Linklater’s adaptation of A Scanner Darkly works so well because, back in 2006, it adhered so closely to the source. Twenty years later, the real world has begun to look uncannily like a dystopia imagined by Philip K. Dick.
There’s all of these PKD blockbusters: Minority Report, AI, Total Recall, Blade Runner, Imposter… Most of them are alright, but A Scanner Darkly remains one of my favorite PKD adaptations.
While the novel is dedicated to Dick’s friends, it’s an even more personal creation. As he writes in the author’s note, “I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel.” When Freck offs himself with downers and a bottle of red, he lies down in his bed wearing a suit and sporting a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. One could imagine this as an end for Dick, a self-described religious anarchist and libertarian, a man who once ran in communist circles before turning on them.
Story old as time.
