Philip K. Dick Hits the Screen Again
Review: A Scanner Darkly (Manohla Dargis, NY Times; subscription required, basic is FREE)
Two big things about this film intrigue me:
(1) I am a HUGE Philip K. Dick fan, with a small selection of his novels currently gracing the bottom shelf of my bookcase, including A Scanner Darkly, which is truly one of the single most disturbing and unusual novels I have EVER read.
(2) I find that the film-versions of Dick's altiverse-unreality make inroads into even weirder ideas, and may not bring the drug-induced flashbacks that many of his stranger novels so disturbing to the screen.
Or maybe I just need to actually watch Blade Runner, which was inspired by Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? instead of Total Recall.
Who knows? But, being that this is one of my favorite novels, I'm curious to see the flick to see if it's as twisted and earth-shattering as it should be. The film style points to "possibly", which is, of course, tons better than "no."
posted by Lizzy Wednesday @ 10:09 AM
4 Comments:
Sounds good. And, even though it's limited release right now, it's still playing in Austin! And the theater is not in the "scary part of town!"
I'm mostly interested in the visuals in the flick, but haven't managed to tell Matt that I want to see it.
Nope.
I kinda liked it, too, but would really like to read the PKD story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" which was the source material for it.
The point I was trying to make is that many of PKD's novels and short stories read like being stoned with a hangover and that's part of what really makes them REALLY tough to translate to the screen.
I think that the filmmakers for 'Scanner Darkly' (which is kind of an updating of the scripture "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 1 Cor. 13:12) have tried their best to capture that out-of-focus world that PKD wrote so well.
Lizzy, stop being so diplomatic... Yes, sir, you are. But, if Total Recall is your guilty pleasure, so be it. Everyone has one. ;o)
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