THE DARK SIDE OF THE WORLD

A Scanner Darkly Zooms In On The American Drug Trade

A Scanner Darkly Directed by Richard Linklater Starring Keanu Reeves,
Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Rory Cochrane Now Playing

In the near future, we will be under constant, omnipresent
surveillance, our every action categorized and logged by scanners
capable of seeing straight through us. The abstract wars on terror
and drugs will have devoured themselves to birth a hybrid of paranoia
and police-state regulation. At least, such is the setting painted by
director Richard Linklater in A Scanner Darkly, the screenplay
adaptation of sci-fi author Phillip K Dick's prophetic thriller.

The film stars Keanu Reeves as Robert Arctor, a tormented man
completely unaware of who or what he is, working as an undercover
police officer in a sting operation as a new and incredibly powerful
synthetic drug--known as Substance D--begins to circulate across
America, blazing out of control. Arctor, posing as an addict himself,
resides in a house full of pill-popping lowlifes and dealers,
attempting to work his way up the hierarchy to the local source of
the drug. But as Substance D seeps into his life, Arctor begins to
lose his grip on everything around him, including himself.

The resulting trip is a surreal journey of lost lives, false loves
and forgotten opportunities. Arctor must find himself before he can
begin to discover the identities of those around him.

The casting in A Scanner Darkly is exceptional. While Reeves can
easily be criticized for playing only characters like The Matrix's
Neo, this is exactly the type of character that makes Arctor's
tormented state so fitting. In an amusing and effective supporting
role--inspired, perhaps, by real life--Robert Downey Jr plays the
paranoid drug addict who resides in Arctor's house.

Donna Hawthorne, a drug dealer who is the target of a police sting
and the love interest of Arctor, is played by Winona Ryder who rounds
out the lead roles perfectly, along with Rory Cochrane and Woody
Harrelson in animated bit-parts.

Using an oft-overlooked but visually stimulating animation technique,
the first thing that makes A Scanner Darkly truly stand out is the
marriage of live action film to computerized cell shading.

Film frames are painted over with a posterized two-dimensional
rendering, similar to Linklater's earlier work Waking Life. The end
result is a film that is both animated and realistic, with effects
that blend seamlessly into the psychedelic settings. And, because so
much of the movie is seen from the perspective of Arctor under the
influence of Substance D, the bleeding colours and morphing shapes
simulate the effects of a heavy acid trip so well that the return to
the crisp and clear images produced by surveillance cameras feels
unsettlingly out of place.

The film certainly warrants multiple viewings, if not for its
breathtaking visuals, then for its intricately interwoven plot.
However, everything from the camera shots to the narrative are so
often taken from Arctor's first-person perspective that it's easy to
become as confused and overwhelmed by the world around him as he is.
It's also easy to get lost in a scene and feel as though you've just
missed something relevant, despite the fact that there was seemingly
nothing there.

Much of this perplexity could probably be remedied by watching a DVD
release, or by simply reading the original novel.

A Scanner Darkly may not portray an entirely accurate vision of the
future, as is implied by Phillip K Dick's parting words in the film,
but it certainly offers a plunge into the depths of the human psyche,
tortured by the self-destructive acts of the body. Although we can
never really see through to the soul, Scanner can see through the
darkness and into the drug-trade core itself.