The Picador Book Room

*The following is the first in a series of posts highlighting one of the twentieth-century’s finest and most controversial film critics, Pauline Kael, and features selected criticism from her collection 5001 Nights at the Movies.*

Pauline Kael on Blade Runner (1982) 

“Ridley Scott’s futuristic thriller is set in a hellish, claustrophobic city, dark and polluted, and with a continual drenching rainfall—it’s Los Angeles in the year 2019…

But you’re always aware of the sets as sets—it’s 2019 backlot. And the movie forces passivity on you. It puts you in this lopsided maze of a city, with its post-human feeling, and keeps you persuaded that something bad is about to happen…The whole movie gives you the feeling of not getting anywhere—of being part of the atmosphere of decay.”

(Gif Source: http://iwdrm.tumblr.com/)