re:mote voices

Title:A Scanner Darkly
Cast: Keanu Reaves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder
Director: Richard Linklater

Fred is an undercover police, actively combating the supply of the drug Substance-D, which is sweeping across America. In a surveillance age calls are monitored, people are watched, and agents are placed within groups of friends. With the use of scramble suits no one but the agent knows who they really are. This makes Fred ideally placed to monitor Bob Arctor when the technology suggests he might be a key step in the Substance-D chain. Bob and his friends are all users, and Fred has to use as well to maintain his cover. But Substance-D is powerful stuff, incredibly addictive it quickly causes brain damage. Signs of which Bob and Fred are both exhibiting, something that is proven by the fact that Fred sometimes has problems remembering that he actually is Bob.

A Scanner Darkly is the latest film to be adapted from the works of Philip K. Dick, a science fiction writer who's work has been plundered by Hollywood on numerous occasions. Most successfully in the form of Blade Runner, and perhaps most embarrassingly in the form of Paycheck. Director Richard Linklater has taken an unusual approach to this adaptation though, which shouldn't be a surprise with someone like Linklater, he has gone for a pretty faithful version.

While Linklater may have gained a higher profile in recent years thanks to his more commercial efforts, he has a reputation for the more free form rambling production. Which is what Scanner Darkly is for the most part, the bulk of the film is comprised is junkie talk, the paranoia and delusions of the drug addled and how the bend the world to fit in with that. To capture some of that sense of shifting reality, and the weirdness of the scramble suit, Linklater decided to film Scanner with his cast and then use animation to finalize the sensation. The animation extends from the techniques developed for his earlier film Waking Life, itself featuring a conversation about Philip K. Dick and his perception of reality.

The film Scanner Darkly that results is a curious thing. In some ways it is astounding novelty, an adaptation of a Dick novel that bears some resemblance to the original material. Which is something of an unsettling proposal. The animation is a glitchy shifting thing, and particularly cartoony and unstable when it comes to the scramble suits. On first viewing, I felt that I kind of liked the film, though I also had a certain restlessness, a certain uneasy feeling that it wasn't entirely living up to expectations. On second viewing however, I felt a lot more comfortable and was able to appreciate the film a lot more, enjoying the humour and absurdity the way it should be enjoyed.

To a large degree, this is how Philip K. Dick's work should be done - a near future setting that isn't so far from the present, that has a certain grimy feeling, a certain paranoid feeling, a certain feeling that messes with your head.