Why Tears in Rain is Cinemas Greatest Monologue

Why I think Tears in Rain is the best monologue in movie history.

[averylawton]

The fact the Rutger wrote it himself late one night before shooting it, is incredible.

[_Skim_Beeble]

Rutger Hauer was a highly underrated and under utilized actor, the fact he personally came up with the "tears in the rain" monologue speaks volumes of his skill as an actor. His death was an extremely sad loss.

[ValensBellator]

Roy saved him to have an audience, to be *seen* himself, and to avoid dying alone. It’s incredibly human.

[Mors_Umber]

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears... in rain."

Beautiful.

[jbazinga]

Every time I watch this movie, this ending reminds me of how fleeting and fragile life truly is for us humans. As I grow older (I'm 58 now), I realize that everything that I am: my memories, my experiences, my emotions...are all unique to me, and only me. No one else can ever live them or understand them; even if I were somehow able to upload them to a computer for future playback, no one else could possibly understand why I am who I am today. Treasure the life that you have - truly live it - and don't try to record it on a stupid phone because without context, or an explanation, no one else will understand your collection of clips that you thought were important enough to save.

[vaskylark]

This! This is what I've been saying for thirty years! It's my fave scene in movies too. Very poignant and meaningful. RIP Rutger Hauer.

[RafitoOoO]

I always loved that he was created to be a soldier, a killer, and as a last moment of defiance he chose to spare a life instead of taking it. He also in some way will live on in Deckard's memory. Such an amazing movie.

[macdavy]

I love that in his last moment Roy became what he always desired, the moment he choose compassion he became human and in that act his profound action he achieved a little immortality and lived on in Deckard.

[christopherpardell]

It starts earlier. As deckard is hanging on, his grip slowly slipping. Roy looks at him and sees the fear on his face. And he says with apparent detachment, “a terrible thing, to live in fear, isn’t it? “. It looks to the first time viewer like Roy is relishing Deckard’s distress and imminent fall. But this is the moment that Roy realizes that everyone who lives, lives in fear of death. This is the moment Roy sees Deckard with empathy, and chooses to save him, because he Can, just as he chose to kill his creator, because his creator couldn’t. All Roy wanted was for someone to do for him what he had the power to do for Deckard in his last moments. Give him just a little more time to live.
I have always preferred the theatrical version of this movie, because it did not make Deckard a replicant. Roy’s message is far more meaningful if he is saying it to a human. To us. The central question of what makes humanity human evaporates when the the dialog is between two androids. Roy’s journey needs to be witnessed by those who consider themselves human, to enlighten them that humanity may entail more than they imagine. And I prefer the original ending, where deckard runs off with Sean Young, despite the knowledge that she’s a replicant, because he now sees her as just as human as anyone. Making him a replicant turned a story about redemption from prejudice into a runaway slave story.

[mirG]

I was 14 years old on June 26th 1982 when I got dropped off at the theatre with some friends to see this movie. When it ended I felt like a different person. It has been my favorite movie and this speech has been my fave moment in entertainment ever since. Then we went and watched the Thing 1982. It was a good movie day.

[DiscordantVice]

One of the greatest films ever made. And the fact that the sequel didn’t suck and was also a great film is very pleasing!

[liamhemmings]

I watched this with my son a few days ago. I wept like a baby. I first watched it with my late father, he got upset watching it. It's not dying, we fear, it's being lost forever, becoming without memory to anything. Just like I will and those who I followed and who will follow me. My late father is gone, as I will be one day. From ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We have all been a lot longer dead than we have been alive. We all go the same way. Somewhat incredible, somewhat tragic.

[rottensquid]

Seeing this first at age 11, it went right over my head. But it came on TV one evening. This is back in '85, the early days of basic cable, and I wasn't much of a talk shows kid, so I left it on. My dad came into the room, and asked what it was. "Kind of a long, slow sci-fi film. There's nothing else on." He sat and watched it with me. By the end, we just turned to one another, utterly dumbfounded.

I think it was the first film I really bonded with my dad over. We would go see it every time it came to repertory theaters. There's nothing in this world like Blade Runner on the big screen.

These days, the slow pace feels like such a treat. I love films that transport me to fictional worlds, but Blade Runner feels like a proper visit. You can really settle into its world. While most of these modern films, with their frantic pace, seem more like a layover at best.

Someone on a Youtube channel I can no longer find said something really profound about this speech. He pointed out that the speech eluded to the lore of the greater Blade Runner world, wars being fought by replicants in space in the service of, in all likelihood, rival corporations. And yet, he found that, unlike Star Wars or Star Trek or Alien, and dozens of other fan-favorite sci-fi and fantasy worlds, Blade Runner's lore is particularly sparse. What the hell is a C-beam? What even is Tannhauser Gate? This speech is the first we've heard of it. But we can infer that thousands and thousands of replicants died in space, fighting wars that no one knows about, as slaves. Died, and were forgotten, like Roy.

So this is a film about erasure, about what it is to have one's humanness denied, one's history scrubbed from memory. Roy chooses to spare Deckard because he wants a witness; someone, anyone, even an enemy. He could have killed Deckard, and then died alone, with no one to see that he was more than just a malfunctioning machine. It occurs to me that, until Roy saved Deckard's life, he maybe didn't even know he was going to do that. It was a very human impulse.

All over the world, I see people denying one another's humanity, dismissing people of other religions, races, skin colors, sexual or gender identities, even taste in movies (looking at you, Snyder-cut people, and people who crap on Snyder stans too). And not just dismissing their choices or their cultures or whatever. It seems like such a short leap to denying people's humanity, as though one difference, one disagreement, disqualifies them from the human race. I don't think Blade Runner was ever about A.I.. It's about us, about how eager we are to deny people's humanity, so we can feel guiltless in exploiting them, or just ignoring their suffering. It's about how easily we assume that the oppressed people are the problem, and not the victim of the problem. And how hard it is to turn the situation around and see it from the point of the view of the person being vilified.

Blade Runner's greatest accomplishment as a story is how well it does that, how it uses our tendency to assume that antagonists are always in the wrong, and that the protagonist's "win" is their defeat. Blade Runner smashes us against that assumption, showing us how our assumptions make us complicit. It happens right here, in this simple, heartbreakingly beautiful speech.

That, to me, is why this is the greatest monologue in film history. It's a reminder that there are no enemies, no replicants, no "them." There's only us humans, and the cruelty we commit against one another.

[pw]

I met Rutger shortly after this film and he was such a kind guy.

[oglieotr]

This one scene has stayed in my head my entire life.

[boris]

Such a profound monologue! Roy's message resonates deeply with us all. RIP Rutger Hauer. 🙌

[JoyCliffe]

This monologue is sublime, made even more so by Vangelis's poignant score.

[FokkerAce]

The way Roy knowingly yet apprehensively looks at Deckard when he says “like tears, in rain” is an admittance to Deckard that he is crying, but Deckard cannot see the tears. They are lost in the rain.

Roy has realized his own existence
enough, gained is own humanity enough, to not jut be angry but to be sorrowful that it is ending.

[raykaelin]

The more time passes, the greater this film becomes - a true gem, a real work of artistry and illumination - and it touches the heart in a deeply sublime way that lasts for years

[CityPrepping]

My favorite scene in a movie. I reference it often. Thanks for highlighting it!