Richard Linklater’s latest release, A Scanner Darkly, is a slow, cruel and unusual punishment for its audience. Though its nuanced monologues and cryptic, surreal imagery try to suggest that it has something profound to communicate, it doesn’t—instead, the whole movie plays like a ruse, trying to trick the audience into believing they’ve deciphered some hidden meaning, and in the process, only highlighted the heavy-handed delivery of its message.
A Scanner Darkly leads us through the sad life of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), also known as Agent Fred, an undercover narcotics agent involved in the war against drugs. The movie takes place in a dystopic universe reminiscent of Orwell’s Airstrip One, where a drug, Substance D (also referred to as “slow death”), has taken hold of 20 per cent of the population. The drug is supposedly unlike any other: it is not only an addiction, but a lifestyle, ending in complete psychosis.
Arctor lives in a suburban house with a lawn populated by shopping carts, old tires and derelict cars. He shares his home with two squatters and Substance D addicts, James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) and Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson). Barris is a frenetic, paranoid lunatic, recalling a more intellectual and less spaced-out Hunter S. Thompson. Luckman is a volatile stoner, constantly starting fights or having nervous breakdowns. Accompanying them is the dark and erratic Donna (Winona Ryder), the trio’s dealer and Arctor’s love interest.
As Agent Fred, Arctor’s job is to immerse himself in this drug culture to infiltrate Donna’s inner circle and apprehend a dealer integral to the distribution of Substance D. However, Arctor himself becomes addicted to the drug and begins to lose touch with reality and his own identity. Agent Fred reports to an anonymous superior, who, while subjecting Fred to a host of psychological tests designed to weed out addicted officers, seems to know quite a bit more than he lets on. Fred is assigned to watch surveillance footage of himself as Arctor through a scanner: hence, A Scanner Darkly.
Though supposedly faithful to Philip K. Dick’s book by the same name, A Scanner Darkly is at best minimally stimulating, and at worst completely esoteric. Random events in Arctor’s life lack any real context or connection to a larger storyline. Most scenes are irrelevant vignettes featuring Arctor talking with Barris and Luckman, having vague discussions with Donna about their future plans together, or following a trivial and inconsequential character, Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), further into his hallucinogenic collapse. These scenes are both unnecessary and difficult to understand, making the movie seem profoundly pretentious rather than profoundly intellectual.
In fact, the storyline is so simple that Linklater uses most of these tangential scenes to deflect our attention from the terrifically obvious moral: drugs are bad, society is worse, and you should watch out for big corporations! However, a few of these irrelevant scenes are among the best in the movie—the rapport between Barris and Luckman is always mildly comical, even if mostly outrageous, and Freck’s hallucinations are saturated with dark humour.
Most scenes intend to document Arctor’s constantly deteriorating mental condition. However, this deterioration is hard to see. Except for a few scenes near the end of the film, Reeves plays Arctor the same way the entire time: completely spaced-out and confused, but never showing any indication of his potential to be otherwise. Whether Reeves did a poor job or Linklater specifically asked him to act like a coma patient, Arctor’s lack of character development garners little sympathy.
Downey Jr. and Harrelson provide the only genuinely engaging performances. Downey Jr. perfectly captures the witty and engaging Barris, while Harrelson’s depictions of Luckman’s breakdowns are full of emotion and vibrant, schizophrenic abrasiveness. Though the movie as a whole is disappointing, visually speaking it’s spectacular. As in Waking Life, Linklater uses rotoscoping, a technique where film shot with real actors is then painted over by animators. The result is an eerie, dreamlike quality that expertly depicts the mind of a deteriorating drug addict. In fact, the animation is so compelling that without A Scanner Darkly’s visual power, the movie would have been unbearable. The soundtrack was equally impressive, with haunting strings augmented by Radiohead, Thom Yorke and playful surfer rock. Maybe Linklater should stay away from screenplays and concentrate on cinematography and sound.
It’s too bad that good looks aren’t enough to redeem A Scanner Darkly. Those of you looking for an atmospheric, “intellectual” film open to endless interpretation should rent Waking Life. Those committed to a deeper engagement with A Scanner Darkly should, perhaps, stick to the book.
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