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A Scanner Darkly Sneak-Peek
An anonymous reader writes "Some images for the upcoming film 'A Scanner Darkly' have been posted on aintitcool.com. Looks like it's going to look alot like one of Richard Linklater's previous films, Waking Life."
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Philip K. Dick is a rather famous sci-fi author responsible for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, upon which the film Bladerunner was based.
While the plots in some of his books don't really come together neatly in the end, he does quite well at creating vivid imagery, fascinating characters, and imagination-sparking ideas.
A Scanner Darkly and Do Androids Dream of Electrip Sheep? are two of his more famous, and some of his best, published works.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
While the erosion of the mind is a main theme in A Scanner Darkly, it is not the only theme presented. In fact, the psychological split between addict and police officer is arguably more important to the book.
Dick has stated that in A Scanner Darkly, he wanted to investigate the mind of an undercover agent - one who works toward one set of goals in one persona, then works to undermine those goals as another persona. While Substance D (the drug in the book, for those who don't know) exacerbates the problem and creates two independent entities from one mind, it is arguable that anyone trying to work undercover must segregate their mind in the same fashion. While the theme of descent into madness is certainly a large part of A Scanner Darkly, as well as many of Dick's other works, it is not the only theme.
I would imagine that it would be extremely difficult to adapt the theme of a split personality to film. While the artists could certainly provide differing character traits to each half of the split personality, it seems that it would be difficult to maintain the cognitive dissonance presented towards the end of the book, in which the two halves seem like completely different characters. It would seem that some innovative cinematography would have to come into play here; it would take a truly talented team of artists to accomplish this. I can only hope that they're up to the task.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.