A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly

Richard Linklater's (Dazed and Confused, Fast Food Nation, The School of Rock) take on Philip K. Dick's novel of drugs, identity, and the tolls they can take is novelly rendered in interpolated rotoscope animation. The scenes were shot digitally and then run through the computer animation ringer to look kinda like a matte painting.

The animation style was fairly unique when it was done. It can turn some people off, however. The constant jittery shifting of the colors, coupled with the scrambler suits that the undercover cops "Fred" and "Hank" wear through most of the film, are fairly seizure inducing. If you let your eyes relax and take in the entire scene instead of the details, you brain will thank you.

The story follows narc Fred whose undercover persona Bob Arctor reels and deals in LA's increasingly subversive drug scene, dominated by the uber-pill Substance D. Substance D can seriously fuck you up. It agressively decimates the dominant half of your brain, forcing the other half to compensate, resulting in crises of identity, language, and pattern recognition. Like all drugs, there must be an upside, though you'd be hard-pressed to find it in this movie. Unless rampant paranoia, hallucinations, and mania are considered that much of an upside. Fred eventually finds himself trapped in one of these webs of paranoia, and he becomes confused about a great many things, including who he really is, and if he's playing or being played.

Keanu Reeves, as usual, is merely a place-filler of an actor, although he does a convincing job of looking burnt-out fucked-up stoned. The real one to watch here, though, is Robert Downey Jr. as Arctor's fast-talking, plan-hatching, double-crossing, manic buddy James. Equal parts Walter from The Big Lebowski and, well, RDJ himself, James's crazy ideas and rambling soliloquys flit by faster than you can grasp their meaning.

Mostly playing it cool as a stoner buddy comedy, Scanner makes an abrubt dive for the deep with the reveal of Fred's true mission, and what he sacrificed to pull it off. It is only with a scrolling message from Philip K. Dick himself (over 25 years gone!) as the credits roll that you really understand what this movie was meant to be about but just wasn't quite.

PKD spent his life in pursuit of the perfect drug, one that would give the user all the benefits and none of the detriments. Why should we be physically, mentally, psychologically, and legally punished for wanting to get high and feel good? To PKD, this did not make any sense, and he felt if legal restrictions on drugs were loosened, that a true scientific pursuit of happiness through substance might flourish, and eventually produce the fabled perfect drug. In the meantime, drugs also brought with them the attendent misery, damage, and death.

The Reverend says: 7/10.