A Scanner Darkly
Directed by Richard Linklater
Reviewed by Marigold Edwards
Sci-fi films and futuristic cartoons are generally not my cup of tea but I was pleasantly surprised by this haunting animated feature about a narcotics officer who battles addiction and mental illness as he evolves into the persona of his undercover alter-ego. The place is Anaheim, California and the time is the not-too-distant future. A world where cars and homes still look familiar, but electronic surveillance gadgetry has become more intrusive, and “America's most wanted” is a narcotic known as “substance D,” which is produced from innocent blue flowers.
November 2006 - The Lamp
The stellar cast could also be called “Hollywood's most wanted” but not necessarily for the right reasons. It is led by Keanu Reeves, whose portrayal of a man deteriorating deeper into madness with each capsule of Substance D consumed, slowly draws us into his character's increasingly confused mind. Winona Ryder is disturbingly appealing as the cokehead girlfriend who's too messed up to put out in the bedroom, and Rory Cochrane is delightfully irritating as the pretentious yet clueless, secret agent wannabe “friend”. The cast also includes real-life marijuana activist Woody Harrelson, but it's Robert Downey Jr. in a smaller role as a lost soul, scratching frantically at imaginary creepy crawlies in the opening scene, who is perhaps the most convincing and pathetic.
The film is written and directed by Richard Linklater but it's adapted from a 1977 novel of the same name that could almost be mistaken for a self-portrait of its author, Philip Kindred Dick. Dick also dabbled in drugs and battled mental illness of a sort. He experienced some type of vision in 1974 which could be described as either a drug-induced/schizophrenic hallucination, or a spiritual revelation, depending upon your belief system. Regardless, it colored his writing, making him yet another one of those creative geniuses bordering on mental illness, who never see the financial rewards that their work merits. Stories and novels by Dick are also the basis for such films as Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report, all produced after his death in 1982.
The style of animation used is still something of a novelty – Rotoscope animation is a cross between live action and some aspects of old-fashioned cell animation - a process said to require 500 hours of work for each minute onscreen. The technique is called interpolated rotoscoping and is exclusive to Flat Black Films. Some objects and scenes are notably realistic, particularly the cars, while others, such as the scramble suit – an eye-challenging, body encasing piece of apparel that continuously alters the appearance of the individual wearing it – appear totally animated. It doesn't take long to become entranced by the pseudo reality of the art form, which lends itself perfectly to plot and theme.
Despite the gloomy nature of the subject matter, there are many lighter moments in the movie as well, and the audience is kept guessing as to what's really going on as it is plunged ever deeper into the paranoid psyche of the protagonist. While it is tempting to write the characters off as a bunch of losers as we watch them pop pills and battle their demons, they are in fact victims of a private war with drugs who, for the most part, are on the losing side. It's noteworthy that the end credits include a dedication to drug abuse victims taken from a list of names published in the “author's note” in Dick's novel, and the casting itself is a tribute to the human face that Linklater gives drug addiction. But the film has yet a broader message – it is also an indictment of a system that willingly destroys a man in the slim hope of achieving a victory in a bigger battle - the war on drugs. In the process, it only causes the problem to grow.
"I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an integration & presentation, analysis & response & personal history."
Philip Kindred Dick
Links:
philipkdick.com/index.html
flatblackfilms.com/Rotoshop.html