Film: Dir. Richard Linklater - A Scanner Darkly

Dir: Richard Linklater
A Scanner Darkly
[Sci-Fi/Thriller/Animation]





You may have heard a lot about this film's rather unique visual style. Essentially, it combines live action of actors like Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder with real and CGI enhanced backdrops. The twist is that all this footage is then "drawn over" by a computer to look like a cartoon, in a similar method to the rotoscoping of old.

Whilst this makes all the film posters look rather beautiful, you'll likely find yourself looking straight past it within the first few minutes of the film. In stills, the actors look like well drawn cartoons of themselves. In motion, your eyes will soon begin to ignore the cartoon treatment completely.

Does this detract from the film? Not really, thankfully. Indeed, the main gain may well be that it kept the budget down to a relatively tiny three million pounds mark. And despite the fog of the graphical style, it's easy to distinguish some great acting. Keanu Reeves, famous for only being able to play a confused stoner or a zen-like super agent, gets to do both here, just like in The Matrix. He plays an undercover cop sent to infiltrate a houseful of - confused stoners. Being a Philip K. Dick plot, the story is as drug addled and enjoyably crazy as a trip without the come-down. I don't want to spoil it, but the central themes are identity and paranoia; pretty typical Dick. The supporting cast, in particular Robert Downey Jr. are also rather great; his unhinged dope fiend is both funny and terrifying.

The music also deserves a mention; as well as a specially written soundtrack, the film also features quite a bit of Musically Sound favourite Radiohead. The script adaptation does a great job of transferring the 1970s set novel to the present day without sacrificing the plot or the characters. And the direction's choice of camera angles and POV shots, and the gorgeous composition of the driving scenes, had me hooked.

As much as I like Dick, the only thing that saved me from loving this film to bits was one aspect of the plot - the stylishly animated "scrambler suit", designed to render a persons identity as a fleeting composite; simply didn't make a lot of sense; why not just use a mask and a vocoder? Still, are you expecting water-tight logic from a film about taking a lot of hallucinogens? Probably not. In all, a faithful adaptation and a great stand-alone entity in itself. 90