LiveWire

Maynard goes to the movies

This weekend I caught the creepy, dystopian A Scanner Darkly (and they’ve got a MySpace page and of course an IMDB entry as well). I’m going to recommend it most highly to myself, but any of you people who aren’t me (and I assume there are a couple of you) may be less enthusiastic. The story upon which the film is based was written by the (deceased) sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, whose tales draw the reader into worlds of delusions and paranoia. This represents a state of mind that some do not regard as wholesome entertainment; I can’t imagine why not, but people who feel that way should skip the film and read no further. Brooding pseudointellectuals and sci-fi mavens may be intrigued, along with anyone who has melted his or her mind and lived to tell the tale.

This is not a happy story, nor a clear one. Some might read into it a political metaphor (and I have some reason to believe the filmmakers view it as such), but I see it as a personal struggle, which is why I’m sympathetic. A new drug has hit the streets, “Substance D”, and the police have recruited ordinary citizen Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) to spy on his friends, who are suspected of being connected to the chain of distribution. Thus Arctor, himself an addict, is drawn into a double life, with one foot inside the drug culture and the other alongside the authorities. His goal should in essence be simple: Find the source of the drugs and clean up the mess. But the clarity of the ideal somehow isn’t being translated into reality. Indeed, this clarity, which should be within reach, seems to be inexorably slipping away.

I’ve got some ambivalence about my enthusiasm for a film that is itself ambivalent-by-design in an era where there is already too much deliberate obfuscation. I’m certainly concerned, as I often am with “artistic” endeavors, that I’m giving my financial support to people who are morally corrupt and, perhaps with the best of intentions, are aiding and abetting the forces of evil. (There is apparently a philosophical connection to Alex Jones of PrisonPlanet.com, who seems to be something of a paranoid whackjob, as indeed was Philip K. Dick himself. Why is it that people of compelling artistic vision so often suffer from such acute moral myopia in the real world? We’ll have to explore this topic sometime.) Anyway, I feel challenged by this film because I believe we only come to clarity through great struggle, and I see that struggle represented in the events portrayed. It’s a film that “works”, if only you can keep up with it (which is no small trick). I emerged from the screening writhing, but enthused. That’s what I took away, but others will disagree. You have been warned, and may now proceed at your own risk.

Crafted on a rotoscope (meaning that live action was translated into animation), “A Scanner Darkly” has an unusual and surreal aura that’s just a notch offset from real life. Rated “R”, it’s unsuitable for children or immature teens.