I was going to cover a different film for this week, but I was a bit too tired when I watched it and wasn’t able to fully absorb its intentionally disjointed nature. I felt that I wouldn’t be able to do justice to it, so I decided to cover something else instead. I ended up choosing A Scanner Darkly, the second Richard Linklater digital rotoscope film. It’s a film that’s debatably obscure, but I don’t hear many people talk about it, so I thought I could probably get away with featuring it here. It’s not a bad little movie, overall, though it sort of rides a similar line that Waking Life did between intriguing and pretentious, as well as makes one wonder if the somewhat unclear nature of its presentation helps or hinders the experience.
The film takes place in a semi-technologically advanced future wherein a new hallucinogenic drug called “Substance D” is proliferating throughout America. Bob Arctor works for the government as an undercover agent, infiltrating the L.A. drug network. He used to have a wife and kids and regular job, but seemingly got fed up with that life and joined the force to experience something more interesting. Currently, he is friends/associates with several “D” takers: Barris, a paranoid and overthinking pseudo-intellectual; Luckman, a somewhat insecure slacker; and Donna, their main supplier and currently Arctor’s girlfriend. Arctor’s main mission is to try and buy enough from Donna and gain her trust, which might lead to her introducing him to the main drug lord. However, he seems to have fallen for Donna legitimately, but is frustrated by the fact that she won’t let him get close to her physically (apparently, she has issues or some sort of trauma associated with that). Adding to that frustration is the fact that Arctor has actually become addicted to “D” himself, and is starting to feel the harder effects. Essentially, what he’s been doing is inviting his friends over to his house, and then going into his office at the station and reviewing security footage of these very gatherings (as there are hidden security cameras in his house). While he’s in the office, he and all of his coworkers wear these devices called “scramble suits,” which are full-body suits that distort your appearance and voice, making it impossible for you to be identified (they don’t even use their real names with each other). This concept plays out rather ironically in two scenes. Barris has started getting suspicious about the police being onto them, and so decides to go to the police and sell Arctor out in the hopes of getting a better deal (or more specifically a job), never knowing that Arctor is one of the officers in the room with him during the questionings. As the stress of his job situation and the effects of the drugs get to him more and more, he visits with Donna who confides in him about her want to leave everything behind and live on a farm in the mountains. Arctor seems to consider this, but is still frustrated by their lack of closeness, and seeks out sex from a prostitute (who also seems to be tied in with the drug ring). However, post-coitus and upon waking up, Arctor thinks he sees Donna on the bed next to him, only to look again and see the prostitute once more. This event was recorded for his job, and when he gets back to the office, he finds that he can shift the image of the prostitute into one of Donna and vice versa using some sort of holographic device. Now, he’s starting to wonder what might be going on in the grand scheme of things. I’ll end the summary here, since the reveals start coming one by one afterwards.
In terms of the visual style, when comparing it to Waking Life, there’s definitely more of a lean towards a more standardized look. Waking Life often had a more flowing, semi-morphing paint-like quality to its visuals, which went along with the surreal dream experience that it was trying to get across. A Scanner Darkly, on the other hand, tends to keep its visual artistry more grounded, at times almost coming across similar to cel-shading, like you might’ve seen in 2000s video games (e.g., Jet Set Radio, Sly Cooper, The Wind Waker, Okami, etc.). Granted, it still moves more than the shading in cel-shading tends to, but there tends to be less focus on creating morphing visuals in different styles than there was in Waking Life (with the exception of the scramble suits, which are intentionally amorphous, but even those don’t go as wild). However, for this story, that direction makes more sense. Waking Life was all about the nature of dreams and being in a dream-state, so having a more flowing visual filter adds to that experience. A Scanner Darkly is more about drug addiction and undercover conspiracies, so the look is more so there to give the film an “off” quality, where everything feels a bit odd and nothing looks entirely how it should. In that way, the film actually plays off the nature of its medium to a literal effect, since we’re looking at real human actors being filtered through an animated lens. The natural human movement is being thrown off by the animation over top of it, which both gets across how someone on drugs or who has been on drugs for a long time might see the world (not literally, of course, but in a creative sense) and the untrustworthy nature of everyone in the story. While generally I do like to see animation when it’s allowed to just be itself, I do think these sorts of “live-action-plus” films can be interesting and effective in their own way. However, I think where A Scanner Darkly might be contentious is in its storytelling. The film throws you into this scenario without giving you enough of an idea of what’s going on. You can pick it up as you’re watching, it’s not super out there, but I did find myself questioning at first if the idea was that Arctor was spying on himself and his friends, if there was another guy that looked like Arctor that was spying on them, or if the events with his friends took place earlier than the investigation or something. The whole thing with Barris trying to sell out Arctor while being unaware that Arctor is one of the guys he’s talking to was a fun and ironic idea, but it never seems to really pay off in any way. It seemed like the film was missing some connection points that would really get us into the story, and it often felt like you were left in this murky state where you generally got the story, but it wasn’t quite clear or developed enough in certain aspects to really become a great experience. It’s the sort of film that you can take away ideas and elements from, but not necessarily a full experience, at least to me. That said, when the film does hit, it hits pretty well. The scene with a side character, Freck, being read his sins by a strange multi-eyed man in a suit was darkly humorous. Arctor’s struggles with substance D and where he ultimately ends up because of it might hit close to home for those that have gone through drug addiction. The scene where Arctor thinks he sees Donna in the prostitute’s face and his later discovery that there might be more to it definitely had me wondering in that moment. Though the dialogue does ride the line between “interesting/meaningful” and “trying to sound interesting/meaningful” like several sci-fi films did for a while (and Waking Life, come to think of it), the actors generally do a good job with it and their roles, especially Robert Downey Jr as Barris, who probably knew too well what it was like to be a wired drug addict. I’m starting to run out of things to say, so I’ll end with the fact that the ending is a classic downer with a hint of hope sci-fi resolution, and it did help to give the film a bit of turmoil to think about after it was over.
On the whole, I don’t think A Scanner Darkly is a bad film, and I won’t dissuade people from watching it, but I just don’t think it was as strong as it could have been. It’s always sad to see films that try something a little different and don’t quite hit the mark. Granted, this isn’t exactly an abstract art film or anything, what with the more typical-ish story and the relatively big names attached to it, but it could have acted as a cool alternative for more mainstream film goers if it was developed slightly more. Still, I am glad I checked out the other Linklater digi-rotoscope movie. Not sure if I’ll look into featuring his other films or not, but it is a possibility, so maybe check back for that in the future. See you all next week, we’re heading back into the full-on avant-garde again, though you’ll have to wait to find out what it is.