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June 16, 2006

A Scanner Darkly

scannerdarkly.jpg

Talking to the Onion A.V. Club about his long awaited (by me, at least) adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater recently said that "I think usually in adaptations, you lose the comedic. People think drama drives story, but I thought the comedy was really the heart and soul."

I think he's right about the first part: comedy ain't easy, and fusing it seamlessly, naturalistically, with a dramatic narrative is an even greater challenge. I don't think he's necessarily wrong in his interpretation of Dick's novel, either; I never saw it as a comedy - quite the opposite, in fact - but everyone's entitled to their own own. The problem with his film, though, is that, rather than preserve the spirit of what he felt was the heart and soul of the novel, Linklater seems to have assumed it would be implicit in an adaptation that isn't necessarily extremely literal, but is extremely perfunctory in all the wrong places. His script hits all the necessary story notes, but it gives precedence to the more humorous sequences from the novel in which schizophrenic undercover agent Bob Arctor is hanging out with his druggie pals, Barris (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Luckman (Woody Harrelson), riding the highs and lows of addiction. Harrelson and Downey, Jr. take naturally (naturally) to their parts, and it's fun to watch them riff off each other; it is, indeed, funny, but these scenes don't participate in the overall story the way they need to, the way they do in the novel, because when they occur, Arctor - the central character - seems to disappear into the background for distressingly long periods of time.

Cue jokes about Keanu and his acting. I've always liked Reeves, when he's in the right roles, and I think he's actually quite good as Arctor, a narcotics agent who isn't quite aware he's reporting on himself. The problem is, essentially, that his character remains a single character; the paranoid schizophrenic element of Dick's novel never become a recognizable issue in the film until Arctor's condition is explicitly explained to him (and to us). When the script finally begins to indulge in some substantial voice over narration, the subjectivity is like a breath of fresh air - but it's too little, too late. All those sequences in which Barris and Luckman argue over whether a bicycle has eighteen gears or merely nine might have benefitted from a liberal dose Arctor's perspective.

I haven't reach many of Dick's novels, and I'm not a purist by any means; but I think that while Linklater certainly understands the point of the novel, he doesn't properly convey it. Thus, at the end, when Dick's afterword from the novel is put word for word on screen - an alphabetical elegy for all his friends, most of them dead, who suffered from drug additctions - it doesn't have the impact that it should. Audiences may feel like they should be moved, but they may not know why; those who've read the book will know why, and, like me, they'll likely consider the film a great opportunity, narrowly missed.

So now comes the curious part of this review in which, after explaining why I don't think it's the success that I was hoping for, I try to convince people to see it anyway. Seriously flawed though it may be, it's certainly not a bad film; it's certainly better than everything else that's been released thus far this summer, and I've always been of the opinion that an interesting failure from a great filmmakers is still a worthwhile experience. In a more specific sense, however, it's worth seeing for the animation - and even more specifically, for the way in which the use of animaton (which, unlike that in Waking Life, seems almost like a surrealy tranparency laid over the video footage) is justified by the scramble suits. These outifts, worn by undercover agents to obscure their very existence, hide their wearer behind an array of features, visages and countenances - a vague blur made up of, in Dick's words, "a million and a half physiognomic fraction-�representations of various people every conceivable eye color, hair color, shape and type of nose, formation of teeth, configuration of facial bone structure projected at any nanosecond and then switched to the next." The way this effect has been achieved in the film is, as any one of its characters might say, completely mind-blowing. The suit seen in the trailer was a work in progress; the finished version is worth the price of admission.

A few worthwhile links, concerning the film:

It was in this article that I learned that a gentleman named Nick Derrington, who I've hung out with because he's a good friend of my good friend Clay Liford (he designed the poster for Clay's film, A Four Course Meal, and just last week did some awesome concept art for Mr. Liford's next film, which I'll keep mum about for the moment) was actually the lead animator on the scramble suits.

And on the subject of connections: while watching the scene from which the image above is pulled, I thought I recognized the voice of one of those doctors, but couldn't place the face. It wasn't until the credits were rolling that I realized it was Wilbur Penn, a local actor who impressed the hell out of us with his entirely improvised performance in GDMF. Seeing animated versions of people you know is weird, especially when you don't recognize them.

Posted by David Lowery at June 16, 2006 2:45 AM