Why are you making it complicated?
K’s meeting with Deckard is the challenging centerpiece of the film. The initial interaction is telling in that Deckard immediately cuts through K’s attempts at deception:
Rick Deckard: “What are you doing here?
K: “I heard the piano.”
Rick Deckard: “Don’t lie. It’s rude.”
This Connects to BR82 when Deckard used trickery and cunning on Zhora. Part of the job in hunting down fake humans is to fake one’s own background, however we can see here that K has met his match.
This is reflected in the next terse exchange:
K: “I just have some questions.”
Rick Deckard: “What questions?”
They aren’t just questions. To K they are, but to the man on the receiving end, these questions have real consequences. Deckard knows the ropes of this game meaning K has met his match. With their wits at a stalemate, the result is violence.
During their fight, we see K’s effectiveness as a Bladerunner: absorbing punishment like a human tank. However, this goes beyond his job and becomes a representation of his existence. He literally puts himself through a beating in order to get to the truth.
Once they’ve exhausted the physical battle, they agree to speak, though there’s still conflict between them. Namely, a clash of perceptions:
Rick Deckard: “I had your job, I was good at it.”
K: “It was simpler then.”
Rick Deckard: “Why are you making it complicated?”
K: “Why don’t you just answer the question?”
It’s here that we see the toll that the events of BR82 took on Deckard:
K: “I didn’t figure you as one for bullshit. What’s her name?”
After being so reluctant to say it, he says it twice – the first time for himself, and the second time for her. In doing so, it opens up old wounds, brings back painful memories, and reignites feelings long repressed.
The ensuing conversation reveals not only Deckard’s reasoning but the delicate strand that encompasses the theme at the very core of the movie. The height of human achievement: dying, or a part of him dying, for someone else to live.
Rick Deckard: “…we were being hunted. I didn’t want our child found. Taken apart. Dissected.”
As a parent, this would be too horrific to contemplate. The ultimate sacrifice had to be made, and is summed up by Deckard in a line so tightly expressed, that it contains a universe of meaning:
Rick Deckard: “Sometimes to love someone, you gotta be a stranger.”
This connects not only to Deckard’s child, but the children of humanity – Replicants. Within this phrase is the problem that blights humanity – an inability to let go.
What we see in this world are the consequences of the parents not letting go, of humanity holding onto Replicants long after they should have become strangers.