‘A Scanner Darkly‘ is a complex and fascinating story based on a novel by Phillip K. Dick (the author of Blade Runner). The movie uses the latest techniques in rotoscoping to produce a beautiful animated look. The story is set in a near-future, when the United States is obsessed with the war on drugs, particularly a substance known as ‘D’ (Death).
The use of rotoscoping has been put into use before by the director, Richard Linklater, in his philosophically complex film ‘Waking Life‘. In this ‘A Scanner Darkly‘ Linklater uses the same technique to put into a narrative that, compared to Waking Life, is non-linear to the point that it is very faithful to the original author’s novel. But there’s more than meets the eye, literally, to what Linklater is doing with this picture. It really does fit the mood of the movie, but the control over thought and the similarly powerful self-destruction comes at a high price…
To talk about the story, we have to involve the characters affected by the drug. Keanu Reeves plays Bob Arctor, a narc on the verge of a breakdown. For public appearances, he acts as a cop and he has to wear a special hi-tech disguise to protect his identity. This ‘suit’ changes his voice and image as a shifting kaleidoscope of features.
Arctor’s impending mental breakdown is accelerated by the burden of spying on a group of drug addicts, and he is under such deep cover that these losers are now his only friends: the hyperactive Barris (Robert Downey Jr), dopey slacker Ernie (Woody Harrelson), unhappy Freck (Rory Cochrane) and the beautiful coke-addict Donna (Winona Ryder), with whom Arctor is in love.
This movie may be seen as ‘quirky’ due to the visual representation and the subject on hand. But looking at the bigger picture, it does an amazing job of capturing the feel and tone of the book as well as the paranoia, perceptual distortions, and chaos of hallucinogenic overindulgence.
It can be seen as a sense of losing all forms of reality and the struggle for identity and meaning.