SCANNER DARKLY, A - DVD review

Going into director Richard Linklater's oddball 2006 animated sci-fi drama "A Scanner Darkly," I admit I had some doubts. Besides finding Linklater's work up and down, I had never cared for the rotoscope animation technique he used here that tends to make human faces look creepy to me. I hadn't liked the method in Ralph Bakshi's 1978 "Lord of the Rings" or in Linklater's 2001 "Waking Life" (a film I would have found boring and pretentious with or without the animation) or in recent television commercials for some kind of investment firm. But I found "Scanner" a little different, perhaps because it is science fiction of a sort, and while I didn't care overmuch for the movie itself, I enjoyed its visual style.

Rotoscoping, which filmmakers now do on computers, is a type of animation that traces real human forms onto the screen, much like that done by early pioneer animators in the days of silent movies. (Max Fleischer first used it in 1914, and Disney later used it successfully in a number of his classic full-length cartoons.) It means that live actors have to perform scenes and then have their outlines and features copied in drawings. When filmmakers use the technique to recreate a sense of reality rather than outright fantasy, the result is curious to watch, and it has always prompted me to wonder why the filmmakers didn't just use live actors in the first place. But in "Scanner" the technique seems to enhance the otherworldly paranoia of the screenplay, one Linklater adapted from a semiautobiographical novel by Hollywood favorite Philip K. Dick ("Blade Runner," "Total Recall," "Screamers," "Imposter," "Minority Report," "Paycheck").

Dick wrote his novel in 1977, and he apparently based it on actual people he knew and actual (though obviously exaggerated) situations he encountered. The author set his story in the near future, but it's really about today, Dick's day and our own, centering on drug use, government surveillance, loss of identity, and other such sociological issues, all of them wrapped up in a nontraditional sci-fi setting.

The idea is that a few years from now about 20% of the population are drug addicts, hooked on a narcotic called Substance D. The main character is an undercover narcotics agent, Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), who goes by the cover of "Officer Fred." The story's gimmick is that Arctor wears a "scramble suit," a high-tech garment that allows the wearer to be a chameleon, changing shape at will, the wearer's voice and face unrecognizable by any known means of detection. That's about as undercover as you can get.

Anyway, Arctor is a drug agent eight hours a days and a secret drug addict the other sixteen, so he finds himself in a precarious situation. He's burned out on the job, depressed about the extent of the addiction he sees around him, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, leading him to use the very illegal substance he's out to suppress. Things get especially dicey when his superior officer assigns him to watch his own roommates, whom the officer suspects of drug use. Essentially, the government asks him to investigate himself, a wonderfully ironic twist.

All of Arctor's friends and roommates appear to be druggies, so he's torn between loyalty to the force and loyalty to his friends, as well as his becoming more and more afraid of the government finding out about his own habit. Before long, what with the scramble suit and the covert spying and the government electronically scanning and tracking everybody, Arctor begins to feel like he's losing his individuality; he doesn't know who he is anymore. Unfortunately, Linklater also begins to lose the audience along the way with all of his cinematic sleight of hand; it's easy for the characters in the film and the viewers watching it to find themselves coasting off into dreamland.

A number of fine actors portray Arctor's friends. Chief among them is Robert Downey Jr. as James Barris, one of Arctor's roommates, a techno geek, an informant, and a BS artist supreme. Nobody trusts Barris, and for good reason. Downey is an actor who can do it all--drama, comedy, tragedy--and in Barris he has a chance to display some of his best talents; he is alone worth the price of the disc. Also in the cast are Woody Harrelson as Ernie Luckman, another of Arctor's roommates, a goofy, hippie-surfer type; Winona Ryder as Donna Hawthorne, Arctor's dealer friend, who doesn't like anyone touching her; and Rory Cochrane as Charles Freck, a super-paranoid acquaintance who worries about fleas, lice, and aphids attacking his body.

But despite the intriguing setup, this is a Richard Linklater film, so be prepared for long periods of pure dialogue, some of it quirky, some of it funny, and more than a little of it aimless and tiresome. When the film is on track, it works; when it devolves into meaningless chatter, it simply drifts.

Two other distractions: First, the shape-shifting business is absorbing for a while, but for reasons I never understood Arctor keeps changing appearances every second, and the changes very quickly become annoying to the eye. Second, the movie's tone changes rather abruptly, too, from scene to scene, sometimes light and amusing, other times heavy and serious. It's hard to know how Linklater meant for audiences to take the film--as an earnest satire, as a warning about drugs, as a caution against government spying? I dunno. It certainly isn't an action thriller.

Still, the acting and the animation almost make up for the script's deficiencies. Also, since it's based on a Philip K. Dick novel, expect the film to be pretty tricky, so watch it carefully. If you get lost along the way, don't worry; the characters are mostly lost themselves. Oh, and this is not your Disney cartoon; it's rated R for profanity, sex, and nudity.

Video:
Animation usually shows up well on disc even in standard definition when it's transferred well, as this one is. Using a high bit rate and enhancing the picture for 1.78:1 widescreen TVs, the WB engineers produce an almost flawless image. There is excellent color depth, excellent definition, excellent black levels, and excellent clarity, thanks to zero grain. I can't imagine high definition doing much to improve upon it.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack goes for long stretches doing very little, and then it suddenly bursts forth with strong dynamics and an abundance of rear-channel activity. I can't knock it; it does exactly what's expected of it. Linklater loves dialogue, so bear with it. When he needs extraordinary sonic effects, he gives them to you.

Extras:
The disc includes three primary bonus items. The first is an uncommonly perceptive audio commentary with star Keanu Reeves, writer-director Richard Linklater, producer Tom Pallotta, author and Philip K. Dick historian Jonathan Lethem, and Philip K. Dick's daughter, Isa Dick Hackett. Together, they provide a illuminating summary of the man and his work. The other two items are documentaries: "One Summer in Austin: The Story of Filming A Scanner Darkly," twenty-six minutes, and "The Weight of the Line: Animation Tales," twenty minutes. Their titles are self-explanatory, and they contain further remarks from the group who do the audio commentary. Needless to say, all three bonus items say as much or more about Dick as they do about the movie.

The extras wrap up with twenty-six scene selections, but no chapter insert; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English as the only spoken language; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.

Parting Shots:
"A Scanner Darkly" is an appropriately unusual film, one that intentionally distorts reality, leads the viewer up a few blind alleys, offers plenty of pseudo-philosophical conversation, concludes with a couple of surprises, and moves at a snail's pace--the very thing we have come to expect from auteur Richard Linklater and, to a degree, from author Philip K. Dick. I can't say I'd want to watch the movie again any time soon, but I can't deny I found it fascinating the first time through.