The movie Blade Runner seems to be one of those polarizing flicks that either works for you or it doesn’t. Despite its wide reputation as a classic that rose from the ashes of its initial failure at the box office, I know a number of people who just don’t understand the fuss that gets made over this one. And you know, that’s perfectly valid. I feel the same way about Pulp Fiction myself. It’s immensely popular, critically acclaimed, massively influential… and it does absolutely nothing for me. In fact, it actively repelled me the one and only time I actually watched it. So, yeah, Blade Runner critics, I hear you. But I don’t agree with you.

Personally, I find Blade Runner endlessly fascinating, especially its incredibly dense production design. The first time I saw the movie when I was about 13 or thereabouts, I didn’t understand a lick about its themes of weary existentialism (“tears in the rain”) or its defiant romanticism (“it’s too bad she won’t live… but then again, who does?”), but its depiction of a 21st century Los Angeles mesmerized me. Even now, when I watch it, I sometimes find myself slipping into a kind of reverie, not paying attention to what’s happening on-screen so much as where it’s happening. There are so many details in every shot, everything from brand logos to buzzing neon signs to weirdly menacing technology to plain old dirt and grime to that insane, dazzling blimp floating through shots as it shills for the Off-World Colonies. All this stuff builds on itself, layer after layer, to finally accrete into — in my opinion — one of the most realistic futuristic environments ever presented on screen.

One little detail I particularly love is the lumbering juggernaut of an automobile you can see in one of the street scenes, an early-Sixties something I’ve never quite been able to identify — you get a pretty good look at it in this clip, at about the 0:32 mark — mingling with all the bubble-topped Spinners and boxy utilitarian transports of the imaginary year 2019. Growing up around old cars and the people who love them, I understand and believe in the idea that some folks will never let go and will find a way to keep their beloved old beasts on the road as long as possible.

I found myself thinking of that scene this morning as I drove to the train station. I got stuck, as I so often do, in the middle of a morning convoy, a two-lane-wide “Mormon blockade,” as we call them around here (because they so often consist of mothers taking their multiple children to school). But today, right there alongside all those boxy, utilitarian SUVs and aerodynamic, bubble-topped sedans and hybrids, was an Edsel station wagon from the late 1950s.

Our real-world 2015 doesn’t much resemble the dystopian 2019 of Blade Runner — at least, not yet — but that doesn’t mean that life doesn’t imitate art! At least closely enough to make a fortysomething nerd smile and write a blog entry about it…