A Scanner Darkly

[TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW]

What, no thread yet? Is it in limited release or something?

I really, really loved the film. I loved the look of it, and was glad that the whole “wack-ee cartoon look!” wasn’t used as a gimmick in the way that it was in Waking Life. It really fits the hallucinatory vibe of the film.

I haven’t read the book, but I thought it was just a killer, very “Dick”-ian story. Woody’s character was a bit cartoony, but Robert Downey Jr. really steals the show as Barris, which really felt like an “as himself”-style performance - just the epitome of the cerebral wiseass junkie.

Still, the plot is so twisty-turny that I’m still confused about a few plot points.

What was the deal with the whole “terrorism” thing that Barris is trying to pin on Arctor and Donna? I get that he realized that the cops were on to him and he was trying to use Arctor as a red herring by fabricating the whole terror plot thing, but then he brought them a recording of Arctor and Donna talking about the plot. What was the deal with that recording? Was it just a fake, or had Barris recorded Donna talking about the Arctor plan in some sort of code and misunderstood?

also,

Who messed up the gas pedal on the car, and why? Was it just happenstance, used to illustrate how paranoid they were, or was it deliberate?

[Pushkin]

I remember both of those plot points from the book but I’m rubbish at re-reading books before the film is released :smack:

Looking forward to it here in the UK too

[blondebear]

Loved the book. Keanu just doesn’t do anything for me, but I am looking forward to seeing the movie.

[Push_You_Down]

A friend of mine loved the books, LOVES Linklater… and he hated this movie. Said it was the most boring movie he’d seen in a year.

[Patty_O_Furniture]

@VCO3

What, no thread yet?

There was this one about two weeks ago but it’s mostly people pooh-poohing the rotoscoping effect. The commercials make my eyes hurt so I’m not sure if I can risk seeing it.

[Tuckerfan]

@VCO3

What, no thread yet? Is it in limited release or something?

I really, really loved the film. I loved the look of it, and was glad that the whole “wack-ee cartoon look!” wasn’t used as a gimmick in the way that it was in Waking Life. It really fits the hallucinatory vibe of the film.

I haven’t read the book, but I thought it was just a killer, very “Dick”-ian story. Woody’s character was a bit cartoony, but Robert Downey Jr. really steals the show as Barris, which really felt like an “as himself”-style performance - just the epitome of the cerebral wiseass junkie.

Still, the plot is so twisty-turny that I’m still confused about a few plot points.

What was the deal with the whole “terrorism” thing that Barris is trying to pin on Arctor and Donna? I get that he realized that the cops were on to him and he was trying to use Arctor as a red herring by fabricating the whole terror plot thing, but then he brought them a recording of Arctor and Donna talking about the plot. What was the deal with that recording? Was it just a fake, or had Barris recorded Donna talking about the Arctor plan in some sort of code and misunderstood?

It was a fake. He compiled it out of various conversations he’d recorded.

also,

Who messed up the gas pedal on the car, and why? Was it just happenstance, used to illustrate how paranoid they were, or was it deliberate?

Arctor did it to ensure that they’d be gone long enough for the police to plant the monitoring devices in the house. Or actually, “Fred” did it since in the book, it’s revealed that the chasm between his two personalities was so great that he had no idea when he was in one life, that he also had the other life.I don’t think that most people are going to get the film unless they’ve had some kind of experience with folks so gone in the stages of drug use as the folks in the movie. I think that the rotoscoping was a bit overdone. I think that the intensity of it should have faded in and out to match plot elements more closely. Most of the changes from the book didn’t bother me, but there were a few that I didn’t quite understand.Dick’s religious experience which he used to for Arctor’s soliloquy is cut, even though most of the soliloquy is still in the film. The other is that the chasm between “Fred” and Arctor is so great that for most of the book, “Fred” and Arctor don’t realize that they’re the same person.I thought that the performances in the film were fine, with Downey turning in the best of all of them.

[Zebra]

I really liked the movie. It did make cuts from the book but not the sort of ‘cuts’ that PKD fans tend to expect in movies based on his work. It actually resembled the book for a change.

[jackelope]

I saw the film tonight, but haven’t read the book. I enjoyed it, was intrigued by it, but I have that feeling that I just didn’t understand a lot of it. For instance,

How long did the action in the movie take? I.e., how much time passed between the opening and the ending? I got the impression it was just a few days, at least until Arctor got sent to New Path; yet it also seemed like his mental condition deteriorated pretty dramatically in those couple of days.

Which raises this point:

@Tuckerfan

I don’t think that most people are going to get the film unless they’ve had some kind of experience with folks so gone in the stages of drug use as the folks in the movie.

I have had such experience, and

[spoiler]I never recognized that condition in Arctor, until the very end when he was at the Farm. And even then it seemed so sudden that I figured he had caught on to the plot against him and was faking the dementia to help the people who had set him up, including the Winona Ryder character.

Maybe this was a function of Reeves’s acting; when he was being told by the doctors how far he had deteriorated mentally, I felt like I was watching a healthy person being told he was sick; I never felt for a moment that his character was truly “sick.”[/spoiler]

And another issue:

@Tuckerrfan

The other is that the chasm between “Fred” and Arctor is so great that for most of the book, “Fred” and Arctor don’t realize that they’re the same person.

To which I respond (these spoiler tags are so tiresome):

Wow. I didn’t get that at all from the film, not having read the book. How is that possible, since “Fred” was watching “Arctor” all the time on the monitors? Sure, Fred was usually wearing the suit, but he took it off now and then; I feel pretty sure he would recognize himself on those screens.

I was intrigued by the film, but I left with a lot of questions. And I don’t mean questions about “What is the nature of identity?” but rather questions like “So wait, was Character X supposed to be the same person as Character Y?”

Oh yeah:

And by the way, it would be trivially easy to recognize someone you knew in one of those disguise-suits. The features would be different, but the body language would be totally the same; many times I noticed “Fred” making gestures that clearly identified him as Keanu Reeves.

[devilsknew]

I’d go see the freaking Movie if it came to where I LIVE! ARRRGGGHHH!
Stupid limited release…what kind of fuckwit decided to do this!!!

[Tuckerfan]

@jackelope

I saw the film tonight, but haven’t read the book. I enjoyed it, was intrigued by it, but I have that feeling that I just didn’t understand a lot of it. For instance,

How long did the action in the movie take? I.e., how much time passed between the opening and the ending? I got the impression it was just a few days, at least until Arctor got sent to New Path; yet it also seemed like his mental condition deteriorated pretty dramatically in those couple of days.

I don’t recall exactly, but it was over a period of months in the book, IIRC.

Which raises this point:I have had such experience, and

[spoiler]I never recognized that condition in Arctor, until the very end when he was at the Farm. And even then it seemed so sudden that I figured he had caught on to the plot against him and was faking the dementia to help the people who had set him up, including the Winona Ryder character.

Maybe this was a function of Reeves’s acting; when he was being told by the doctors how far he had deteriorated mentally, I felt like I was watching a healthy person being told he was sick; I never felt for a moment that his character was truly “sick.”[/spoiler]

I wasn’t really speaking about Reeves mental deterioration, but more about the whole deranged thought processes that were going on when they were trying to figure out how many gears the bike had and the whole disarrayed appearance of the house.

And another issue:To which I respond (these spoiler tags are so tiresome):

Wow. I didn’t get that at all from the film, not having read the book. How is that possible, since “Fred” was watching “Arctor” all the time on the monitors? Sure, Fred was usually wearing the suit, but he took it off now and then; I feel pretty sure he would recognize himself on those screens.

That’s one of the things you have to read the book to understand.Again, unless you’ve spent a lot of time addled by drugs/depression/addiction, it’s really hard to concieve of such a thing happening, but I can tell you from personal experience that it’s entirely possible to stare at yourself and/or your surroundings and suddenly realize that the way things are is entirely different than you had been percieving them up to that point.

I was intrigued by the film, but I left with a lot of questions. And I don’t mean questions about “What is the nature of identity?” but rather questions like “So wait, was Character X supposed to be the same person as Character Y?”

Oh yeah:

And by the way, it would be trivially easy to recognize someone you knew in one of those disguise-suits. The features would be different, but the body language would be totally the same; many times I noticed “Fred” making gestures that clearly identified him as Keanu Reeves.

The suits weren’t done very well in the film, IMHO. In the book they were described as changing in such a way that if you were at a party and someone was standing in the background wearing one of those suits, you wouldn’t notice them changing, and would simply assume that someone else had moved into that spot. If you looked at them closely, you’d realize what was going on, but even things like body language would be concealed by the suit.

[susan]

I enjoyed it. A lot of Dick’s work leaves one wondering “what the hell happened here? What’s the real story?” because of Dick’s use of multiple explanations for events. This mirrors Dick’s lifelong ruminations about whether he was experiencing transcendence, schizophrenia, or drug-related effects.

[Pushkin]

@jackelope

Which raises this point:I have had such experience, and

[spoiler]I never recognized that condition in Arctor, until the very end when he was at the Farm. And even then it seemed so sudden that I figured he had caught on to the plot against him and was faking the dementia to help the people who had set him up, including the Winona Ryder character.

Maybe this was a function of Reeves’s acting; when he was being told by the doctors how far he had deteriorated mentally, I felt like I was watching a healthy person being told he was sick; I never felt for a moment that his character was truly “sick.”[/spoiler]

I thought the meaning behind the ending was that;

Arctor had genuinely gone downhill, his superiors hadn’t intended that to happen. But since it did, they used him to infiltrate the farm where substance-D was grown. I’ve got to pick up the book from home and possibly re-read it before the film, but it seemed like they were hoping to have him stumble upon some piece of evidence that only he as a totally burnt out inmate could find, then others within the clinic would take it from him to the outside world

Just my £0.02 (which is worth more than your 2 cent remember)

Does anyone know if it will be on limited release in the UK? The only mention of it I’ve seen is in the cinema here at the university that regularly offers limited release films.