Scanner Darkly Runs Spotty

For a part-time schizophrenic and Gnostic acid casualty, Philip K. Dick has a long history of Hollywood blockbusters. While a perpetual college favorite, his books rarely get adapted as heady, art-house style pictures. Rather, Hollywood has made his novels into cyberpunk noir (the almost universally revered Blade Runner), big-budget summer action (Total Recall) and a Steven Spielberg popcorn movie (Minority Report). When news hit teh streets that early-90s indie wunderkind Richard Linklater was working on A Scanner Darkly in the animated style of his earlier reality-bending science fiction lite film Waking Life excitement abounded. How would the man who made the second most popular film about the subjective and ineffable nature of reality adapt a PKD novel for the screen? The final result shows a high degree of loving craftsmanship, but if anything remains too loyal to Dickian ideas for the silver screen, resulting in an entertaining, engaging but ultimately unsatisfying picture.Set seven years in the future, A Scanner Darkly presents a stark, all too real picture. The fictional world has one foot set firmly in Dick’s obsessions- drugs, Gnosticism and paranoia- and another in the political realities of Dick Cheney’s America. The police rely leave spying for the amateurs, creating a society where anyone with a grudge is encouraged to turn rat. Total Information Awareness has switched from a phrase that gives me an erection into a daily reality. And of course no dystopian drug picture would be complete without fictional dope. The culprit here is the elusively named “Substance D,” nicknamed “death.” The recreational appeal remains elusive, but the long-term effects are plain as the President’s lies to anyone paying attention. Chronic users experience disorientation, paranoia and a general deterioration between the subjective and objective realities. The substance causes addiction on a Burroughsian level, prompting one character to remark that there aren’t any “weekend warriors” (heroin parlance for addicts managing their habit, also known as “the Banker” or “the Construction Worker”) on D- “you’re either on it or you’ve never tried it.”

To be fair, Linklatter can’t be accused of a lack of trying or artistic slack. The film’s animation is breathtaking, giving the picture a look of unreality which couples almost symbiotically with the films Dickian tropes. The film begins with a sequence showing a death addict frantically scratching aphids off of himself. An entire sequence is shown via security cameras which watch the ersatz family of drug addicts as they leave the secluded security of their dope den. When protagonist Bob Arctor / “Agent Fred” calls his dealer and asexual girlfriend Donna to make a score we see surveillance from the point of view of the observing bureaucrat. The gestalt effect is a claustrophobic feel, and the viewer may well leave the theatre looking over their own shoulder. The film ends with classic Dickian optimism in the invanquishable spirit of divine man, which belies the film’s tagline “Everything is not going to be OK.”

But the picture still falls a bit flat, mostly owing to workman-like acting from the cast of aging Gen X-ers. While Keanu Reeves is as comfortable in this role as any other since his post-Matrix renaissance, he still screams “Keanu Reeves” thru the film where he should be subtly murmuring “Bob Arctor.” The same can be said of Woody Harrelson who seems not so much to be performing a character, but acting out a typical Saturday nite around his California flat. The incoherent, rambling nature of their characters appears more as a product of their phoned-in performances than anything in the script. Robert Downey, Jr. is effective as a junky-turned-snitch, evoking all the sycophantic and back-stabbing behaviors one would expect from his character, as well as the constant anxiety of a snitch in the field. Surprisingly, the most effective performance is turned in by Winona Ryder, fresh from her brush from the law (at least on Hollywood’s time scale) who sublty portrays the physical and emotional withdrawal common among hardcore drug addicts. However, as an ensemble the troupe never really seems to gel. They perform more like a collection of soloists, desperately jockeying for the lead rather than a cast of actors trying to collectivize for the greater good of the picture.

While the acting is perhaps the film’s worst feature, it seems to be the most successful film thus far at getting Dickian elements on screen in the same picture. The film touches briefly and tangentially upon Dick’s Gnostic Christian beliefs during the third act, particularly when they reveal who supplies the world with Substance D in the first place. Similarly, the drug’s source has Gnostic overtones. The film hints that the plant it is produced from may be sentient- God in the machine. Of course no post-Matrix Keanu vehicle would be complete without him in his Jesus Christ pose, and the film obliges showing Arctor’s life and body destroyed in the interest of a greater good.

In the final analysis, however, one viewing of the film will not yield much insight. Linklatter clearly wears his grudges on his sleeve, using Dick’s dystopianism and paranoia about Republican surveillance as a bludgeon against the current socio-political situation. As with any adaptation of Dick’s work success seems to be measured by keeping the themes from the original and making them seem real enough to happen tomorrow. Linklatter achieves these in spades creating a world hauntingly, disturbingly, terrifyingly similar to our own “seven years in the future” and lovingly painting Dickian headspace on camera. It seems regrettable that his desire for Gen X cache led him to a sub-par cast. Further, the film’s tagline “Everything is not going to be OK” seems antithetical to the naive optimism in the face of dystopian nightmare which characterizes Dick’s work. The generational anxieties of the X’ers blot out Dick’s emphasis on seeing the light even in the darkest times (Dr. Bloodmoney, Radio Free Albemuth, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)While the film certainly makes a strong challenge for the title of “Second Best PKD Joint” fans will still have to wait for another masterful adaptation.

Attrition's 2008 album, All mine enemys whispers (The Story of Mary Ann Cotton) available ...

Asides from being great pop culture horror/action flicks, the Underworld movies were also known ...

I'm driving along in a 1963 Cadillac trying to hold the lumbering sway of ...

So I'm driving down the road listening to your stereotypical alternative rock station when ...

If you're a casual Nine Inch Nails listener, this digital download is probably not ...