Was That Real?
A Scanner Darkly is one of those films that, at some point, everyone was talking about. I was very curious about the animation itself — Linklater explained the use of rotoscoping through its connection to his own experiences of lucid dreaming. The technique is traditional cel animation originating from tracing film frame by frame. Linklater filmed digitally and then animated over it. The final effect is honestly some of the most interesting I have seen.
The cast is worth mentioning separately: Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr., and Winona Ryder — all really good here. The Harrelson and Downey Jr. scenes in particular are a delight, their rapid-fire, paranoid exchanges providing most of the film's dark comedy and making the slower stretches considerably more bearable.
Watching A Scanner Darkly can make you feel a bit dizzy. I assumed this was a desired outcome — the film tells the story of a world where a highly addictive drug is ruining lives, and the disorientation you feel as a viewer mirrors exactly what the characters are experiencing. Some parts were quite confusing and I had to pause several times to gather my thoughts and figure out what was happening — was that sequence real, or just another hallucination induced by the red-tablet drug known as Substance D?
To make the wait more enjoyable, you can delight yourself in all the crazy dialogues between Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. They are worth the price of admission alone.
As the story proceeds, clarity slowly assembles. A very addictive drug is being produced and distributed across America. Society is under intensive surveillance, and one government organisation known as New Path has put up a fight against Substance D — using secret agents and monitoring networks, attempting to penetrate the dealer network from the inside and destroy it. That alone would make for a solid premise. But if that was all it amounted to, I would have been disappointed.
Fortunately, the story evolves further. The last twenty minutes bring a significant turn — wrapping the drug-dealing environment in a conspiracy theory with multiple levels to be revealed. The final scenes feel like a slight stretch, but surprisingly everything pays off. And do we not all love a pay-off?
Too bad the ratio wasn't 50:50 instead of 90:10 between the drug-dealers-hunt and conspiracy-reveal. You need to wait — but it does reward you.