A Scanner Darkly (4 viewings)

In my last post about this movie, I said, "The animation truly suits the movie, though at times the effect of the beautiful look in some scenes is lessened by the animation's use in drives in the scenes where everyone is just acting stoned and crazy (barring the hallucinations, which really come alive)."

After watching the film twice more since then, I have changed my mind about the animation, or rather my opinion of it became clearer. The animation is always beautiful. The look borrows from comic books and paintings more than anime or disney. Things are authentic looking and easily observed even though the reality it depicts is slightly "above" or "more (beyond)" when compared to ours. And that is what I was trying to say earlier. The scenes where everyone is just hanging out being paranoid don't seem spectacular because at that point, I had become accustomed to the style and tone of the film. Seeing these events that I could witness in my own neighborhood or on the highway depicted in animation seemed different from the other scenes in the film. Again, they looked real enough to be real, but were actually just off center enough to make those scenes heightened and more acutely observed. I think that I started to look past the visuals into the stories and the moments within represents a great quality of the animation. I watched the movie with the commentary on and it was a very unusual, good commentary. Linklater, Reeves, a producer, one of Phillip K. Dick's daughters, and a Phillip K. Dick expert all watched the movie and talked about themes and ideas and the source material more than "how'd they do that?" sort of information. There were instances of "HTDT?", but the larger portion of the commentary was different from what I've come to expect from commentaries. That isn't to say I haven't encountered the like before. The movie continues to grow on me. Part of the reason I've watched it so often is it's new to me and one of the only new movies I had in the house. Plus, it's good. It's interesting enough to reveal more and more to me each time I see it. The commentary certainly revealed a great deal to me. The true test of the film will be how fresh it feels in three months or so.


Jeffrey Overstreet review on lookingcloser.org