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British filmmaker Ridley Scott is one of my favourite Hollywood directors and has grown on me over the years with his vast body of work that has covered decades. Known as the Father of the Director’s Cut, he excels in picture-postcard frames, which bring out atmospheric detail because of his crammed visual style that has influenced many other directors. It also makes him the master of memorable imagery of urban environments whether it is 12th century Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven or contemporary Osaka in Black Rain or Mogadishu in Black Hawk Down or even futuristic cityscapes in Blade Runner. And speaking of atmosphere, one can almost smell the air in the frame. I still remember that glorious shot of a little girl bouncing a tennis ball on the cobbled streets of Belfast in Ryan’s Daughter, which incidentally is not one of David Lean’s major films. It also had John Mills as the village idiot, one of the best cameos on celluloid. That’s what only genius can achieve. But let’s briefly run through Scott’s films with particular reference to atmosphere. Among his first is Alien (1979), which is the first of many space horror movie sequels (at least four of them) scripted by Dan O’Bannon, who delved into many science manuals to create the alien. This alien has been described as a highly aggressive extraterrestrial that stalks and kills the crew of a spaceship on one of its missions. Piloted by Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), it has a six-member crew of whom warrant officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has a key role to play. But it is the manner in which the alien is introduced that is the highlight as it breaks through the chest of one of the crew members and then escapes into the interior of the huge spacecraft. The creature also emits a deadly acid-like substance that leaves the victim unconscious. Being one of the early space films, its ambience is very important and that’s where Scott’s expertise comes into play. Still on his space trip Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) is a real masterpiece. Set in dystopian Los Angeles of November 2017, it is all about engineered organic robots called replicants. Their use has been banned on earth. But some of them have infiltrated and Blade Runners are special police appointed to run them down. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is the head of the Blade Runners and Ray Batty (Rutger Hauer) the main replicant. The space sequences are brilliantly conceptualised and events lead to a memorable climax where the robot displays its "humanity". Harrison Ford is good but Rutger Hauer steals the show and was in much demand after this movie. The climax is stunning but the ambience, too, is very authentic. Black Rain (1989) is about Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, and how two New York police officers get there in the line of duty. Nick Conkin (Michael Douglas) is already under a cloud with investigation by the internal affairs for money laundering. Charlie Vincent (Andy Garcia) is his partner and they fly to Osaska to accompany Yakuza man Sato (Yasaki Matsuda) cannot be tried in the United States. They scarcely reach Osaka when Sato escapes and the rest of the film entails tracking, which results in the loss of Vincent and a close look at the Japanese mafia, which is printing fake US dollars as revenge for the "black rain", the term they use for the dropping of the atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Here once gain one sees Scott at his best for capturing minute details but he also keeps the action flowing up to the dramatic climax. Jan de Bont is the cinematographer and I still remember a shot from the window of the plane with a river running deep down below. Breathtaking. But Scott has always made use of excellent cameramen to capture the essence of the place. Thelma and Louise is a delightful road film with women camaraderie to the fore. Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) has a domineering husband while Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) is single. But what they thought would be a joyride turns into an unlikely adventure. First, they stop to give a lift to JD (Brad Pitt) but in good time find, he has walked away with their money. Worse is to follow when they even hold up banks. They reach a point of no return. Geena Davis comes off best while Susan Sarandon is somewhat typecast. Gladiator (2000) is back to those distant Roman times graphically recreated with Russell Crowe in the lead role and Joaquin Phoenix as his adversary. It won five Oscars and a year later, he made Black Hawk Down (2001), a topical subject and the US Delta Force’s operations in Somalia after the peacekeepers had been withdrawn. It also showed Ridley Scott’s versatility and his immense body of work.
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