>>REVIEW
A SCANNER DARKLY
STARRING Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr.
DIRECTED BY Richard Linklater
Opens Friday, July 14
Uptown Screen
"It’s easy to be a winner. Anyone can be a winner."
So says Donna (Winona Ryder) in response to having her quasi-boyfriend Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) greeted as a "loser" by staff at the New Plan rehab clinic, where he lies like a child on the floor, shaking, vomiting at their feet. The first part of this declaration is delivered with malevolence to the staff, while the latter is tenderly directed at Arctor. And though this scene occurs rather late in the film, the duplicitous nature of the statement serves as a fitting introduction to Richard Linklater’s (Dazed and Confused, Waking Life) latest film A Scanner Darkly.
What you see isn’t always what you get.
Using the computer-rotoscope technology he pioneered in Waking Life (a labour-intensive process in which the film is first shot in digital video then animated over in post production), Linklater has expertly crafted a faithful adaptation of the 1977 Phillip K. Dick novel. The psychokinetic narrative (set in the near future where the war on drugs is all but lost) centers around Arctor – an undercover narcotics officer tasked with uncovering an alleged drug ring. Arctor, like all undercover agents, wears identity distorting body gear known as a "scramble suit" which poetically leaves him a flickering array of infinite visages –literally a man without an identity.
Problem is, Arctor has developed a nasty habit for a personality-splitting drug known only as "Substance D" and the alleged ring he is investigating runs out of his own house. Oh, and his prime suspect in the case is Bob Arctor! Every day Arctor leaves his junky roommates to go to work, where he passes the day monitoring video surveillance of him and his junky roommates speaking in paranoid non-sequiturs (Arctor has his own house under surveillance).
While much press has been devoted to drawing obvious connections between the film’s paranoid plot with the fear mongering in today’s political climate, real praise should be reserved for the film’s unyielding portrayal of the haunted life and mind of a junkie. Much credit is due to the actors (which also include Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane) for their frantic, off-the-wall performances of men on the brink, which, no doubt, were fuelled by their own real-life misadventures. No better forum exists for presenting the blurred realities of these unreliable minds than the mixed medias, rich textures and shifting lines of the rotoscope animation. |
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