Reflections on Death (with the legendary Rutger Hauer)

Dutch actor Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, in the 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner.

About 20 years ago, Thee Optimist had the good fortune of working with the actor Rutger Hauer on Rutger's memoir, All Those Moments.

The book took about two years to write, and during that time, Thee Optimist came to know Rutger pretty well.  

It probably goes without saying that Rutger was a talented actor.  In addition, he was a kind and generous man, who also had what those in the West might call a morbid fascination with death, and with tragedy.

Thee Optimist knows many dead people, and it occurred to him recently that people often wait their entire lives to consider the inevitability of death, and what it means.

Thee Optimist has known people who have faced their own impending death in a low-grade sort of terror, as though the walls were closing in.  

In certain other cultures, of course, death is experienced as an expansion, or a potential liberation.  

All of this got me thinking about a couple of reflections on death, and mortality in general, that appeared in Rutger's films.

The first is very well-known, so well-known in fact that it has become a cultural touchstone, and has its own Wikipedia page.  It is the "Tears in Rain" monologue from the end of the movie "Blade Runner."  

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The background is that the living robot, or replicant, Roy Batty (played by Rutger) has returned to Earth from outer space in an attempt to gain more life from his creator, the inventor Tyrell.  

Replicants have only a four-year, preprogrammed life span.  Roy and his replicant companions go on a spree of murderous violence, and are hunted by the dissolute, probably alcoholic Blade Runner named Deckard (played by Harrison Ford).

At the end, Deckard has killed all of Roy's friends, and Roy is about to kill Deckard, when he realizes his four years are up.  Roy takes pity on Deckard and doesn't kill him, demonstrating a level of compassion that the human Deckard does not have.

Enjoy:

The Room

In 2001, Rutger co-directed and starred in a short film called "The Room."  Rutger was very proud of it.

The Room won best short film at the Paris Film Festival the year it came out.  It is a quiet, haunting movie, and another reflection on life and death from Rutger, as he was growing older.

In this movie, an older man, with an undisclosed illness, rents an apartment in Amsterdam that he recalls being obsessed with as a young man. 

You might have to watch this on the Youtube website.

Enjoy:

Words of Wisdom

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.  Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.  All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.  Time to die."

- Roy Batty