A Scanner Darkly. (15.)
Directed by Richard Linklater.
Starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson. 100 mins.
Set seven years in the future in an America which has taken its Wars on Drugs and Terror to their illogical conclusions, A Scanner Darkly is a unique and daring piece of cinema, the most faithful adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel yet. Don’t go in expecting some frenzied piece of lunatic sci fi though – it’s head spinning but on a very slow cycle.
While films like Total Recall and Paycheck used Dick’s ideas to give a wild twist to their big budget action scenes, Scanner is authentic Dick action, taking place in a suburban druggy milieu racked with fear and paranoia. It’s a narrative of slowly shifting certainties, blurred identities and smudged moralities. The battle against the addictive hallucinogenic Substance D has been so divisive that now everybody is under surveillance all the time and everybody and anybody could be a user, a dealer, an informant or a narc, possibly all at the same time. This is such a divided society that even the two hemisphere of one character’s brain are set in opposition to each other. It’s not Blade Runner, more slacker Naked Lunch.
Linklater has chosen to shoot the film in a bizarre new live action/ animation hybrid called interpolated rotoscoping. First the whole movie is shot conventionally on location with actors and then handed over to a team of computer types who then take 15 months performing a process akin to painting by numbers.
Is it worth the effort? For a low budget movie that needs to slip a few wild visual images seamlessly into what is fundamentally a realistic visual scheme I can see that this is the most practical and cost effective way to make the film but in this Pixar age many will find the results a little crude. To delineate shading, blotches appear on the actor’s skin and clothing, constantly shifting like clouds on a weather map or restless sweat patches. It’s the digital equivalent of the big black line that marked the extent of Fred and Barney’s stubble in the Flintstones.
The effect is a little distracting – it keeps you at arm’s distances from the situation and I’m not yet sure if this is to the benefit or detriment of the film overall. It doesn’t though hamper the actors. Though Harrelson rather gets lost, Ryder is better here than she’s been in a long time while Downey Jr is irritating and creepy (he often is these days, but this time he supposed to be.) Best of all though is Keanu. He’s always had a gift for doing lost and confused and here he gives real heart to the role of a man who’s been turned inside out.
A Scanner Darkly. (15.)
Directed by Richard Linklater.
Starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson. 100 mins.
Set seven years in the future in an America which has taken its Wars on Drugs and Terror to their illogical conclusions, A Scanner Darkly is a unique and daring piece of cinema, the most faithful adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel yet. Don’t go in expecting some frenzied piece of lunatic sci fi though – it’s head spinning but on a very slow cycle.
While films like Total Recall and Paycheck used Dick’s ideas to give a wild twist to their big budget action scenes, Scanner is authentic Dick action, taking place in a suburban druggy milieu racked with fear and paranoia. It’s a narrative of slowly shifting certainties, blurred identities and smudged moralities. The battle against the addictive hallucinogenic Substance D has been so divisive that now everybody is under surveillance all the time and everybody and anybody could be a user, a dealer, an informant or a narc, possibly all at the same time. This is such a divided society that even the two hemisphere of one character’s brain are set in opposition to each other. It’s not Blade Runner, more slacker Naked Lunch.
Linklater has chosen to shoot the film in a bizarre new live action/ animation hybrid called interpolated rotoscoping. First the whole movie is shot conventionally on location with actors and then handed over to a team of computer types who then take 15 months performing a process akin to painting by numbers.
Is it worth the effort? For a low budget movie that needs to slip a few wild visual images seamlessly into what is fundamentally a realistic visual scheme I can see that this is the most practical and cost effective way to make the film but in this Pixar age many will find the results a little crude. To delineate shading, blotches appear on the actor’s skin and clothing, constantly shifting like clouds on a weather map or restless sweat patches. It’s the digital equivalent of the big black line that marked the extent of Fred and Barney’s stubble in the Flintstones.
The effect is a little distracting – it keeps you at arm’s distances from the situation and I’m not yet sure if this is to the benefit or detriment of the film overall. It doesn’t though hamper the actors. Though Harrelson rather gets lost, Ryder is better here than she’s been in a long time while Downey Jr is irritating and creepy (he often is these days, but this time he supposed to be.) Best of all though is Keanu. He’s always had a gift for doing lost and confused and here he gives real heart to the role of a man who’s been turned inside out.
