DVD Review: Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly on Warner Home Video

A Scanner Darkly looks sweet, but it's scarcely penetrating.

A Scanner DarklyEven though scene for scene it sticks very close to Philip K. Dick’s counterculture classic, A Scanner Darkly feels much more like the earnest theorizing of Richard Linklater in Waking Life mode. The interpolated rotoscoping techniques, which cloak live-action photography in a graphic-novel haze of animation, seems more appropriate in this tale of a drug-addicted, brain-fried undercover cop called Fred (Keanu Reeves) who is ordered to narc on his own secret identity, a dealer named Bob Arctor. His police identity is kept anonymous by wearing a “scramble suit,” which renders him into a vague blur of ever-shifting faces and identities, a walking piece of abstract art. The suit alone justifies the animation techniques, yet one cannot help but wonder what Terry Gilliam might have done with it in live-action. Gilliam, in fact, might have been able to tap into the absurd humor of Dick’s novel, the identity crisis of chasing after one’s own tail, and the paranoid, mind-addled horror of full-blown addiction.

Linklater is working with excellent material, though, and his down-home portrayal of addicts hanging out in their slob’s paradise apartment in Austin, TX offers some vivid set pieces. Opening with a junkie (Rory Cochrane) desperately trying to scrub off the insects of his mind in the shower using scrubbing brushes and insecticide, followed by misadventures with Arctor and his roommates (explosive Robert Downey Jr. in full-on psychotic chat-a-holic mode and Woody Harrelson doing his usual thing) driving around in cars ready to fall apart on the highway and wandering around their place, outfitted with hidden security cameras, wondering if their place has been infiltrated. The laughs should be sticking in your throat, watching these lost souls self-destruct as they focus on inanities, but Linklater can’t quite go that far.

Linklater, to his credit, has a skill for taking stories that thinly drift along on a vibe and make it vaguely, loosely compelling. If a scene gets dull, Arctor’s roommates will suddenly transform into gigantic talking insects with human heads. While Reeves might not be the most ideal stand-in for Dick, he carries the film along on an Orange County would-be philosopher’s stream of consciousness, and his blank face, awkwardly skinny frame, and scraggly beard seem appropriate for a character whose mind is so erased that he’s in the land of the lost. There’s still enough Matrix in Reeves to speak mumbo-jumbo he probably doesn’t understand and make it sound rich in meaning.

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When Bob goes out on a date with his sometimes girlfriend Donna (a surprisingly intense Winona Ryder, whose acting is vastly improved by the animation) and their evening climaxes with a chilling talk on the couch about why he cannot hug her close because of some half-baked theory of her being hopped-up on cocaine, Reeves and Ryder are stand-ins for a generation of actors who cannot emote, cannot act, cannot do much beyond posture, but they are trying like hell, for one second, to connect. Reeves stands up, frustrated and sad, says “Fuck it,” and walks out the door. Linklater may not completely tap into the comical nightmare of Dick’s novel (though sometimes he gets close with Downey’s maniacal experiments like one involving silencers that freakishly amplify the sound of handguns), but he’s good at capturing the failed intimacy of Generation X.

Image/Sound

Haloes are visible throughout, but these slivers of white actually complement the trippiness of the film’s animation in most scenes. The soundtrack is fiercer, especially whenever an intimidating jangle of beeps and other electro noise is used to evoke a character’s madness.

Extras

The commentary track included here is overcrowded but not exactly busy with insight. Keanu Reeves struggles to parlay deep thoughts, more so than Richard Linklater, producer Tommy Pallotta, and author Arthur Jonatahn Lethem, all of whom are more laidback than the actor. Not surprisingly, Dick’s daughter Isa Dick Hackett proves to be the most useful, coming to the group with a fascinating arsenal of anecdotes that illuminate the mysteries of the book and film, from her father thinking he was living with an informant during his communal-living days to his use of prescription amphetamines. (She also clears up that A Scanner Darkly was the first novel her father wrote when he was completely lucid.) Also included on the disc are two groovy featurettes: “One Summer in Austin: The Story of Filming A Scanner Darkly,” which begins with rare footage of Dick talking about his book, and “The Weight of the Line: Animation Tales,” during which the film’s animators get to show off their creative muscles. Rounding things off: a theatrical trailer and a series of previews.

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Overall

A Scanner Darkly looks sweet, but it’s scarcely penetrating.

Score: 
 Cast: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane  Director: Richard Linklater  Screenwriter: Richard Linklater  Distributor: Warner Home Video  Running Time: 100 min  Rating: R  Year: 2006  Release Date: December 19, 2006  Buy: Video, Soundtrack, Book

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