TERROR DRUGS

A Scanner Darkly Attacks the War on Terror, Drugs, And
Poverty

What if terrorism came in pill form? What if the War on Terror and
the War on Drugs became one and the same?

With not-so-subtle references to these ideological wars, as well as
to homegrown terrorism, Richard Linklater's adaptation of Philip
Dick's acclaimed novel has one clear message: it is impossible to
wage a war on the symptoms without first addressing the underlying
causes. The militant war on drugs portrayed in the film is
intricately tied to the need to cut off terrorists' cash flow. But
the clients are everyday Americans, and the US, through its own
misdirected use of force, becomes the agent of its own downfall.

Substance D is the elusive drug which circulates through the film.
Arriving in small red pills, which strangely resemble Advil, it is
derived from a small blue flower which is grown and sold by
"terrorists" to finance their operations. In essence, the highly
addictive and ultimately brain-destroying drug is being sold to
Americans so that the proceeds from those drugs may be used to wage a
war against them: a brilliant double-edged sword.

Keanu Reeves plays the dual character of Bob Arctor (drug addict and
good friend) and Fred (undercover narcotics officer). Unfortunately
for Bob/Fred, one of the side effects of his Substance D addiction is
a division between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which
slowly begin to compete with one another for supremacy. Eventually,
Bob/Fred loses his ability to differentiate between his work as a
police officer and the drug culture in which he and his friends take part.

"Calculatedly addicted to Substance D for profit by drug terrorists,"
explains Fred, speaking about the fate of America's children. He
continues in the same speech: "Our military and their associates are
actively engaged in countries where it is believed the organic
component of Substance D, a small, highly-toxic flower, originates.
Our troops are down there fighting for us."

Kind of sounds like poppy farming in Afghanistan, doesn't it? Or
cocaine in Colombia?

Against this backdrop of international drug-financed terrorism is a
social message. The overarching theme of the movie is that it is
impossible to attack the symptoms of any social problem - in this
case drug addiction - without first attacking the sources of the
discontent and poverty which led to the drug culture in the first place.

In this sense, the film bears much resemblance to 2000's drug film of
the year, Requiem for a Dream. The viewer sits dumbfounded as the
characters on the screen pop pills all the way to the devil's
doorstep. Each of them recognize their own addiction but are
powerless to stop their descent.

"The drive of unliving things is stronger than the drive of living
things," says one character in a rehab clinic near the end of the
film. But the message goes beyond this to politics, policy, and belief systems.

A Scanner Darkly is a unique voice in the War on Terror and The War
on Drugs: it criticizes the logic of both without directly mentioning
either. While Reeves is less than convincing as a strung-out and
recovering addict, his co-stars - Robert Downey Jr. and Woody
Harrelson - are impeccable, and their characters are as unique in
their idiosyncrasies as Reeves is bland and stereotypical in his.

The animation technique of the film uses the same software,
"Rotoshop", that was used in Linklater's Waking Life, another
life-like animation film produced in 2001 with similar philosophical
notions about drugs and politics. Rotoshop is a computer program,
similar to Adobe Photoshop, which is used to animate over top of
filmed cells and then analyze how the film changed between each of
the cells and animate those "in-between" cells as well. The
technique, however, is very labour intensive and requires
approximately 500 hours of work per minute of film.

The end result is a tripped-out wander through a troubled society in
the not-so-distant-future, seen through the eyes of a young drug
addict who has become both a victim of, and a soldier in, the War on
Terror. It is a film about the future that relates so much to our
present that the viewer is tempted to just wait and see if it might
not come true.