Austinist Reviews A Scanner Darkly
“Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs...And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.” - Rush Limbaugh, October 5th 1995
Adapted by Austinite Richard Linklater from Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel, A Scanner Darkly is the story of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), an undercover narcotics agent who becomes so tangled in California’s drug culture that he begins to lose track of his own identity. Set in the not-too-distant future, the film follows Arctor and his gang of drug-addled housemates (Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder and Rory Cochrane) as they slowly spiral towards paranoid lunacy.
Though billed as science-fiction, Scanner is much closer to animated noir. Based largely on events from Dick's own life, the story is more about plain old drug addiction than it is about futuristic gadgets. There’s very little action, and it’s even been suggested that the original draft of the novel was “sci-fied” by the publisher for fear that such a contemporary story wouldn’t fly with Dick’s fans (just as an indicator of how low-tech Scanner actually is: Linklater’s updating of the story includes the addition of cell phones, which were actually invented before the book was written).
In Dick's future, we are all being constantly monitored for suspicious activity - on the streets, at our jobs and even in our homes. Every phone in the world is bugged, friends betray friends, and nobody can trust anybody. Trust runs so shallow, in fact, that police officers don’t even know the identities of their bosses or coworkers, and Arctor eventually becomes so confused that he begins spying on himself as well as his friends.
It's a paranoid vision, but it's not completely unbelievable. Some might even say that the current situation in the United States is eerily similar to Scanner’s reality, and with high-level wiretapping scandals in the headlines, it's an easy case to make. That's what makes Linklater's rotoscoped animation technique so ideal for telling the story. The just-beyond-reality visuals are a perfect metaphor for many of the film’s key themes. The technique is similar to the one used in Linkater’s 2001 film Waking Life, but in Scanner, it's refined and controlled, without the unpredictable distortions and exaggerations of its predecessor.
Of course, Dick’s fearful vision of the future wasn’t meant as a prediction for the real world – it was an extension of the drug culture's self-destructive nature. In the film, just as in the novel, the real world only exists in short flashes, and it seems clear that Dick had no idea how close his vision would come to reality a few decades later.
The novel is often credited with having predicted (and preemptively criticized) Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs”, and it’s startling how perfectly Dick skewers the war without ever having seen it in full swing. Dick knew that drugs were a social problem, not a criminal one, and the film delivers that message well. But ultimately, Scanner is plainly anti-drug. Dick himself had been heavily involved in the drug culture of the 60s and 70s, and he spent time in some extremely harsh rehab centers. Drugs left Dick (and many of his friends) with permanent psychological and physical problems, and the severity of the consequences for addicts is very much the point of the film. Many of the characters are based on Dick's real-life friends, and the epilogue spells out the horrible prices they paid for their addictions.
Reeves isn’t a fantastic actor, but he manages to fit the role of Arctor well. He’s brooding and reflective, but ultimately confused and lost: things that Reeves seems to be able to convey pretty well. There are some scenes where his chops fall considerably short of the character’s demands, but not enough to damage the film beyond repair.
Woody Harrelson’s performance plays a bit overly-caricatured, but he seems comfortable and convincing (if a bit hammy) in the role of a drugged-out weirdo. And the scenes where Reeves, Harrelson and Downey are playing out drug-fueled, paranoid fantasies are so pitch-perfect they redeem Harrelson’s stiffest moments.
Scanner’s real triumph is Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as Barris, the hyper-intelligent but hopelessly paranoid druggie whose loyalties, like Arctor’s, are questionable. Linklater has joked the Downey would attribute his stellar performance to “20 years of research” into the role of an addict, and there is probably a lot of truth in that. Downey is so confident and charming in this role that when juxtaposed with Reeves’ rigidity, he actually almost ruins the film.
The screenplay is strikingly true to the novel, with only a few minor changes in dialogue to update the story. However, he film does little to develop the plot line or character, leaving much of the film to rely on the unique rotoscoped aesthetic. Though it sometimes feels like Linklater is a bit too obsessed with the visual appeal of the animation (and of Reeves’ face), the film does a decent job delivering Dick’s vision. It’s certainly not the Sci-fi thriller it looks like in the trailers, but it works well as a dramatic comment on drug addiction and its consequences. Perhaps if America's pundits and policymakers had Dick's grasp of the subject, the film wouldn't be as necessary and important as it is.
*A Scanner Darkly opens tomorrow at the Regal Arbor Cinemas, with a special midnight screening tonight.*
