A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darky is based on the book by Philip K. Dick in which tells the story of a group of drug using friends based on Philip K. Dick's own experiences as a drug user and the experiences of his friends. The story takes place seven years from now and tells the story of an undercover narcotics agent who is simaltaneously an addict. The interested me in several ways, first of all the fact that the film was adapted in two ways. Originally a book adapted to a live action film, and then Richard Linklater had decided that the film would be animated through a technique very similar to rotorscoping allowing the entire film to have a cel shaded effect. This was no small task and did take 18 months of post production and over 350 man hours per minute of film. But the result is fantastic giving the film its very own individual style, and the style of the visuals really helps the complexities of the story. Due to the fact that throughout the film many of the characters are hallucinating it helps that the look of the film is consitant through these hallucinations and also when something is really happening. Because the alternative to this would have been to use CGI to create the hallucinations it would have been far too obvious when a character was hallucinating when perhaps for the purpose of story it shouldn't have been. The film did have some slow points in terms of narrative and particularly character dialogue, the problem with the entire set of characters being high throughout the film is that their conversations, whilst being what is needed for the story, are a little bit hard to follow or just make a lot less sense than a normal conversation. However as the film nears the end I found that the story really came together and personally I loved the ending so it was definately worth watching all the pointless at times conversations to get there.