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 t's
odd when you realize that the novels and short
stories of Philip K. Dick have been adapted to the
screen almost as frequently as that of Stephen
King or John Grisham. Odd because, unlike the
pulpier writing of both King and Grisham, Dick's
stories are quite cerebral and, in the most
traditional
Hollywood
sense, uncinematic. Here's a quick rundown:
"Blade Runner" (1982), "Total
Recall" (1990), the French film
"Confessions De'un Barjo" (1992), "Screamers"
(1995), "Impostor"
(2002), "Minority
Report" (2002), "Paycheck"
(2003), "A Scanner Darkly" (2006), and
the now in-production adaptation of "The
Golden Man", since retitled "Next"
starring Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore.
In most cases, Dick's dense
and paradoxical plots are used as nothing more
than loose pretexts for standard
Hollywood
action adventure stories. These often feature more
proactive heroes in place of the meditative and
often reality challenged protagonists of Dick's
original stories. Clearly, Arnold Schwarzenegger
in "Total Recall" wasn't going to waste
time with philosophical arguments when he could
fire off a few rounds to establish his own sense
of reality.
However, Richard Linklater is
a filmmaker who has demonstrated an almost
obsessive interest in philosophic debate and
discussion. From the opening scene of his first
released feature, "Slacker", Linklater
has made the "uncinematic" talking head
his niche and has demonstrated a mysterious
ability to float on magic carpets of non plots and
inaction without putting everyone into a
collective coma. His characters talk and theorize,
question and rebut, pause to think, and then talk
some more but somehow all this is rendered by
Linklater as spellbinding cinema, which is what I
found "A Scanner Darkly" to be.
With "A Scanner
Darkly", director Richard Linklater has
married the Kafkaesque plot of Dick's 1977 novel
with his own sensibility for just letting the
movie "hang out" and come up with what
could be described as "Waking
Life" with a story. And what a complex,
paradoxical story it is: Keanu Reeves plays an
undercover narcotics detective named Officer Fred
who ingests massive amounts of a dangerous drug
called Substance D in order to maintain his cover.
As Bob Arctor, Officer Fred surrounds himself with
various hangers on in the hopes of tracking down
the suppliers of Substance D.
Offer Fred's circle of
friends include his house-mates Barris (a dazzling
Robert Downey, Jr.) and Luckman (Woody Harrelson),
Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), who is moving into
a more frenzied stage of addiction, and Donna
Hawthorne (Winona Ryder) who may or may not be the
one who has the connection to the suppliers. Since
it's required that all narcotics agents remain
anonymous to each other, officers wear a
"scramble suit" of constantly shifting
identities. This is how Officer Fred is given the
mind bending task of spying on Arctor: No one in
his unit knows that Fred is
Arctor.
Since Substance D is a
hallucinogen which, over time, weakens the
functions of the brain's left hemisphere forcing
the right hemisphere to accommodate, Arctor begins
to loose his grip on reality. Is he Officer Fred
spying on Bob Arctor or is he really Bob Arctor
who pretends to be Officer Fred at work? Since he
is so confused, no one else can be less confused
and in some really crazy events,
Downey
, Jr. informs on Arctor to Arctor as Fred.
The synopsis above makes the
movie sound like some kind of police procedural
similar to "Serpico" or "The French
Connection", but this could not be farther
from the truth. Linklater slides around all of the
plot points, leaves it to the audience to figure
out the various inter-relationships and focuses on
what he likes most: characters in perfectly
crafted conversations, just hanging out. Once
again, he makes the most of these conversations to
slyly develop both character and story.
Now, for the big difference:
the visual style. The surreal, almost liquid
rotoscoped animation from "Waking Life"
is applied to "A Scanner Darkly", and
with a story steeped in rubbery reality, this is a
really great choice. The film would not be half as
good were it not animated. Everything -- roads,
trees, houses, people, and skies -- seem to hang
in temporary space, always about to shift and
twist away at a moment's notice. A further
uncanniness is created by the perfectly rotoscoped
features of Reeves,
Downey
, Jr., Harrelson and Ryder, whose celebrity faces
are so familiar to us. The animation places them
all in a hyper reality, familiar and yet strange.
The actors literally become the characters they
are playing and quite differently from how
Stanislovski intended.
Finally, I think it's about
time someone created a new award to give away,
that of "Most Improved Actor". I can't
think of another actor who has improved more
through the years than Keanu Reeves, who really
gives an excellent performance as Offer Fred aka
Bob Arctor. Or is that Bob Arctor aka Officer
Fred?
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