A Scanner Darkly
It was a difficult choice. A Scanner Darkly and You, Me and Dupree were showing in the neighborhood. So is Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest, but I can't imagine sitting through that in a theatre. Sitting through Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly was pretty trying as it was, at least during the second fifteen minutes. The film, which was shot as live action and then run through a rotoscope to give it an animated look, does a very good job of simulating the pleasures of a moderately-bad hangover. Angst and remorse pour off the screen. We're in the land of Philip K Dick, one of Southern California's most chronic malfunctioners. The 1977 novel on which the film is based must be a joy to read. Not.
It's the rotoscoping that makes A Scanner Darkly so powerfully uncomfortable. It's obvious that there's a live-action film, with Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey, Jr, Woody Harrelson and (I think) Winona Ryder really going through the moves, somewhere beneath the impasto. The sketchiness of animation - the huge reduction in visual detail - very effectively turns the original footage into something impossibly dreamlike. Technically, A Scanner Darkly is the most brilliant movie about Californian anomie ever made. Which is why you may want to think twice before running out to see it.
For an excellent discussion of A Scanner Darkly, visit CultureSpace.
