kevolution
The Salty General
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2006
- Messages
- 1,651
- Reaction score
- 105
- Points
- 63
I went and saw this movie last night and I really enjoyed it.
Even without roto-scoping it would be a great flick. It had good characters, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr did an excellent job! Keanu whether you hate him or love him was good & tolerable. The plot is very deep and can be confusing to some but you'll finally get it.
Here is a good review I found:
Darkly is set seven years in the future, but the images are rich brightly drab Seventies Orange County grunge. Dick's story is as much rueful reflection as sci-fi. It's also comedy, as drug stories often are are, the manic nuttiness embodied in Rory Cochrane as Freck, who imagines himself covered with bugs (rotoscoped all over him); Robert Downey, Jr. (who surely knows whereof he speaks) as the motor-mouthed, jumpy, manipulative Barris; and goofy loose canon Luckman (Woody Harrelson), who might get violent or who pass out any minute, you don't know which. These represent Dick's immediate circle of trusted friends. Or they were trusted. Now addiction to big red pills of an amphetamine-like super drug called Substance D (evidently produced by the same encompassing structure of exploiters that hunts down its sellers and users, whom it infiltrates) has turned them manic and paranoid. The system is eating its tail: the War on Drugs is part of the drug business. "The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer," Bill Burroughs said, "he sells the consumer to the product." The matrix feeds equally well in all directions. People are bugs stuck in the honey-pot.
Exploiter and victim at the center is "Matrix" alumnus Keanu Reeves as Bob Arctor -- friend, doper, and covert agent for the company -- whom however the company is seeking to destroy. He hangs out with his friends and then goes to work and watches scanner images of himself with them. No wonder he knows less and less who he is. Even the corporation he works for doesn't know, though it increasingly suspects, which one of the household he's watching on the scanner he is. Agents of the corporate system that binds the nexus together, such as Arctor, "Fred" to the company, wear a shape-shifting "scramble suit" coating when meeting with their bosses that hides their identity from everyone by making them assume dozens of fractional identities every minute, changing outfit, face, and sex with the flickerings of the rotoscope images. But the flickerings on the people all the time show their heightened but fragmented perception and the splitting of their identities. They're pretending to be who they don't know they are. Luckman tells about a famous imposter who decided the best scam would be to pretend to be a famous imposter. The world of "Scanner Darkly" is like your mind on drugs such as marijuana: you struggle to grasp an idea and when you've almost got it, you forget what it was you were struggling to grasp. The movie captures that -- more than once.
Its look is trippy, and though less spectacular than some, this is one of the greatest drug movies, not only because of the intense visuals but because the Dick of this story and Linklater himself are both master delineators of drug thought and drug talk. As in "Spun," linear logic or tidy structure are inappropriate. The movie is episodic and just ends. Highlights are Barris'/Downey's conversation and the friends' argumentative analysis of situations when a bike is found or a car breaks down on the highway. Dick and Linklater capture the hilarity of drugged friends comically bonding at cross purposes with each other, their bicker/banter. But, not atypically for far-along druggies, there's no sex: Donna (Winona Ryder) can't bear for her boyfriend Arctor to touch her. "Fred" (Arctor) is periodically hauled in for testing. They know he's addicted to the stuff he's supposed to be investigating and can see the two hemispheres of his brain aren't working properly any more. It may be Arctor signifies a man at war with his inner Addict. Some reviewers complained about press screening walkouts or inability to follow, but the San Francisco third day audience was warmly appreciative. Dangling abrupt ending? Perhaps, but the key to the treasure is the treasure: getting there is half the fun. Linklater fans, of whom I'm one, must not miss this movie, and it's not just idle play. Nor is it coincidental this came out at Cannes with his other film, "Fast Food Nation." Both are calls to arms that speak to twenty-first-century America. The food industry, the war on drugs, the war on terror are all means of exploitation and repression. Dick's nonsensical word play and Linklater's current film-making are dead serious, and world class American art.
Even without roto-scoping it would be a great flick. It had good characters, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr did an excellent job! Keanu whether you hate him or love him was good & tolerable. The plot is very deep and can be confusing to some but you'll finally get it.
Here is a good review I found:
Darkly is set seven years in the future, but the images are rich brightly drab Seventies Orange County grunge. Dick's story is as much rueful reflection as sci-fi. It's also comedy, as drug stories often are are, the manic nuttiness embodied in Rory Cochrane as Freck, who imagines himself covered with bugs (rotoscoped all over him); Robert Downey, Jr. (who surely knows whereof he speaks) as the motor-mouthed, jumpy, manipulative Barris; and goofy loose canon Luckman (Woody Harrelson), who might get violent or who pass out any minute, you don't know which. These represent Dick's immediate circle of trusted friends. Or they were trusted. Now addiction to big red pills of an amphetamine-like super drug called Substance D (evidently produced by the same encompassing structure of exploiters that hunts down its sellers and users, whom it infiltrates) has turned them manic and paranoid. The system is eating its tail: the War on Drugs is part of the drug business. "The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer," Bill Burroughs said, "he sells the consumer to the product." The matrix feeds equally well in all directions. People are bugs stuck in the honey-pot.
Exploiter and victim at the center is "Matrix" alumnus Keanu Reeves as Bob Arctor -- friend, doper, and covert agent for the company -- whom however the company is seeking to destroy. He hangs out with his friends and then goes to work and watches scanner images of himself with them. No wonder he knows less and less who he is. Even the corporation he works for doesn't know, though it increasingly suspects, which one of the household he's watching on the scanner he is. Agents of the corporate system that binds the nexus together, such as Arctor, "Fred" to the company, wear a shape-shifting "scramble suit" coating when meeting with their bosses that hides their identity from everyone by making them assume dozens of fractional identities every minute, changing outfit, face, and sex with the flickerings of the rotoscope images. But the flickerings on the people all the time show their heightened but fragmented perception and the splitting of their identities. They're pretending to be who they don't know they are. Luckman tells about a famous imposter who decided the best scam would be to pretend to be a famous imposter. The world of "Scanner Darkly" is like your mind on drugs such as marijuana: you struggle to grasp an idea and when you've almost got it, you forget what it was you were struggling to grasp. The movie captures that -- more than once.
Its look is trippy, and though less spectacular than some, this is one of the greatest drug movies, not only because of the intense visuals but because the Dick of this story and Linklater himself are both master delineators of drug thought and drug talk. As in "Spun," linear logic or tidy structure are inappropriate. The movie is episodic and just ends. Highlights are Barris'/Downey's conversation and the friends' argumentative analysis of situations when a bike is found or a car breaks down on the highway. Dick and Linklater capture the hilarity of drugged friends comically bonding at cross purposes with each other, their bicker/banter. But, not atypically for far-along druggies, there's no sex: Donna (Winona Ryder) can't bear for her boyfriend Arctor to touch her. "Fred" (Arctor) is periodically hauled in for testing. They know he's addicted to the stuff he's supposed to be investigating and can see the two hemispheres of his brain aren't working properly any more. It may be Arctor signifies a man at war with his inner Addict. Some reviewers complained about press screening walkouts or inability to follow, but the San Francisco third day audience was warmly appreciative. Dangling abrupt ending? Perhaps, but the key to the treasure is the treasure: getting there is half the fun. Linklater fans, of whom I'm one, must not miss this movie, and it's not just idle play. Nor is it coincidental this came out at Cannes with his other film, "Fast Food Nation." Both are calls to arms that speak to twenty-first-century America. The food industry, the war on drugs, the war on terror are all means of exploitation and repression. Dick's nonsensical word play and Linklater's current film-making are dead serious, and world class American art.
