A SCANNER DARKLY — CANNES 2006

Richard Linklater gives an audacious cinematic adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel about corporate/government surveillance of a public led by their noses by drug addictions similarly fueled and fed by the “system.”

Given the novel’s scattershot method of dipping in and out of a reflexive reality occupied by a group of drug addicts and state-employed wonks, Linklater’s use of rotoscoping (see “Waking Life“) adds a veneer of narrative information that causes you to further question the identity puzzles presented in the story.

Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover Los Angeles narcotics cop who wears a “scramble suit” that disguises his identity, even to his employers, behind an ever-shifting amalgam of physical appearances. Arctor himself has become addicted to a drug called “Substance D.” He is so far removed from his personal sense of identity that he puts what little faith he has in the hope that the all-seeing scanner will view him clearly.

Set seven years in the future, the movie submerges you in its comic paranoid atmosphere. A young drug-affected guy, Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane) scratches all over his nude body at real or imagined aphids that attack him. It’s a particular kind of insect-dread that William Friedkin’s thriller “Bug” explores with accelerating visceral detail. Freck desperately phones his friend Jim Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) who requests that Freck bring him samples of the aphids in a jar.

We can tell by Barris’s wry tone that he’s not a shrink or even much a friend to Freck. He’s merely the closest person the poor guy has to talk to. Freck nervously drives to a diner where he and Barris engage in a superficially lofty conversation about the extent of Freck’s addiction to Substance D (causes “dumbness, despair, desertion and death”) before retiring to a mini-mart to acquire inexpensive ingredients that Barris will magically turn into another mind-altering substance. Linklater’s unique blend of animated visual style goes hand-in-hand with the dystopic source material. Everything is scary and weird, but still fun — really enjoyable.

Bob Arctor resides in a low-rent Anaheim cul-de-sac with Barris and Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson), an equally wobbly addict. The three live a dead-end frat house existence that mocks society with a pre-disastered sense of skeptical autonomy. The intellectual apathy that the men rely on is their singular moral imperative for pursuing oblivion.

Acquired from a neighbor, an ostensibly stolen bike gets considerable attention as an object of animated debate among Luckman, Arctor, and their mutual friend and drug dealer Donna (Winona Ryder). Here, as in other scenes, Linklater embraces Philip K. Dick’s source material for its inherent humor and let’s the comedy soar under the choice delivery of his well chosen cast.

Bob Arctor isn’t as drug-ravaged as Barris or Luckman. Still, he struggles with a real or imagined past in which he was a responsible husband and father. Smarmy young inquisitors patronizingly insult him during psychological testing sessions when Arctor isn’t trying to doublethink his way around being his police department’s number one drug-dealing suspect.

Arctor lives in a bad dream that becomes a full-fledged nightmare at the turn of a romantic screw involving Donna, who may or may not be part of the authoritarian metaplot that spirits Arctor into a corporate/government-run land of “rehabilitation.” This is one strange drug addiction rehabilitation. 

Linklater’s effortless handling of complex layers of incisive social and political satire enables the movie to wash over you in a dreamlike fashion. Linklater contains the author’s enigmatic work as it pinpoints all-consuming aspects of our modern existence — the pervasive use of drugs and surveillance to stifle freedom of thought and action.

“A Scanner Darkly” is a movie that goes down better the second time you see it. It’s easier to laugh at the jokes once you’ve accepted Philip K. Dick’s cynical and accurate 1977 vision of America in the year 2013. Like George Orwell before him, Philip K. Dick’s premonitions were just barely ahead of their time.

Rated R. 100 mins.