Film highlights director’s artistic vision

Art, in all its forms, can not and must not be experienced in a vacuum. A reference point, a conception of the time and place in which the work is being produced is essential to its understanding.

Director Richard Linklater’s latest creation, “A Scanner Darkly,” is no exception to the aforementioned rule. With its seldom used animation techniques and sci-fi story line, the film, viewed at surface level, appears to be nothing more than a director’s follow-up experiment and a zany visionary’s foreboding drug tale translated to the screen. But passing off the film as nothing more than a showy hour and a half of stoner’s paradise may be oversimplifying.

Based on the late Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, “A Scanner Darkly” exists in the futuristic world of “seven years from now.” However, the California of seven years from now is not altogether different from the California of, well, now.

But the police force does have a few technological advances at its disposal. Primarily the ever-changing identity suits undercover cops can don in order to shield themselves from being recognized as they delve into drug circles. The suits are an amalgamation of different eyes, noses, ears, mouths, etc., which allow the officer to be completely free from identity scanners — other undercover officers aren’t even aware of each other’s true identity.

While cocaine and marijuana are prevalent in the film, a drug known as Substance D — the D referring to death — is the top priority for users. Its banishment is also the primary objective of an undercover officer known to his co-workers as Fred. But Fred has taken on the alias of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) to infiltrate a Substance D ring made up of the quick-witted Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), the long-haired joker Luckman (Woody Harrelson), long-time stoner Frek (Rory Cochrane) and Arctor’s love/drug interest Donna (Winona Ryder), all of which frequent Arctor’s once residential home turned crack house.

The authorities have placed surveillance cameras inside the dingy drug dome, and Fred spends most of his time watching recordings of himself and the rest of the gang at headquarters — that is when he’s not being examined by facility physicians.

As tests from the doctor begin to reveal unusual occurrences inside Fred’s head, the line between Fred and Arctor begins to blur as Fred/Arctor continue to pop Substance D pills. Is Arctor merely an alias, or is Fred the impostor behind the non-identity suit? Why is Fred/Arctor still taking Substance D while preaching its ills?

These questions drive the surreal plot of Dick’s novel. Written just after his release from a drug rehabilitation center in the early ‘70s, Dick intended “A Scanner Darkly” to be not only a metaphor for his own drug addiction but an ode to the many friends he lost to the habit. Dick admitted to ingesting nearly 1,000 hits of acid a week along with a plethora of tranquilizers from 1971 to 1972. And while his rehab was successful, the closing credits acknowledge those who weren’t as lucky — as he wrote, those who “had been punished entirely too much for what they did.”

But the obvious anti-drug message from Dick was undoubtedly more poignant when drug education was at a minimum. It’s the look and feel of the rotoscoping animation that is most intriguing about “A Scanner Darkly” in the present day. Linklater’s decision to use rotoscoping, which he also employed in his earlier film, “Waking Life,” permits the non-identity suits and the several drug-induced hallucinations in the film to exist without being mere special effects in this already alternative reality.

Rotoscoping uses computer software like a pencil to trace over live-action images of performers, and then acts as a paint brush, filling in these images, which look almost like gelatin molds moving fluidly through an eerily realistic animation.

Sad, however, is the fact that audiences can only enjoy the voice inflections of the pinpoint dialogues by Downey Jr. and the hilarious gestures of Harrelson and Cochrane. How much richer their stay on screen could’ve been as themselves and not animations.

But does Linklater’s decision to rotoscope his characters speak to the generation in which his film is being made? Dick’s novel had the backdrop of the ‘70s street scene, yet in the midst of Pixar and Dreamworks box office success, Linklater’s film seems to be the adult equivalent.

Even with animation pulling a large box office draw, “A Scanner Darkly” is likely an isolated film. The industry does not seem to be so stagnant that replacing the technical aspects of cinematography with computer animation is a necessity to bring audiences to the theater. Never will simple brush strokes by a computer compare to the beauty of a well-lit scene, when light and shadow are so inextricably linked that the frame acts as a director’s painted picture — at least, let’s hope not.

Grade: B-