A Scanner Darkly

It certainly fucked up my head, basically there's a plot detail, which I won't disclose so I don't spoil the film, which I thought I was living through when I got admitted to hospital the first time. But most of his books are head fucks, especially the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and the Divine Invasion. On the evidence of Phillip I'd say schizophrenics shouldn't write books cause they turn other people into schizophrenics, or they should have a health warning.

But they do have him playing yet another character who has no discernable personality for plot reasons. Writers must shit their pants when they hear 'we got Keanu'. There's only so many ways you can make excuses for having a block of wood as a leading man.

[edited for rogue apostrophe]

the bit I'm worried about is where I'll end up if I follow him.

Saw it last night and it's crap.

The weird animation thing is completely pointless and just serves to make everyone act like a cartoon character. It loses all of Dick's sympathy for his characters and all the tragedy from the tragi-comic bits so you just get a succession of funny junky stories until the film stops. You don't believe for one second that Arctor's become two people.

It cops out all the time as well. As soon as the plot gets difficult you just get a big chunk of voiceover reading bits of the book out loud.

Yeah I guess that sits well with the idea of being unable to articulate the horror of the real. When reeves character is confronted with the actuality of the situation, which necessitates becoming an addict who loses touch with all sense of ‘reality’, it is only in a guise of pure experience, where there is no possibility of reflection – he cannot symbolise his experience, he cannot contextualise it, give it meaning, and communicate it. The situation, the real, is only ‘discernable’ as pure experience, it evades comprehension.

I didn’t think it was that good a film though (3/5).

I enjoyed it, and thought it was as good a film adaptation as your likely to get of the book. Thought the animation worked well because at the beginning you didn't like watching it but by the end it had almost become normal, which worked well with the content of the film. I still suspect a less star spangled choice of actors would have worked better but then realistically they had to sell the film to the studios and promoters, even though in audience terms it was probably utterly unneccesary, especially since most of phillip k dicks work is based on a constant feeling of mind crushing anonymity

The author didn't know himself whether objective reality existed, especially since he spent a large amount fo time beleiving in various paranouid fantasies or thinking he was in the man in the high castle universe or some such drug fuelled mania. So attempting to analyse his thoughts on reality is a bit pointless, since they veered wildly from the absolute and complete rejection of any form of perspective, all the way to the near opposite end of the spectrum where he also stated 'reality is what, when i stop beleiving in anything else, refuses to go away'. And of course, he wouldn't want to be taken too seriously, even though he wrote excellent books and hgave some pretty nifty quotes.

stupid post cleansed