Farenheit 451, A Scanner Darkly

Farenheit 451 was goofy to me. Maybe the way the future is depicted in movies today will seem ridiculous to us in the future, but from the costumes and the set to the way people interacted, this whole movie felt a little silly to me. I don't know if the dialogue was awkward because it was meant to be that way or if was just because Truffaut was uncomfortable with English. Either way, I love the book Farenheit 451, but this film was lacking. Whereas in The Two English Girls I could pick out parts that I liked in the whole mess of a film, this whole film seemed to drag on to me.

I thought A Scanner Darkly was a much more successful adaptation of a science fiction novel. I know Linklater wanted to stay as faithful to the book as possible, but I actually liked the film better than the book (which is pretty rare). As we already talked about in class, the animation worked really well for the film, though I didn't like its style as much as Waking Life. The consistent style makes the story seem more cohesive and it's also more sophisticated and life-like, but I like the rawness/paint-like quality of the animation in Waking Life. Everytime I see A Scanner Darkly, I always forget that Hank is Donna. The casting for this film is really interesting. Everyone seems to almost be playing themselves, only a little crazier. I actually really don't like Keanu Reeves in this though, and that distracts me from really enjoying the film at points. It's interesting that Linklater chose to use all big name stars for this, but ultimately I liked the mix of actors.