Stutter out a few words. That’s probably all I’ll do for a long while is stutter a few words here and there.
Writing (off-blog, y’know) is, for the time being, like there’s this field filled with little shards of broken glass, some surface, some muffled by the earth, and my chore is cataloging each tiny piece and figuring out where it might go. None of it is sharp glass and it’s all well worn so figuring out where it goes is problematic.
I’m so stuck in the field though (which I can see very clearly in my head, its short brown/green variegated grass, its earth, the few trees on surrounding hills) that coming over here and writing is difficult. But I did want to say something about “A Scanner Darkly”, which Marty rented yesterday from Blockbuster.
We both, lovers of P. K. Dick novels, had hated what Hollywood did with “Bladerunner” and weren’t eager to see what would be done with A Scanner Darkly. I expected the rotoscope animation to be no more than a gimmick.
And Keanu Reeves? I’ve had no use for him. I hated the Matrix films. C’mon. Fashion kills all. What else is there to say?
The opening moments of “A Scanner Darkly” I had my doubts. So did Marty. But the film was telling me already to be patient, to let it build. And I sensed this could be it. This could be on its way to being a great film.
A couple of minutes in and I was more than receptive. Whether it stayed true to Philip K. Dick, I wouldn’t know until the end.
Wow. Build it did.
People will think I’m insane but that build (gotta have the build, can’t go into it cold) culminating in the long scene where Arctor makes his way home from work, Keanu narrating as Arctor approaches the derelict remains of his suburban tract house, observing lost possibles, the distance between What Is and the dream, entering, continuing to narrate as he goes to lie down on his sofa…well, as I said, I know people will think I’m crazy but I think that scene makes up some of the most honest moments that Hollywood has ever managed to put on film. Partly because it’s P. K. Dick at his finest, and the script stays pretty true to him (I’ll have to pull out the book), partly because Linklater’s use of rotoscoping works in that lucid dreaming way he apparently intended it to work (there is just enough room between the film stock and the vectoring for our imaginations to flow in, take hold and make the experiences more ours than those of just the actors), and partly because Keanu Reeves’ acting and narration is just so damn good. He pegs Arctor’s meditation and its shifts with a remarkable, heart-rending sensitivity.
I hadn’t even bothered to look at reviews but have since read that some give it at as not emotionally involving and going nowhere and I wondered just how desensitized these critics are. Or guarded.
The cast is great. Rory Cochrane as Freck (I’ve known that character), Robert Downey Jr. as Barris (“Galapagos!” I’ve known that character too), Woody Harrelson as Luckman (known that character as well) and Winona Ryder as Donna (I’m not sure I’ve known that character but can imagine her, to a point).
An important scene has Donna spurning Bob Arctor’s advances, again one of the better not-going-to-make-it-to-being-a-love-scene moments on film, not overwrought, the need to hold, to give affection and receive it beautifully depicted, having less to do with sexual desire than the despair of isolation. Because Arctor is a man who is fragmenting, being torn apart, crucified, but is emotionally present and aware of that reduction. Bewildered and in awe of it, he suffers it as he must, every exit shutting down, only one path remaining.
The reviewer James Berardinelli writes, “What’s new about a culture benumbed by drugs…” But that’s not the point of the film. It’s not what Arctor’s crucifixion is about. The drug addiction is a vehicle for examining identity, what is “I” and what is “other”. As an old Rolling Stone interview points out,
Philip K. Dick has described his novels as books that ‘try to pierce the veil of what is only apparently real to find out what is really real.’
P. K. Dick managed to be both a humane and seeringly honest author. Linklater’s effort to honor that goes beyond what I imagined possible out of Hollywood.
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