A Scanner Darkly

[KLAXXON]

Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder star in this fantastic sci-fi thriller from the director of School of Rock.

Movie adaptations of Phillip K. Dick stories have had a somewhat chequered history. From the serious, future-noir of Blade Runner or Minority Report to the exploitative fun of Total Recall and Screamers; Hollywood has consistently stripped Dick’s novels of their central Macguffin whilst leaving behind their intensity and intelligence, essentially boiling down the stories to their pulpy core.

Richard Linklater has broken new ground with his adaptation of A Scanner Darkly having managed to not only maintain Dick’s passion for paranoia and low society but also to find a suitable cinematic representation for his skewed universe. The process of Rotoscope animation (a system by which animation is layered over the top of live action footage) makes the film into a living, breathing comic book. The picture moves and swirls even in the most sedate of scenes. The effect is beautiful, surreal and not a little disorientating and for a film about the idea of representation and masked identities it compliments the subject matter perfectly.

Set in the near future Keanu Reeves plays undercover narcotics agent Bob Arctor. Having infiltrated a ring of hapless ‘Substance D’ addicts Arctor is living the life of a low-level drug dealer. Matters are complicated when the Arctor’s superiors assign him the task of investigating his own undercover identity.

Keanu Reeves is again called upon to play a man doubting the nature of his own existence. It is a role that, since his turn as Neo in The Matrix trilogy, it seems impossible to separate him from. Again he handles it well, bringing that world weary, grown-up slacker attitude to Arctor. It is a subtle performance but it feels too reminiscent of Reeves’ other roles to be anything more than solid.

Winona Ryder is, like Reeves’, good rather than spectacular, with the final few twists of the plot being the only thing to elevate her above the level of mere ‘love interest’. It is Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson and Minority Report Rory Cochrane who really steal the show. As the down and out friends of Arctor they could so easily have been just comic relief. Whilst they are very funny, the true joy of their performances comes from our knowledge of their off-screen antics. There is an extra layer of fun be had in watching Downey Jr descend into a drug fuelled rant about the theft of a mountain bike or to witness Woody Harrelson creep into Substance D fuelled paranoia in the back of a car when you know that they are drawing upon very real, and possibly quite raw, experiences.

Cochrane manages to completely embody the effects of drug psychosis. His tightly wound portrayal of Frick, whether he is scratching out the imaginary bugs in his skin or quietly freaking out in a restaurant, is not just consistently entertaining but freighted with a deep sense pathos.

At its essence A Scanner Darkly is more than just a sci-fi film, its striking looks and stoner chic may gain it a cult reputation but it deserves more than that. As a film that deals with the nature of identity, paranoia and addiction it is naturally confusing at times and, whilst watching you may find yourself having several ‘what the hell?’ moments, like a good narcotic, its effects stay with you long after that initial, startling hit.

Anaheim, California, the near future. Bob Arctor (Reeves), an addict to the drug Substance D, is actually an undercover cop out to bust the D network. Bob’s bosses, who don’t know his cover story, order him to spy on himself, causing his grip on reality to be shaken by his schizoid way of life.


Well before he popped his first pill, the keyword for Philip K. Dick’s fiction was ‘paranoia’. Like a lot of science-fiction writers who started in the 1950s, Dick looked at the streamlined, post-War miracle of the United States and felt it was crawling with bugs, by which he meant both alien-insect invaders and surveillance devices planted by covert forces. Watch any Twilight Zone rerun for a taste of the times.

Dick, paid by the word and working for pulps, turned to amphetamines to keep him at the typewriter. By the 1970s, the habit had mushroomed into an extensive, mostly tragic drug experience. A Scanner Darkly, written in 1973 but not published until 1977, is his most direct fictional representation of this part of his life. By the time the novel came out, Dick was (mostly) off drugs, but paranoia was so much a part of his worldview that he wouldn’t have been cured of it if he could.

If Dick’s literary personality has been felt in earlier film adaptations, from Blade Runner through Total Recall to Minority Report, it has been almost accidental. His imaginings have been filleted to become the material of star-driven, big effects films he would have despised. The usual approach to Dick has been to take his high-concept ideas (often from minor short stories) and use them to propel a macho leading man through action scenes against a colourful futuristic backdrop. Richard Linklater does something different with A Scanner Darkly. For a start, he is the first director since Ridley Scott to take one of Dick’s major novels as a source; moreover, he might well be the first director ever to feel Dick is worth a faithful adaptation rather than the source for a handful of cool ideas that could be stripped while the rest of the matter got thrown away.

Scanner is almost not a science-fiction novel, though its plot depends on one amusing bit of gadgetry — the ‘scramble suit’ which makes undercover hero ‘Fred’ unrecognisable to his superiors whenever he reports, so that the cops order ‘Fred’ to spy on ‘Bob Arctor’ without (perhaps) realising they are the same person. Linklater uses the rotoscope process he pioneered in Waking Life, treating images to an animated overlay, almost entirely because it’s the only effective way of putting a ‘scramble suit’ onscreen without seeming ridiculous. However, the cartooniness pays off in other drug-related fantasy moments, often involving insects or morphing identities.

Linklater’s adaptation is skilful, blending the late ‘60s with the present, subtly adding the war on terror to the war on drugs, and picking up on Dick’s many prescient insights (like total surveillance of public and private space). He even satisfyingly sorts out the slight fizzle of the book’s last chapters, though this means making the hero’s girlfriend Donna (Winona Ryder) slightly less distinctive a bitch (after a bunch of marriages, Dick tended to write women as monsters or androids). Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson are all suited by talent, prior screen history and life experience to fit into this world, and they make the free-associating junkie dialogues funny, scary and dumb by turns. Reeves, slipping into what might be an anti-Matrix, is strong as the identity-collapsing Fred/Bob — especially when we (but not he) perceive what his undercover mission really requires.


For Dick fans, this is pure, uncut, grade-A dope. For others, it’s a series of dizzying moments with an overall downer effect. Still, its intelligence makes it near-essential viewing.

Rory Cochrane ... Charles Freck
Robert Downey Jr. ... James Barris
Mitch Baker ... Brown Bear Lodge Host
Keanu Reeves ... Bob Arctor
Sean Allen ... Additional Fred Scramble Suit Voice (voice)
Cliff Haby ... Voice from Headquarters (voice)
Steven Chester Prince ... Cop
Winona Ryder ... Donna Hawthorne
Natasha Valdez ... Waitress
Mark Turner ... Additional Hank Scramble Suit Voice (voice)
Woody Harrelson ... Ernie Luckman
Chamblee Ferguson ... Medical Deputy #2
Angela Rawna ... Medical Deputy #1
Eliza Stevens ... Arctor's Daughter #1
Sarah Menchaca ... Arctor's Daughter #2



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