The Subtle Differences; a comparative essay

In 2006 Philip K. Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly was given a film adaptation for the first time. The movie was designed under a very unique style with the technology of rotoscoping and helps add to the bizarreness of Bob Arctor’s life. The director did a wonderful job at maintaining the complex story of A Scanner Darkly, but also made odd decisions like fusing two characters from the book into one character for the movie. Besides shifting when each scene occurs, the film portrays the novel incredibly well and only leaves out the small character details that a person would only find in the book.

The oddest difference between the novel and the film is the lack of an entire character named Jerry Fabin. He never plays an important role in the book, but is the character that is first introduced to the reader. It is not uncommon for characters to be left out of movies when there is so much to be told, but the director decided to fuse the aspects and traits of Jerry Fabin into another character by the name of Charles Freck. This fusing only means that the scene where Jerry collects aphids in the book is transferred over to Charles in the movie. It actually helps the story to flow better because it shows how Charles is already deep into his Substance D addiction early on in the movie. The novel has him turn himself in to a New-Path rehabilitation centre arbitrarily with no previous knowledge of him being a heavy addict. It is a subtle enough change that actually helps make part of the story more logical.

Not a lot of things differ between the book and movie when it comes to events, as it is just the order of sequences that do not share similar qualities. For one reason or another, certain situations in the movie present themselves in a different timeframe than that of the book. This never detracts from the experience for it is still the same story from the novel, it just happens to be told in a different manner. The only problem changing the sequence of events is that some parts of the story are lost. Entire scenes in the novel, such as when Arctor visits an old friend, are never visited in the movie and makes characters like Arctor feel flat.

The characters are portrayed fairly well though, giving off a sense of oddity and murkiness that is associated with drug users. Some characters like Luckman have a different feel about them compared to their novel counterpart in a sense of style and mannerisms. The movie also makes many of the characters to say and do things that heavily foreshadow what their role will be later on in the story. This is due to the time restraints of the movie and actually appears more as homage to individuals who have already read the book.

A Scanner Darkly is both an excellent novel and film for roughly the same reasons. Each tells a story of a man who has been unfairly punished, but does it in a way that subtly differs from one another. Even with scene changes and character details missing, the film stays true to almost all of the intricate details found in the book and is a must see.