Truly, Madly, Darkly

Dick wasn't one for solutions — "There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois," he writes in the book's afterword — and neither is Linklater. There's hope in A Scanner Darkly, but only a sliver — just the momentary spark of two tiny lights in a sea of black, or the rare gift of a filmmaker whose fixes are paradox and contradiction. It makes sense that the most gripping images in Linklater's tweaked-out, color-flared eye-popper would be the simplest: blue-tinged closeups of Arctor's beseeching face, hidden inside his corporate scramble suit just as Reeves the untouchable celebrity can only emote from behind a digital veil. However you look at it, it's the picture of modern alienation, of the ubiquitous man who knows he'll never really be seen.