A Scanner Darkly
posted 10 August 06 by J.S. Vodalarius
It was light when we got to in the city and bought our tickets and candy and settled down inside the theater (smallish, with green velvet on the seats and real curtains around the screen and not many other people in there with us) to watch the movie. And when we got out it was night already and raining and on the drive home I got to see through my glasses, darkly, a spectacularly huge orange moon slashed by clouds that hid it not long after.
It was a very strange movie, to say the least. I liked it a lot.
It was about Bob Arctor. Sometimes Bob is also called Fred, and when he’s Fred he wears a scramble suit that shifts and slides and never shows any one face or body for very long. It even changes his voice. This looked right in context because the whole movie was rotoscoped; they filmed it live and animated over the actors and the scenery. It was very effective. And really amazingly weird.
The plot was sort of confusing, probably because most of the characters are on a lot of drugs, even Bob. Especially Bob. It was about drugs and law enforcement and paranoia and surveillance and madness. Mostly that first one, and the last one.
If I seem incoherent it’s because the movie makes you feel like you’re on drugs. Or at least it made me feel like I was on drugs. Not that I’ve ever been on many drugs, but the feeling was somewhat reminiscent of Benadryl.
Anyway, for one, the soundtrack was awesome. The bits that weren’t instrumental were played by Radiohead, and they had “Black Swan,” from Thom Yorke’s solo album, over the credits, with that sweet white-robe-and-wings voice of his.
Also the acting. The acting was good. Keanu Reeves played Bob Arctor, and he was actually really awesome. He still had that somewhat monotone voice, but for this role it worked. Rory Cochrane, as the very drugged-out and twitchy Freck, was interesting, and I’ll have to look up some of his other movies. Robert Downey, Jr., was the spectacularly odd, paranoid, nonsensical Barris, and he made me giggle. And Winona Ryder’s character was named Donna, I think, although it might have been Daphne at the end, and she was just…well, I won’t say neat, she was a little creepy, but she was interesting.
I liked this movie a lot.
Now I’m going to go read the book. Philip K. Dick, here I come!