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Directed By
Richard Linklater
Written By:
Richard Linklater
Cast:
Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Alex Jones, Rory Cochran, Mitch Baker, Sean Allen, Cliff Haby, Steven Chester Prince, Natasha Valdez, Mark Turner, Chamblee Ferguson, Angela Rawna, Eliza Stevens, Sarah Menchaca
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A Scanner Darkly (2006)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
July 28th, 2007
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'A Scanner Darkly' is the second film from Richard Linklater to make use of rotoscoping animation, which involves shooting everything in live action, and then applying the animation afterwards, obviously a laborious task, but it creates a surreal effect that could not be duplicated any other way, and is perfectly suited for this bizarre and often confusing, convoluted story of drug addiction, adapted from the impeccable writing of Philip K. Dick. Keanu Reeves is Fred, a narcotics agent working undercover, a job made very easy by a Scramble Suit, a wonderful piece of visual ecstasy, which grants him seemingly countless identities, from all ages and races. Fred is also Bob Arctor, who lives with his two friends, James Barris (Downey) and Ernie Luckman (Harrelson), who are always high. He is spying on them, as Fred, and recording their activities, but is always unaware about his dual personalities. Bob has a girlfriend, Donna (Ryder), a hopeless addict who shuns all physical and sexual contact.
Bob, like many others, is abusing Substance D, a powerful hallucinogen that can cause severe brain damage. This is the very drug he wants to get off the streets. It is certainly quite talky, with a lot of mundane conversation, about the mechanical intricacies of bicycles and car engines, pointless banter one may expect from stoners and dopeheads, but it takes its toll on an audience enticed by an arresting visual style and some truly stunning feats of imagination, however demented they may be. Take, for instance, Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), the first character we meet, so frazzled by Substance D that he sees little green bugs crawling all over his body, and is always on edge, and this is followed by a scene where Bob sees Barris and Luckman as large insects, complete with antennae. Cochrane and Harrelson are superfluous, despite their entertainingly hyper and crazy performances. Downey is at his neurotic best, spouting observations with inflated vocabulary, to make himself as much of an arrogant and obnoxious a**hole as possible.
Reeves is surprisingly solid, with an unusual intensity emanating from his eyes, and a deep sense of uncertainty about what he sees and does, which is shared by us, as we try to figure out what is real and what is fake, though we are perhaps better at it than he. Ryder is terrific, and her character is more complex than one might initially think, undergoing some changes towards the end that are handled with great sincerity. The animation, as I noted earlier, is fantastic, and the movie is filled with both subtle and outlandish visual details, strangely distracting and beautiful, creating a fully immersive environment, unlike anything else.
That is the primary draw of the film, though I fear that it may lack the narrative substance to reach beyond this. Linklater's previous rotoscoping effort, Waking Life was an existentialist drama, 'A Scanner Darkly' is more of a sci-fi thriller, with bold ideas and lots of ambition, mostly because it came from the fertile and impressive mind of Dick, who had provided the source material for many cinematic projects, including Blade Runner and Minority Report, both of which are superior to what Linklater has given us here.
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