Film Review: Scanner Darkly

[da]

I read PKD's original book of Scanner Darkly last year, and on the basis of that, decided to skip the movie.

When I was visiting my folks, my brothers brought along the movie, and I let myself get sucked into watching.
The movie's much better, I think. You can argue whether "Bladerunner" is better than "Do Androids Dream" but I see no real comparison here. PKD's novel had distracting 60s slang and the drug/police cultures felt unrealistic and flat. All of these seem fixed by translating to rotoscope animation and limiting to 100 minutes. The visuals work better than the descriptions. Even though the scramble-suit is a bit silly.

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book, but I wasn't bowled over by the movie. I think theycallmebeth read the book after seeing the movie, but I can't recall for sure which she liked better.

[dpolicar]

(nods) Dick is altogether too willing to throw away story structure. Generally speaking, the movie versions tell a story in his world, rather than translate the book itself to video; the result is way more approachable.

[psychedelicbike.livejournal.com]

I normally think that about PK Dick, but I found A Scanner Darkly to be one of his more comprehensible stories. It did that weird thing in the middle where everything just went crazy, but the last two pages were enough (IMHO) to bring the story back and give a resolution.

I usually prefer his short stories, since he doesn't have enough time in them to get really weird.