REVIEWED - A SCANNER DARKLY: RICHARD Linklater's queasily effective adaptation of a much-puzzled-over novel by Philip K Dick will, I imagine, prove endlessly popular with young people in chemically induced states of recreational bewilderment.
This is a shame. Linklater, here revisiting the melding of live-action with animation he pioneered for Waking Life, works so hard at inducing a pseudo-narcotic disorientation in the viewer - and, thus, putting across the similarly confused state of his characters - that it seems something of a waste to enter the cinema already whacked up on goofballs.
Could there possibly be a cast more ideally suited to such a tale of pharmaceutical annihilation and disconnected synapses? Keanu Reeves plays a government agent sent among stoners to source the supply of a powerful drug named Substance D. Winona Ryder plays his girlfriend, the apparent dealer. Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson turn up as, respectively, an agitated megalomaniac and a disconnected buffoon, whose meandering conversations go nowhere at an astonishingly leisurely pace.
Just reading those names sets the brain on the route to terminal confusion. Imagine the effect when the actors' performances are treated with a digital wash to create a universe that, though slippery and uncertain, looks a little too much like our own for comfort.
The plot, as with many of this author's novels, moves through a morass of paranoid switchbacks and dubious uncertainties. The longer the film goes on, the less profitable it becomes for us to attempt to disentangle the increasingly frayed motivations of the various agents, traffickers and government bodies. The message, simultaneously naive and cynical, is, though, quite straightforward: They're all in on it.
Some may find the film's obtuseness frustrating. But, as the student next to you will surely explain, that's the whole point, dude. The picture, though it addresses serious points on drug enforcement and urban disaffection, could be a tale told by Downey Jr to Harrelson on Reeves's couch: funny, deranged, confusing, disturbing.
The effects of ingesting A Scanner Darkly are undeniably pleasurable. I would, however, not recommend driving or operating heavy machinery afterwards.
