Joho the Blog
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July 10, 2006
I saw A Scanner Darkly last night and thought it was worth seeing if only for the hammy delight of Robert Downey, Jr. But, I left wondering why Richard Linklater insisted on "rotoscoping" it, turning live action into animation. It's a difficult process and not nearly as automated as I'd thought. The effect is definitely cool and trippy, but it sure is distracting: "I wonder how they did the hair?" "Why is the tow truck so realistic when everything else is cartoony?" "Does that really count as a nude scene?" It actually made part of the plot (no spoilers ahead!) harder to follow. Would it have been a better movie if it had been left unpainted? If not, does the paint mask flaws in its construction? By the way — and this too is not a spoiler — our daughter pointed out that the quote from Philip K. Dick that ends the movie seems at odds with the movie's thrust. Or maybe the movie is just too far out for a square like me. Daddy-o. [Tags: a_scanner_darkly animation movies philip_k_dick richard_linklater] Posted
by D. Weinberger at July 10, 2006 10:37 AM
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Comments
more reading about A Scanner Darkly there: (archives)
http://winona-ryder-news-channel.org/?cat=2
Posted by: midas | July 11, 2006 12:05 PM
I think the rotoscoping fits in with the disconnected-from-reality theme of the movie. The hallucination scenes, like the aphids in the opening to the movie, wouldn't have worked nearly as well in live action. Likewise with the scramble suits.
I think the Dick quote at the end (which is also how Dick ended the novel) is perfectly consistent with the rest of the story. Drugs suck and The System sucks.
Posted by: Seth Gordon | July 12, 2006 10:30 AM
I saw Scanner 3 days ago and am still trying to sort out how I feel about the rotoscoping (?) Having said that I dont have any real reservations about the movie; I'm always thrilled to see ANY studio & film maker tackle PKD, and I think Dick's patented layers-of-the-onion brew of drugs, paranoia, big brother and hard-core pre-Socratic philosophic hide&seek, (preferably set in my beloved/much hated O.C.) was well served and brilliantly championed in Scanner.
Posted by: Chris Jurgens | July 18, 2006 04:48 PM