A Scanner Darkly
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory CochraneWritten and Directed By: Richard LinklaterBased on the novel by: Philip K. DickRated RWarner Independent Pictures
In the hyper-permeable late 1960s, a prominent mass of human neurology in Southern California was awash in both innocuous and dangerous transcendental chemicals. Some people died. Some didn�t. Literary visionary Philip K. Dick was one of those who survived, plagued with memories of friends lost to dangerous junk. In the 1970s, those memories pushed him to write one of his most acclaimed novels. He worked on A Scanner Darkly in the hazy fugue of marathon stints, writing into the early morning until he passed out at the typewriter from sheer exhaustion only to wake up two hours later and resume where he�d left off. Some thirty years later, filmmaker Richard Linklater has pieced together a deliciously dark film adaptation of the novel. It is moved by the same deeply insightful madness, genius, stupidity and paranoia that made the novel so captivating.
Keanu Reeves stars as Bob Arctor: an undercover narcotics officer whose job it is to spy on his friends in the interest of finding the ultimate source of the highly addictive �Substance D.� His friends include the highly excitable Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson), the sketchy but brilliant Jim Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), the paranoid �D� addict Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane) and his girlfriend/supplier Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder).. In the interest of maintaining his cover, Arctor�s identity is kept from the organization for which he works. When an informant comes to the organization pointing a finger at Arctor as a possible criminal, Arctor is asked to spy on himself � a prospect that poses some problems with his burgeoning �D� habit, a side-effect of which is the dissociative splitting of an individual�s identity.
Transcending their individual identities as big name actors, the cast works surprisingly well in ensemble. Keanu Reeves� usual vapidity reads here as mystery in one of the most subtly varied and textured performances of his career. The rest of the cast plays to its strengths, but perhaps the single most accomplished performance here is Robert Downey Jr. as Barris. With subtle paranoia and dementia gradually growing from his verbose junk-intellectual-speak, Downey Jr. is fascinating. You never seem to know whether he�s crazy, paranoid and detached or malicious, scheming and manipulative. It�s the perfect way to play Barris.
The fact that much of this film consists of idle dialogue that doesn�t seem to have any direct connection to the plot makes it pretty inaccessible to much of the movie-going public. The digital rotoscoping of the film, which makes it feel like a cell animated cartoon, doesn�t help matters. People expect their animated films to have the quality of fantasy with fantastic dream-like visuals. Lacking these elements as a central focus, A Scanner Darkly may be the first high-profile American animated drama. Here, the animation augments and mutates performances of the actors to give the overall film a subtly trippy aura. Considering all the actors worked for a fraction of what they normal make, much of the $8.5 million or more that was spent on this film was spent on the rotoscoping process. The effect is beautiful, but it seems crazy to spend that much money on an indie drama that is, by its very nature, a cult film that isn�t going to appeal to a whole lot of people or make a whole lot of money in the long run. In this respect, everyone involved in the production seems as driven to tell this story as its original author was when he collapsed at the typewriter during those marathon sessions in the �70s.
Philip K. Dick�s writing is so profoundly strange and moving that his work inspires the kind of fierce loyalty that gets a financial disaster of an otherwise brilliant film made. It�s a real pleasure for fans of the author to see a film adaptation of his work done by someone who seems just as obsessed with it as they are. One of the best throwaway scenes in the film (which is arguably one of the best throwaway scenes in the novel) features Charles Freck�s surreal comic suicide. It�s brilliantly executed here. When Freck goes down to the liquor store to buy the bottle of 1971 Mondavi Cabernet Suavignon that he intends on dying with, the camera briefly passes over a poster for a wine called �St. Ubik.� This clever reference to an earlier Philip K. Dick novel is a subliminally brief way of Linklater telling fans of the author, �See, I�m one of you. I get it.� VS
Russ Bickerstaff is a local poet and writer. His poems can be heard regularly at Linneman's Monday Poetry Night.
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