world outright slays it. Existence does not tolerate the pure and it
certainly does not tolerate the beautiful.
Starcrossed
beauty falls no more dramatically than in the dark Romanticism of Edgar Allan
Poe, who played to the hand-and-hand communion between beauty and tragedy. Poe
embodied beauty itself in doleful characters like Lenore, Ligeia, and Annabel
Lee, all women of striking and otherworldly bloom, only to murder them with the
jagged swoop of a pen and relegate them to the creepy-crawlies that await us
all when we wink out.
Beauty is ever fragile. And beauty succumbs abruptly to tragedy with no promise
of resurrection. Bleak. Gone. Never to return. And it is that bitter ache of
its loss that embellishes its retrospect and exalts the time you clutched it.
Beauty’s ghost, now arisen as a siren, is ever more haunting and transcendent.
General Review
After
recently viewing Blade Runner 2049
with my father, the rumors are true: the film is nothing short of a masterpiece.
The story is compelling, the visuals are mesmerizing, and the scope is just
phenomenal. And for all the vocal box office populists bewailing the intrusion
into their lives of meaning and silence: pound sand. You’re why we can’t have
good things, and why Montag’s wife needed a fourth TV. The movie was as
stirring and existential as its 35-years forerunner, leaving my father and
myself moonstruck and wistful as we exited the empty theater, aching in all the
big thoughts we normally shelve to do the needful things. It’s clearly not fare
for everyone, but for the happy few for whom it plucks a cord, sci-fi film
hasn’t flexed such impressive élan in a very, very long time and damn did this
feel good. The director, Denis Villeneuve, eschewed the family friendly appeal
and cheap sugar rush that run the box office tables with safe and forgettable
adaptations (I, Robot
, Ender’s Game
). Instead Villeneuve
crafted a love letter to the connoisseurs and true fans and directed a film
about what it’s supposed to be about. Fine spirits aren’t for everyone, and
neither is profound reverie. If you’re not into either, stick with whatever
Velveeta is currently outselling it. But don’t rain on our parade.
Now having dispensed with my general critique, I’m going to curtail the
standard reviews of Blade Runner 2049
for a more in-depth plunge into biblical allegory and its significance to both
films; namely the life of an elusive unicorn, the biblical matriarch Rachel. This critique will come in two installments. Rachael or Rachel (however you spell it) is a name from the deep past limned
with heady, mystical, and feminine power, and it seems no accident that
Detective Rick Deckard’s songbird shares namesake with the Torah’s deepest symbol
of lovelorn desire.
Jacob’s Unicorn
***SPOILERS
BEYOND THIS POINT***
And it came to pass, when Jacob
saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban
his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the
well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. And Jacob
kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept. – Genesis 29:10-11.
I’m
going to assume my readers are already familiar with the scandalous domestic
wars that rent the house of Jacob asunder in Genesis, but I will rehash the
main points tucked away amid all the tedious begats.
Jacob
bilks his brother Esau out of his birthright for stew and then wheedles the
blessing of the firstborn from his father Isaac under false pretenses. Esau
raises his voice and weeps. Fearing vengeance at the hands of Esau and at the
advice of his mother Rebecca, Jacob turns tail for the East across the Jordan to the
house of Abraham’s kinsman, Laban. Most notably, Jacob departs destitute (a
risk Abraham and Isaac never took). With pockets full of lint and the promises
of G-d and forefathers, Jacob arrives at the flocks of Laban. And it is here,
at that portentous well, where Jacob spots Rachel for the first time. This time
Jacob is the one who weeps. The rabbis offer an explanatory midrash for Jacob’s
tears.
“Since he foresaw with the holy spirit that she (Rachel) would not enter the
grave with him. Another explanation: Since he came empty-handed, he said,
“Eliezer, my grandfather’s servant, had nose rings, and bracelets and sweet
fruits in his possession, and I am coming with nothing in my hands.” -
Bereishit Rabbathi by Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan
Jacob
approaches his uncle Laban with no bargaining chips and is therefore
strong-armed into moiling for seven grueling years for the hand of beloved
Rachel. Yet on their wedding night, Jacob’s scheming uncle switches Rachel for
her older sister Leah. The couple consummate in the dark and the next morning
Jacob meets with crushing disappointment, to which Laban curtly explains that
he simply marries off firstborn to firstborn. Had Jacob not stolen Esau’s birthright, none of this would have
happened!
Jacob then
works for Rachel for another seven long years. And even after he finally has
her, he never truly has her, to
paraphrase Rabbi David Fohrman. For as we shall see, Rachel is
a beautiful ghost who would ever elude Jacob, slipping through his fingers both
in life and in death. Rachel is initially barren while Leah yields Jacob a
litter, and despite her unending tears of shame, Jacob persists in loving her
all the more. Eventually G-d heeds Rachel and opens her womb, but only after
years of bitter strife with Leah. Much later when Jacob finally took his wives,
children, and flock and booked it back to Canaan,
he inadvertently leveled a curse against his one and only Rachel. Upon arriving
back in the Promised Land, Rachel perishes during childbirth. And for hasty
reasons we don’t really understand, Rachel is buried distant from the family
tomb. Then Egypt swallows up the only two fruits of Rachel’s womb, Joseph the
mystical dreamer and Benjamin, threatening every trace that Jacob’s ideal even
existed at all.
There’s
always something in the way. Jacob thought he had her. Then he didn’t. Yet when
he finally did, she was barren. Then after she finally bore fruit, Jacob
accidentally cursed her into oblivion. Then she dies young. And when she dies,
she’s buried apart. Egypt threatens to devour her two sons. And so it goes.
Cull, if
you will, my opening meditations on the fragility of beauty, purity, and the
ideal when it enters our intolerant world. Now you’re a grizzled Rick Deckard,
and you find yourself sequestered in the chic and mesmerizing corporate lair of
Niander Wallace, a billionaire tycoon with a god complex and a canny knack for
allusion as droll as it is twisted. Undulations of aqueous light play vividly
along the walls as Wallace in his morbid glory produces the skull of Deckard’s
forlorn love, displayed like any other evidence exhibit as he reptiliously
strokes her brainpan and recites Genesis 30:22:
“And G-d remembered Rachel, and
G-d hearkened to her, and opened her womb.”
In light
of Rachel’s tragic story arc in the Bible, the weight of this verse as uttered
in passing during Wallace’s macabre interrogation lends a tragic esprit to the
life of Rachael the replicant and uncovers what she really meant to Deckard and
her “skinjob” race.
Deckard.
In the first film we land on a hardboiled loner who deals in a fixer’s side of life
to serve the paymasters of his era. Then amidst his seamy, drain-guttered world
he embarks on a mission. Coming in from the surly backwash outside Tyrell
Corp’s imposing ziggurat in the heavens, Deckard enters a pristine world of
technomancy and lands an unexpected encounter with a fleeting angel.
http://www.stevenbenedict.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Blade-Runner-Rachel.png
The
scene introducing Rachael treats the audience to a captivating skyline bathed
in a rare, golden sun, a synthetic owl threshing before Rachael as a symbolic
forerunner (the symbol for wisdom and for Lilith, Adam’s first wife). Then, her
stilettos clopping out of the darkness and into the lobby, a ravishing woman
glides into frontal view with stylistic poise, a one-of-a-kind modern coiffure,
treating viewers with an iconic scene for not only the film itself but for
cyberpunk at large. This timeless lobby scene is built entirely around Rachael,
featuring her demure and vestal charm. In all, Ridley Scott crafted the scene
for a potent sense of encounter. Now while Deckard is a stolid man by nature
and probably holds his cards close, Gaff later betrays his interest with a
priapic origami figurine cluing us in that the detective is hopelessly smitten.
https://gioviart.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bladerunnermatchstick2.jpg
It’s a
veritable well scene. A visitor stands stricken by the sight of a lovely
daughter while her scheming father figure looks on. The father promised a
prototype yet switched it for Rachel, who doesn’t know she’s a replicant.
Switched copies. So far, so good.
Everything
that follows this encounter – from the first to the second Blade Runner - mirrors the plight of Jacob as he clawed desperately
to have Rachel for his own. Deckard becomes a marked man, a fugitive on the lam
in a nomadic clamber to cleave to his star-crossed love for as long as he can.
Like biblical Rachel, replicant Rachael learns that she is cursed and living on
counted days. Like the lachrymose bride of yore Rachael is barren, as are all
replicants. And then a miracle birth opens up not only a family but an entire
race; in one case Israel, in the other case legitimizing synthetic Man. Rachael
dies in labor while giving birth to their daughter Ana who was a professional
dreamweaver like biblical Joseph, the lad who seeded his kindred with his
visions and became the seething envy of all his estranged siblings. Like
Joseph, Ana was sadly exiled from her wandering father, her identity was
concealed from visitors, and she was immured in a prison to dream her life away.
Blade Runner 2049 deftly splices national mythos
within its plot, but it does not cease with the death of Rachael. But is the
Rachael’s death where the allegory halts? After all, in the Torah Rachel’s woes
do not perish silently with her, but instead fractal into the next generation
in a whole new peepshow of repercussions. Along this vein I have discovered
that Blade Runner 2049 also drags matriarchal
motifs even further into the life of Agent K himself long after Rachael’s
passing. But we won’t be able to unpack his protagonism without first setting
the stage. In the next and final installment we’ll
ditch the Jacob narrative for a trice and switch gears to ask what it means to
be special.
I hope you enjoy it.
, his daughter Anne goes on to have a political career in Israel.
. A pity iTunes doesn't have this, because I'd love to buy it. For the record, this is a 
(I think), a Wiccan priestess thinks to herself "I will have him. So mote be it" or something to that effect upon meeting the man who will eventually become her husband. This is also by S.J. Tucker. Let the record state that the Bible condemns all forms of occultism, not just "black magic," so listen to the song if you wish but don't go doing what's described.
isn't the type of magic the Bible condemns with the exception of divination, which is generally depicted as fraudulent.)
our 
simply takes for granted. And this leaves the
audience to imagine what premiums people are willing to pay just to be told in
so many sweet nothings that they matter to someone. What is something like that
worth? To be special? Evidently a lot. And perhaps onliness resonates all the
more to numbered, prefab drones slaving in the ninth circle. To paraphrase
Lieutenant Joshi: we’re all just looking for something real. Even when it’s
not. 
, and Star Wars base
themselves on picked heroes rising to lead a movement of struggle and
liberation. But Blade Runner 2049
veers away from that tract after teasing us in that direction. As the story
progresses and disabuses K, he bails on the call of revolution to assassinate
Deckard and selflessly reunites him with his daughter instead. This powerful
tonal shift emphasizes what truly matters in this dreary world. True power is
not with the mighty, but the ordinary ones. In the Bible itself, all greatness
buds forth from faint tremors. It rises from the struggles of small families,
and empires spill out of unseen courage of all the forgotten little people long
passed. Just as well, all the grandfatherly hang-ups leapfrog the generations
to tinge the dynamics of the future race. To wit, the Torah recounts a despot
in Sumer building a tower “to make a name for themselves” and then casually
dashes their little pillowfort. From thence, the text segues into the life of a
childless nomad just leaving that region and promises to confer him a name that
would endure forever: Abraham. Names aren’t found in towers; they’re found in
faithfulness. His penniless grandson fleeing Canaan happens on a fleeting angel
he can never quite have, and so he wrestles with G-d and Man and sets in motion
the domestic squabbles that would establish the tribes of Israel and all their
deep recriminations to boot. K’s metamorphosis is complete as his mission
fluctuates from epic to personal. If replicants merit a future, this is the
way. Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth.
