A Scanner Darkly is set in suburban Orange County, California in a
future where America has lost the war on drugs. When one reluctant undercover
cop is ordered to start spying on his friends, he is launched on a paranoid
journey into the absurd, where identities and loyalties are impossible to
decode. It is a cautionary tale of drug use based on the novel by Philip K. Dick
and his own experiences.
Like a graphic novel come to life, A Scanner Darkly will use live
action photography overlaid with an advanced animation process (interpolated
rotoscoping) to create a haunting, highly stylized vision of the future. The
technology, first employed in Richard Linklater's 2001 film Waking Life,
has evolved to produce even more emotional impact and detail.
A Scanner Darkly
Review: Linklater takes audiences on a mind-melting trip through the
world of Philip K. Dick.
For the small group that witnessed Richard Linklater's first foray into a new
animation process called interpolated rotoscoping in 2001's Waking Life,
the application of the technique to the world of Philip K. Dick probably seems
like a natural. For the uninitiated, the process essentially involves shooting
the film with live actors and then animating over the film stock frame by frame.
Besides a truly inventive and different visual look, the process gives lower
budget films the ability to add limitless visual effects. Anything is possible,
as long as animators can draw it.
Waking Life producer Tommy Pallotta and Linklater shared a mutual
affection for the works of Phillip K. Dick, and in particular A Scanner
Darkly. When the concept of adapting A Scanner Darkly was discussed,
the film was a natural fit for the team, and its bizarre, often dreamlike
elements of a near future seemed like a natural fit for a return to the
rotoscoping process.
Keanu Reeves is Bob Arctor, an undercover cop hired to infiltrate his own group
of friends as part of a war on drugs on par with the war on terror. Arctor wears
a new type of suit to protect his identity, a constantly changing image that
cycles through thousands of identities. Arctor's friends in suspicion include
Jim Barris (Robert Downey, Jr.), Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson), Donna
Hawthorne (Winona Ryder) and Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane). Since Arctor's own
identity is essentially unknown, he is eventually asked to initiate surveillance
on himself, leading to a trippy journey of paranoia and endless surprises
sidestepping the lines between reality and the imagined.
Wrapping your mind around the full scope of A Scanner Darkly can take a
bit of time and thought. This is a film that constantly twists and turns,
tip-tapping between the paranoia of character's minds and what is actually
happening with such a smooth flow, audiences may find themselves lost quickly.
The visuals are so spectacular as to also occasionally lull one away from the
storyline, which may result in a kind of "look at the pretty pictures"
reaction in the long run. This is a complicated film with many layers that will
probably benefit from subsequent viewings, as did the excellent Waking Life.
Interpolated rotoscoping is a daring breakthrough in cinema and a refreshing
change. It offers filmmakers with smaller budgets the chance to tackle
complicated material such as this that would have been budgeted in the $100
million range in traditional live action. Like viewing a piece of moving art, it
can also be distracting. Arctor's person-changing suit is a visual marvel, often
so impressive as to distract from important dialogue. It's so new as to almost
be comparable to what it must have been like to view Snow White for the
first time in theaters. The animation team for Scanner have provided a
landmark in animation that should excel the process through future application
and experimentation.
Keanu Reeves has received a bad rap over the years, some maybe unfair and some
deserved. Still, Reeves has continued plugging away and doing what he does best,
winning critics and audiences over as a true actor little-by-little. He
continues to improve, broadening his horizons and showcasing his darker side in The
Gift and Constantine. Scanner is another strong performance, a
feat worthy of respect considering how much of the final result needed to be
imagined on set before animators worked to craft what is ultimately seen on
screen.
The supporting cast is well chosen and universally strong. Downey Jr. and
Harrelson make an amusing team, often trailing off into dialogues that stray
from the story or away from reality. It's hard to know what to follow and what
to ignore. Ryder delivers some of her best work in years. Her character is more
complicated than it may seem at first, but she manages that mystery quite well.
Rory Cochrane (who Linklater fans best remember as Slater in Dazed and
Confused) is very good as the endlessly paranoid and potentially insane
Freck.
Richard Linklater's inventiveness as a director and depth of output continues
to excel on past nearly all of his peers. An often underrated director, ever
since breaking through with Dazed and Confused Linklater has effortlessly
bounced between inventive independent work like Tape, Before Sunrise,
Before Sunset (as well as the aforementioned Waking Life) and
crowed-pleasing studio films such as School of Rock and Bad News Bears.
Fast Food Nation also releases this year, and is already receiving strong
buzz. Scanner is another accomplishment for Linklater, although the often
meandering storyline mixed with beautiful visuals may confound viewers more than
entertain them.
A Scanner Darkly is not for everyone. It is a thinking-man's cinema, and
even some thinkers may feel the film doesn't live up to the sprawling work of
Philip K. Dick. The extreme paranoia of Dick's writing is certainly achieved, at
the very least. There may be some tendency to rest too much on the lush visuals,
though it's hard to say whether this is merely an unfortunate aside for such a
groundbreaking process. As mentioned above, perhaps subsequent viewings will
allow viewers to move beyond the visuals and focus more on the story; it's hard
to say. Scanner Darkly is highly original, imperfect cinema worth a look
for the open-minded.
Movie Review: A Scanner Darkly - Style Over Substance D
Written by Webomatica Published April 08, 2007found at blogcritics.org
What's good about A Scanner Darkly: love for the Philip K. Dick source
material, some surprisingly appropriate acting from Robert Downey Jr, Woody
Harrelson, Winona Ryder, and even Keanu Reeves, and certain key moments where
the animation evokes the confusion and unreal moments of drugs.
But I see a failing that is sometimes attributable to recreational narcotics: an
unfortunate tendency for the imaginer to apply too much profundity to their
personal hallucinations. More simply put, an enlarged sense of self worth = ego.
You don't even have to take drugs to notice this. Ever try to explain a
particularly meaningful or vivid dream to someone, only to have them respond
with complete disinterest? Or had someone recite a mind-bending dream of theirs,
to which you feign interest because frankly, it's completely moronic? This isn't
because your dreams are more interesting, it's simply because the only person
who thinks said dreams are so awesome is the dreamer. Maybe flights of fancy in
the mind are often only intensely relevant to those intimately familiar with the
source material.
Now you might understand my first issue with A Scanner Darkly. Due to
drugs, you have folks that only exist in their own paranoid personal worlds,
completely cut off from society, with much more screen time dedicated to their
thoughts than is warranted. A car breaks down. Oh my gosh, it's a conspiracy.
Someone sold me a bike with fewer gears than I originally thought. Oh my gosh, I
was so intentionally ripped off.
What's ironic is there actually is a conspiracy going on. But the people
involved are too mentally impaired to figure it out. Yet none of the
conspirators would be so obsessed with these stoners if it weren't for the
drugs.
The second negative is how the animation technique is sometimes strangely
limiting. It's rarely used to visualize the trippy hallucinations of bugs and
aliens. It unfortunately disguises the movie's ability to comment on real life.
There's a powerful core of ideas here - a society infiltrated by surveillance, a
war that has blurred the line between friend and foe (to the point where people
spy on themselves), and how the source of Substance D is the power fighting it.
But much of this timely social commentary I nearly missed as I was distracted by
the animation.
The animation style has its moments, as with the "scramble suit," used
to disguise the identity of the wearer by projecting multiple appearances
simultaneously. But since all the characters already look disguised due to the
animation technique, it seems the contrast between the scramble suit and the
"real" people isn't large enough.
I'd like to see A Scanner Darkly "unanimated." All in live
action film, with CGI effects for the scramble suit, and the animated technique
reserved to show life through the eyes of someone on Substance D.
The decision to use animation exclusively surely stemmed from Linklater's use in
his previous film, Waking Life, to much better effect I must add. But I
don't think its constant use in A Scanner Darkly serves this particular
story. To put it bluntly, I don't think this animation technique is as profound
as it first seems, leading to an instance of style over substance... D.
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