The Dark Reflection of Identity
A Scanner Darkly Questions Reality

Philip K. Dick once wrote that the question "What is reality?" was his major preoccupation. In the new adaptation of Dick's 1977 novel, the question of reality and identity are mixed together as an undercover narcotics officer (Keanu Reeves) finds himself the subject of his own investigation. Set in the near future, A Scanner Darkly reveals a country where drug addiction affects 40 percent of the population and police resort to an army of undercover cops to track the source of Substance D, a highly addictive drug.

Keanu Reeves as Bob Arctor in director Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, based on the Philip K. Dick novel. (Warner Independent Pictures, 2006)

Directed by: Richard Linklater
Written by: Richard Linklater, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane, Robert Downey Jr., and Woody Harrelson

Rated

(for drug and sexual content, language and a brief violent image)
Running time: 100 min.

FilmGuru's Rating : 7 out of 10.

"Fred" is the code name of an undercover narcotics officer (Reeves) who uses a "scramble suit" that constantly changes to mask the wearer's appearance and voice. No one knows that the man in the suit is really Bob Arctor, one of the most well-connected buyers of Substance D.

Furthering Bob's problems is his friend Jim Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), who goes to the police to inform on Arctor, claiming that Bob and his girlfriend Donna (Winona Ryder) are terrorists. Soon, "Fred" is put on the Arctor case and asked to investigate himself. He watches hours of surveillance footage of his own house, trying to piece together the person that he has become. Is he an undercover cop posing as a drug buyer, or a drug buyer posing as an undercover cop?

It is with only a bit of irony that Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson (both admitted drug users) play burned out addicts here. While Downey's Barris is the stereotypical "enlightened observer" who refuses to admit his own addiction, Harrelson's Ernie Luckman provides comic relief. The scene wherein Barris buys an 18-speed bike for $50 is one of the best in the film, as Barris and Luckman debate the missing gears (it appears to be an eight-speed).

What emerges here is a story of lost identity, deceit, and shifting reality. As Fred/Bob juggles his drugs and his undercover work, he tries to remember another reality in which he had been married, with children. Whether that memory was true or just another side-effect of Substance D is never explained for certain. What does emerge are several good revelations that suggest that Bob may not be anything close to what he suspects.

Using a process called interpolated rotoscoping, director Richard Linklater creates an askew point-of-view for the world of A Scanner Darkly by overlaying live-action sequences with animation. This process was also used in Linklater's film Waking Life. The animation provides another layer of un-reality for the audience to work past. Like Fred's "scramble suit" that hides his identity, the rotoscoping hides the actors beneath painted representations.

The story examines the paranoia of drug use and the consequences of abuse. Dick, no stranger to drug use himself, weaves a world where the war on drugs exacts a high price in collateral damage. People's freedoms are stripped away in the name of justice, with the police always watching, always listening, always scanning. In a world where a war on terrorism seems to be leading America on a similar path, it is a frightening and sobering commentary on our reality.

The Dark Reflection of Identity A Scanner Darkly Questions Reality

The Dark Reflection of Identity
A Scanner Darkly Questions Reality