What in the world is this movie about? I've been to the website and all I could figure out was something about surveillance, a drug named Substance D, and a company called New Path. Has anyone seen the movie? Can someone give me a coherent, easy to understand synopsis?
Fassigen
31-12-2006, 06:00
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly_(film)
Off the top of my head:
Substance D was created by the government and seeded throughout the country. This was done for three reasons:
* to garner support for wars against nations that supposedly harbored "drug terrorists" who they claimed were selling the drugs
* to use the "rehabilitation" clinic New Path as a way to legally abduct political prisoners
* to allow the spread of mass surveillance and reduce civil liberties
Reeve's character was an undercover cop/junkie who slowly fell victim to the hallucinogenic properties of Substance D. His addiction was encouraged by his girlfriend (I think) who was working with a dissident organization that wanted to stop New Path.
Their plan was basically to addict him to the point of stupor, get him sent to one of the work camps where the drug was produced, and then use him to deliver samples of the drug back to the dissidents as proof of the government's actions.
All the other stuff with his drug buddies was pretty much filler as far as the main plot was concerned.
What in the world is this movie about? I've been to the website and all I could figure out was something about surveillance, a drug named Substance D, and a company called New Path. Has anyone seen the movie? Can someone give me a coherent, easy to understand synopsis?
It's definitely based off a Philip K. Dick short story (full-length novel? I can't remember); IIRC, they even kept the story's name for the movie.
That said, I haven't read the story in question, so no luck there...
GG late to the party.
Avundii Aza
31-12-2006, 06:51
i lifted this from the wikipedia entry, it explains the entire plot in detail including the ending. i have read the book and the movie is extremely close to it's source material. and yes it is a book not a short story. also it's important to make the distinction of the fact that substance d isn't manufactured by the government but by an organisation/corporation that runs the new path clinics, the main character fred/bob arctor/bruce is a narcotics agent for the police department, as is donna his kinda girlfriend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_scanner_darkly
"The main character is both Bob Arctor and Agent Fred, member of a household of drop-out drug-users, as well as an undercover police agent assigned to spy on them. Arctor/Fred shields his true identity both from those in the drug subculture and, ironically, from the police themselves. The requirement that narcotics agents remain anonymous, to avoid collusion and other forms of corruption, becomes a critical plot point late in the book. While supposedly only posing as a drug user, Arctor becomes addicted to Substance D (known simply as Death or D), a powerful psychoactive drug. An ongoing conflict is Arctor's love for Donna, a drug dealer through whom he intends to find the uppermost source of Substance D. Arctor's persistent use of the drug, which causes the two hemispheres of the brain to function independently, leaves him unable to distinguish between his roles as a drug user and a policeman. Incapable of combining what each persona knows, Fred begins spying on himself, Arctor, more passionately. Through a series of drug and psychological tests, Arctor's superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent. Donna takes Arctor to "New-Path", a rehabilitation clinic, just as Arctor begins to experience the symptoms of SD withdrawal. It is revealed that Donna has been a narcotics agent all along, working as part of a police operation to infiltrate New-Path and determine its funding source. Unknowingly, Arctor has been selected to penetrate the secretive organization.
As part of the rehab program, Arctor is renamed "Bruce" and forced to participate in cruel group-dynamic games intended to break the will of the inmates. The story ends with Bruce working at a New-Path farming commune, where he is suffering from a serious neurocognitive deficit after withdrawing from SD. Although nearly an automaton, "Bruce" is able to carry out his mission due to suggestions implanted during his psychological tests. He picks one of the flowers which are the source of SD, which he will give to his "friends": undercover police agents posing as recovering addicts at the Los Angeles New-Path facility."