One of the most famous monologues in film history has joined the intimacy of silence. Six days ago, Rutger Hauer, the backlit profile of science fiction, the voice of a future as dark as night, passed away. It was hard to be much else after having been Roy Batty, facing off against Harrison Ford's Deckard on the edge of corrupted humanity.

Hauer was the soul and male face of Paul Verhoeven's Dutch films (Turkish Delight - 1973, Katie Tippel - 1974, Soldier of Orange - 1979, Spetters - 1980, Flesh and Blood - 1985), and also partnered with Sam Peckinpah (The Osterman Weekend, 1983), Ermanno Olmi (The Legend of the Holy Drinker - 1989 and The Cardboard Village, 2011), George Clooney (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, 2002),  Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller (Sin City, 2005), Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, 2005),  Luc Besson (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, 2017) and Jacques Audiard (The Sisters Brothers, 2018).

As cold as the lighting in Blade Runner, Hauer's eyes had the forcefulness of truth, like the simple ones he told a soaking wet PardoLive at a bar table in Locarno. It was 2014, he was the jury president for Pardi di domani and didn't want to do yet another interview Why not do it on a Harley? After all, he had already told us that rain was the ideal backdrop for his stories and truth back in 1982. That's when, in a fictional 2019, in a scene that gets more real than reality itself, he said "Time to die". And painful though it may be, he was right.