Dir. Richard Linklater, US, 2006, 100 mins
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson
Review by Craig Driver
Avid readers of Phillip K Dick’s fiction are no strangers to dysfunction and paranoia. Whether it’s the neon cyber punk of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' or the multiple dimensions of 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch', Dick rarely stepped outside of the box marked "drug addled" and "dystopian". The army of film adaptations that have traced Dick’s particular brand of sci-fi often stick to tested themes of drug dependence, paranoia and totalitarian state rule. A Scanner Darkly is no different but signals the moment where visual wizardry finally matches Dick’s electric prose.
Richard Linklater, the chameleon director of Before Sunset and School of Rock, revives the animated process used for his 2001’s Waking Life. Technically entitled ‘interpolated rotoscoping’ the process entails digitally painting over live footage already filmed giving the film a comic book drug freak out feel. Set seven years from now almost 20% of the population are hooked on the chemical drug Substance D, or Death as it’s affectionately labeled, a drug so addictive that “you’re either on it or you haven’t tried it”. The Government, in an attempt to maintain order and social harmony, continues to attempt an all out war on the expanding drug culture. Keanu Reeves, in grizzly post-Neo mode, stars as Bob Arctor, a man struggling to find himself among a group of drug addicts sharing a house in the messy suburbs of Anaheim, California. His housemates Barris and Luckman, played by Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson, are warped and twisted casualties of the D epidemic, arguing over the insignificant and trivial. Their friend Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane) has gone one step further and spends most of his time fighting off non-existent aphids. Finally, there’s Donna (Winona Ryder), Arctor’s girl and a full time dealer who can’t stand to be touched or held.
Arctor is a man trapped by circumstance: he’s a deep-cover narcotics agent intent on uncovering Donna’s main Substance D supplier. But is he a narc posing as a user or a user posing as a narc? Realities twist and fold in on each other as Substance D takes hold and Linklater elevates the age old riddle of which came first the Chicken or the Egg to dizzying new heights. Arctor’s judgment becomes clouded by his ever increasing drug intake and his frustration builds as Donna becomes ever more unattainable. This impending sense of dislocation is perfectly harnessed and implemented through the painstaking rotoscoping technique which took 15 months of post-production to perfect. The animation is at once crisp and woozy and as such is a perfect foil to the films narrative arc. The process distances the film from reality while dragging us deep into the mire of a world bereft of sentiment or loyalty. The very fact that the key players are reduced to ghostly residual caricatures of themselves lends itself to the druggy displacement while showcasing the finer subtleties of acting: the emotional nuances and facial tics that continue to define and often inscribe Reeves, Ryder, Downy and Harrelson as purely visual artifacts.
Linklater throughout is careful to balance the hallucinatory trope with a narrative steel. Often restricted to lo-fi indie fare, here he’s able to stretch out with full confidence thanks to the collection of A list stars only too keen to sacrifice commercialism for invention. It’s surely no coincidence that Ryder, Downey and Harrelson harbour a long and varied relationship with substance abuse and general debauchery. Both Downey and Harrelson, often labelled Hollywood’s primary chemical connoisseurs, are given free reign to titillate and indulge. Like some demented Laurel and Hardy their antics are often hilarious riffs on the darker side of paranoia and dependency. The most surreal scene is left to Rory Cochrane who having attempted to overdose on downers and a $70 Merlot hallucinates a space alien reading him a never ending list of his own sins. It’s in moments such as this, and the chaotic but deeply articulate dialogue throughout, that Dick’s presence can be most keenly felt. The dense paranoia of Dick’s writing may not seem the most obvious match for Linklater’s genteel fumbling as seen in Before Sunrise. Thankfully, Linklater’s handling of the emotional subtext of A Scanner Darkly raises the film above and beyond his own stoner classics Dazed and Confused and Slacker. While Linklater’s film may not harbour the incessant dystopia of Blade Runner or the frenzied energy of Total Recall it remains a perfectly poised examination of the governmental hypocrisy that facilitates the very drug culture it opposes.
Linklater’s ability to craft the eccentric but somehow profound nuances of human communication coupled with Dick’s penchant for fantastically dense fantasy make for a thrilling ride. A Scanner Darkly represents a point where philosophical conjecture and human frailty meet a truly dazzling visual trope finally worthy of Dick’s kaleidoscopic prose. As Thom Yorke’s 'Black Swan' rattles across the closing credits, Linklater realises a breathtaking hybrid of style and substance. Paranoia and dependency have never felt so addictive.
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