A Scanner, Darkly

Last night, Ozzy, Christine and myself met at the Arts cinema in Cambridge and had a delicious crepe, then headed into 'A Scanner, Darkly'.



Well, I'd not read the book, so didn't know quite what to expect. Visually it's a bit like an animated graphic novel as the film has been pained over. Interesting, but not as artistic as Renaissance. There was a lot of well studied character mannerisms of addicts, very well done, and a bit of a looping plot, but as it was Philip K Dick, I was expecting it to be more SF, to be honest (according to wikipedia, the SF aspects that do exist were intoduced to make the book sell, as it wasn't like his normal output).
There was one interesting effect however; the undercover cops have suits that hide their identity and shimmer, switching between millions of people - one scene with two of these suits talking to each other made my brain go into meltdown - suddenly I lost my grasp on who was who and had a moment of panic - I assume that's what a 'bad trip' would be like, so that was interesting... but not something I'd like to repeat, thank you!

On the way home in the car, Chris and I had a discussion on our awareness of our existence - what's the tipping point between when a baby is born (with built-in processes, such as how to learn, but without self-knowledge, memory or reasoning) and when it becomes aware? If 'awareness' is just the application of built-in processes, is free-will a mirrage?

Cheers to Ozzy for organising :)