A Scanner Darkly, 2006. My Journey into Science Fiction Part 7.

Hello, and welcome to My Journey into Science Fiction Part 7. A Scanner Darkly was directed by Richard Linklater, and based on a book by the same name, by Philip K. Dick. The film stars, Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder. The movie begins in a dystopian future, where the war on drugs has been lost to a drug called Substance D. The film is fully animated, using a technology called rotoscoping, The process has been used many times over the years, and to great effect. However, I do think this is the first time it has been used with computer animated graphics. The animation is beautiful, and is reminiscent of a highly popular video game. However, the animation is wonderfully executed from the start, as a strung-out Charles Freck Rory Cochrane, endlessly tries to rid himself of parasites that are crawling all over his skin.

 Fred, Keanu Reeves also known as Bob Arctor, is an undercover agent who is trying to find the suppliers of Substance D. His camouflage, while undercover, is a scramble suit, capable of making over 1.5 million different identities. Again, the animation plays a pivotal role in this story, as we see the suit is constantly changing, right in front of your eyes. I had to watch this movie twice, as it felt very much like a Philip K. Dick novel, and was not willing to give up its secrets so easily. However, those two viewings felt completely different, and I would like to discuss those differences, and why I found them so vastly fascinating. 

My first viewing of the film was all about the friendships within the story. I felt like I was drawn towards Bob’s interactions, and dealings with his drug buddies, James Barris Robert Downey Jr and Ernie Luckman Woody Harrelson. I found their companionship to be childlike, and naive. You never feel any real harm or intent from them. Stupidity and ignorance maybe. I know I have acted that way sometimes, and people are not perfect. Each character is pretty charming, in a weird kind of way. And I’m guessing these are the people Phillip K. Dick found solace with. You could definitely find worse friends, in my opinion. 

The second viewing felt darker, and all I could find was power, corruption and lies. I think the reason I didn’t notice this the first time around, is because the clues are only obvious when you find out the reveal at the end. This time, I was more fixated on Fred and Hank, Winona Ryder also known as Donna Hawthorne, and what happens in the Police Department. I’m not going to discuss the clues, but they are there to see, and I feel stupid for letting them go over my head. It also just represents the fact that this was never about normal everyday people. This was about a government and a drug supplier. The same story is repeated today. Those people that are portrayed as criminals, are very much the victims. 

This is a wonderfully poignant film that deserved a better return at the box-office. However, it deserves its recognition as a cult classic. I admire Warner Independent Pictures for making this a reality, and believing in the artists who created it. Kudos to Richard Linklater and the Philip K. Dick estate, for keeping this movie as close to the original material as possible. I am pretty sure the actors involved don’t need to make films like this, but they did it for all the right reasons. My last moment of praise goes to Philip K. Dick. The writer witnessed first hand the implications drugs can have on people’s lives. Sometimes in society, we can often look down on others, but he can make you realise that your views can often be wrong. I guess that’s why I am slowly becoming a huge fan of his work, as he enriches my life in a way that I least expected. I’m not saying the war on drugs is a simple problem to solve, and it’s more complicated than it has ever been. But a film like this will make you think long and hard about society, and that is always a good thing.

 

So, where can I visit next, on My Journey into Science Fiction Part 8? Well, I was going to watch, Alien Resurrection, 1997, as it also starred Winona Ryder. Next, was The Matrix, 1999, starring Keanu Reeves. But my final choice was, Children of Men, 2006. The reason for that choice belongs to one of my favourite bands, Radiohead. The band featured on both, A Scanner Darkly and the Children of Men Soundtrack.

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Below are the words by Phillip K Dick at the end of his novel, A Scanner Darkly. I thought I would put these words up, for those who would like to read it.

This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed—run over, maimed, destroyed—but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it…. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a lifestyle. In this particular lifestyle, the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying.” But the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your lifestyle, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. “Take the cash and let the credit go,” as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.

There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel, there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape-recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful.

If there was any ‘sin’, it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love:

To Gaylene deceased

To Ray deceased

To Francy permanent psychosis

To Kathy permanent brain damage

To Jim deceased

To Val massive permanent brain damage

To Nancy permanent psychosis

To Joanne permanent brain damage

To Maren deceased

To Nick deceased

To Terry deceased

To Dennis deceased

To Phil permanent pancreatic damage

To Sue permanent vascular damage

To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage

…and so forth.

In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The ‘enemy’ was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.