It’s fun just having that as a heading. Saw Richard Linklater’s very effective adaptation of Philip K.’s novel A Scanner Darkly.
I’ve been sitting on this draft post for over a week now, unsure if or how to proceed. I liked the film, and came to it as a Dick fan–that overheated sense that things aren’t what they seem; the moral scorn for the way authority and power creep into the everyday, infecting even pleasure with the force of the disciplinary; a stray, strange notion that pleasure and desire are still worthy pursuits, useful ways to constantly butt up against or even (try to?) rebut Power. All the drug-taking loons in Scanner move headlong toward their own demise. Yet there is a sense–despite the acute irony of the plot’s acrobatics detailing the way the war on drugs itself produces the kind of debilitating effects of drug addiction, how the Power manufactures its victims in order to punish and rehabilitate them–there is a sense that there is still pleasure to be had in stepping into the abyss. The film came most alive for me when paranoia was a parlor-game, when Downey and Reeves and Harrelson and Cochrane are sitting around talking themselves into a lather. There is one outstandingly funny sequence where a bike purchase provokes a spiral into anxiety… yet despite (or because of?) that culminating anxiety, I found pleasure in the scene, and I’m sure the characters did as well. What interests me about Dick, about this film, is the way a paranoid vision can be read as not merely succumbing to (or solely focusing on) the very power-laden systems it so strenuously reveals.
I guess I’m curious if anyone else has seen it? I do recommend it. I saw it with an almost proselytizing drug-taker, who couldn’t really get past the way the film underscored the destructive effects of drug addiction. (He kind of wanted flights of pleasurable insight and philosophical revelation–to show what drugs can do, not just these exaggerated negative effects. I asked him, “In a Philip Dick story? Really?”)
simon, burned by waking life, refuses to see this, and there’s no one else in town to go with me. i don’t mind going to the movies on my own, but i need to ask: is your recommendation strong enough for me to overcome my natural stupor and inertia? (i was enjoying waking life before simon and my friend jennie forced me to leave).
This isn’t really like Life–it’s darker, it’s got a more focused narrative, and it’s less prone to noodling. (To come clean: I, too, found Waking to produce the opposite in me; it wasn’t horrible, just wasn’t my cup of tea. This more was, but…) I’d say it’s decent and worth seeing, but it’d be just as decent if rented.
i actually liked waking life when i finally got around to seeing it–i’d avoided it for years because i thought it would be nauseatingly annoying. i can see why simon would hate it though–those philosophers think they know everything.
‘nab: isn’t that the truth. do you, however, refer to the philosophers in the movie or to simon?
mike: is the verb “to noodle” an invention of yours or is it real english?
I made it up. In fact, 36% of the verbs I use are my own invention.
No, I kid. I josh, tease, funfib, confuszle you. I believe “to noodle” I have appropriated from musicians, who noodle around on their instruments. But I also just learned–the glorious Web!–that “noodling” is also “to hunt for turtles.” Either works in this context.
you’re phunny!
i watched it last night. on the whole i liked it, but it didn’t entirely come together for me. it felt like the film couldn’t make up its mind about committing to either using the technology (put to much better use here than in waking life) to explore the paranoid worlds of the junkie and dick or to exploring the conspiracy plot (which in the second half felt kinda tacked on). that said, i would recommend it as well. and not only for a rare winona ryder sighting–all the performances are great and the screenplay is witty.
I hated that wierd suit Reeves war. Everytime that suit showed up on screen, I thought I was going to have an epileptic fit. I liked it well enough but not enough to encourage anyone to rush out and rent it. Downey was fun to watch. I prefer the existential hijynx of Waking Life.
I know it’s misspelled, but it looked too good to change. Plus, I’m nearly two/thirds through David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and feel as if I should spell all words in unique and eye-friendly ways.