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"I saw," Bruce said. He thought, I knew. That was it: I saw Substance D growing. I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field, in stubbled color.

— A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick

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After jonesing through the staggered release schedule, I finally had a chance to hookup with an old source downtown and watch A Scanner Darkly.

Not too surprisingly the theater was packed with a good demo sampling of the usual twenty and thirty-something bottled-water drinking hipster-types. Score one for the marketing department. The audience remained engaged through-out the film and collectively had a fondness for the rapid-fire rant scenes between Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson.

To my delight, Richard Linklater has wonderfully delivered the most faithful Philip K. Dick screen adaptation yet. The film's animation technique worked perfectly for A Scanner Darkly's shifting themes and third-person narrative style found in Dick's 1977 novel. Linklater stongly embraces all of the original material's intangible and duplicitous themes and characters to finally give a wide audience the closest experience yet to what living in a Philip K. Dick novel might be like.

And yet the movie will have a familiar ringtone to many who will instantly pounce on the seemingly prophetic nature of Dick's story to current events and issues. And it's hard to argue against the comparisons. That's what reading Philip K. Dick is all about. His works always seems to end up as hindsight commentary that has been time-shifted to apply to modern life. The more you read his books and stories, the more you come to realize we already seem to be living in PKD World.

A Scanner Darkly faithfully projects a bit of the ever-shifting realities of Philip K. Dick on a screen and into people's heads. Like PKD's works, it's sure to garner a hardcore following.

Overall, both hemispheres agree, go see A Scanner Darkly!

Movies | A Scanner Darkly | Richard Linklater
Books | Philip K. Dick | Reviews | Biased Opinions
Grouchogandhi | 1977 | 2006 | FACTs

Delivered unto you by Grouchogandhi precisely at 2:54:00 PM