Wednesday, January 03, 2007

A Scanner Darkly


FROM NYT, 1/3/7:
Arrests for drug offenses among those over 40 rose to 360,000 last year, up from 22,000 in 1980.
1980 was 3 years after the publication of Philip K Dick's novel "A Scanner Darkly". The book was a paranoid cautionary tale rooted firmly in PKD's life. The read is chilling, familiar, depressing and funny. Not as funny as Ubik, not as weird as Valis, but definately prescient.
This is a movie review though, so onward! The movie is rotoscoped like Linklater's "Waking Life" version 2.It opens with a junkie seeing bugs crawling all over him and for a moment I worried that the tone was to be too light..
My worries were soon assuaged.
The story digs right in and we follow the Keanu Reeves character through dissociation to disentegration and watch his friends not even notice. Mostly.
Apparently the production was troubled, the release moreso. Wide release was stymied by animation weary critics that would stop the distribution and put this on their top ten list (of course). I am a PKD fan from the early seventies so my judgement is clouded but you know I have to recommend this one..

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