woahhh what the hell happened
i do not get this movie at all. Will someone please explain it to me?
thankss
"Seven years from now" America is a police state; there are cameras ("scanners") everywhere watching people. One of the main problems is a new drug, "Substance D" which is 100% addictive, and 100% guaranteed to fry your brain.
Bob Arctor is an undercover narc trying to break a Sub D ring. He is so deep undercover, that even his superiors don't know who he really is: he is known to them as "Agent Fred." Fred's next assignment: keep an eye on a dealer named Bob Arctor. So yes: he has been assigned to watch himself.
Unfortunately, Bob Arctor actually is a Substance D addict (effectively he is a "narc posing as a dealer" as well as a "dealer posing as a narc.") Over the course of the movie, his D habit becomes so bad that the Arctor and Fred aspects of his personality split and become two separate entities within the same body: he loses track of the fact that he is spying on himself, and starts trying to actively bust himself.
By the end of the film, he is gobbling handfuls of D, and all that's left of him are two brain cells (which are at war with each other). He's incapable of functioning on any level, so he's taken off the case and shipped to rehab.
Turns out this was the plan all along. Only one clinic, "New Path" handles Substance D rehab, and police have long suspected that New Path was behind the Sub D epidemic all along. Only a bona fide addict could get into New Path, though, so Arctor had to sacrifice himself to addiction to gain admission. It was a crap shoot, but it paid off: after several months, enough of his brain recovers that he realizes what's going on, and is able to get evidence that New Path is the real source of Substance D.
That's grossly oversimplified, but pretty much the plot. Hope that helps. Watch the film again, and you'll see it's all laid out--once you know what to look for.
"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism: you don't dare kill it."
heyy thanks
sharejust watched this for the first time and loved it !!!
had the dvd laying about for ages now
good movie and the twists in the story keep you riveted..
tho i wonder what the drug that phillip k dick used that became substance D??
id say meth or any of the chemically created drugs..
tho i wonder what the drug that phillip k dick used that became substance D??
PKD was known to partake in most drugs (hey, he was a product of the '60s) but from my understanding he had a special taste for amphetamines which he picked up when he was still writing short stories for pulp mags and had to meet deadlines. He went a bit crazy in the mid-'70s, and it was probably "speed psychosis." (That, or he genuinely was having some mystical experiences.) Anyway, he went into rehab for his addiction, and wrote Scanner Darkly when he got out. Substance D incorporates aspects of most drugs, though the book (and movie) wisely only focus on the negative aspects.
"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism: you don't dare kill it." - Parker share
You're right about the amphetamine part. Lawrence Sutin's bio of Dick (Divine Invasions, recommended!) says quite clearly that he was heavily into that stuff, and he took handful of pills in the end (plus milkshakes to wash it down). Then he got almost crazy in 1971, went to a rehab community, stopped using amphetamines, but his heart was in bad conditions (he died of an infarction ten years later). But the other drugs, he took them occasionally if at all. Then he wrote in the introduction to a short story that he had used LSD often but that was just hype, he took it only once, got scared and never tried it again. However, I think he depicted the pointless life of drug addicts quite well, and the film managed to render that.
shareThe pointless life of drug addicts? Geez!!!
sharelol, it seems like Keanu Reeves is always the savior in all this movies.
shareYou're wrong about one part
Arcter didn't know about the whole scandal with "New Path." They mention that they couldn't let him know that they were using him to get him addicted enough to send him there, and then use him as a key witness when his brain cells returned.
agreed; I knew that -- the whole scheme wouldn't have worked if Arctor knew what was up from the start -- just worded my previous reply poorly. Mea culpa.
"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism: you don't dare kill it." - Parker
"Arcter didn't know about the whole scandal with "New Path." They mention that they couldn't let him know that they were using him to get him addicted enough to send him there, and then use him as a key witness when his brain cells returned."
The first part is correct but the second part is not. Arctor was a lost cause. His brain was fried beyond saving, that is why the folks at New Path put him on the grow farm. It was just pure luck that he picked a flower to give to his "friends" back home. And by "friends", I mean fellow addicts, not the police who put him there in the first place.
“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”
Really Good Thread, (Spoooiillerrss)
I have always liked this movie. It is so interesting. I agree with all the threads, but I would like to add some more.
As in all wars, there are sacrifices and Arctor (Actor-form of, aka pawn) is sacrificed to hopefully expose the fact of New Path's dual (and evil nature).
What really is shocking and more so than the true CIA thing that was mentioned is the enslavement. It is true that drugs can enslave, but the diabolical thing
about New Path is that they probably knew what the drug did. So, to get free labor they set up the rehab clinics that would take mentally submissive people (made that way from Substance-D) and make them into free labor, probably forever. No enterprise is so profitable as an enterprise that consists of labor that is free (slavery) or virtually free. If New Path got big and powerful enough then you could have them do most of society's unwanted occupations (See Alien Nation). You create a class of people to serve the other class.
So what then? Maybe the 'morality' of New Path was that some people in general will become addicts (to some drug), so lets get them addicted to our drug. It doesn't kill them even though it's called death. Notice in the movie I did not ever hear or see of people dying. It just kills who you are as a person and turns you into a ready and ignorant servant.
The appalling part is that if you knew exactly what this would do and were this would lead, would people still do this. Probably.
"I believe in coincidences, I just don't trust them." Source debatable.
^ replace "Substance D" with "The State" and you've got a Wachowki-esque metaphor movie that might just open some minds and wake up some sheeple.
- - -
Chipping away at a mountain of pop culture trivia,
Darren Dirt.
Oh, It wasn't pure luck he picked the flower. Both medical examiners and Donna Hawthorne and Mike all knew what they were doing with Bob, which is why they cued him to look at a blue flower as a gift...
We (and Bob) are given a nice description of Substance D's origin, the mysterious blue flower, in the beginning during Bob's speech at the Elk Lodge... Bob is repeatedly coached by "Hank" through the speech.
Remember when he asked why Donna won't put out, the medical examiner told him to buy her blue flowers and "give them to her."
Donna, in her descriptions about cats as drippy things also mentions how she likes blue flowers... I can't remember the quote exactly, but it's there... along with how it's great to work on a farm outside and it's lovely to view the mountains.
All those things were done to subconsciously get Bob to favor the line of work that would get him close to the flower as well as value the flower as a gift to give to "friends" on the outside. Subconsciously, he wouldn't need his cognitive side, which is scrambled from substance D.
Now, whether or not the "friends" are only the addicts or if there's a police connection there too, it's not clear. But the revelation that Bob just came back from a New Path facility with the flower that is causing all this wouldn't be lost with his addict community, as it seems the conspiracy is higher than New Path's own employees.
Experience, though quite valuable, is something you only get just after you really need it.
" It was just pure luck that he picked a flower to give to his "friends" back home. And by "friends", I mean fellow addicts, not the police who put him there in the first place."
I would agree that it was "luck" that he picked the flower to an extent. The fact that they were blue flowers I think has some significance. When he is being evaluated by the psychologists/doctors earlier in the movie, the female doctor recommends getting blue flowers for Danna. When Donna is dropping him of at the clinic she mentions seeing him again on holidays like thanksgiving. So as far as my interpretation, the doctors kind of planted the idea in his head that blue flowers were a nice gift and when he picked a blue flower at the farm, he was going to give it to Donna, his friend, when he saw her again on Thanksgiving and who the doctor recommended he give the blue flowers to in the first place.
I don't know if that makes much sense, but whatever. I could explain in more detail with grammatical revisions, but based on the fact that I doubt many people will read this, and less will care, I'll leave it at that.
edit: and now that I read further into the thread I see others already pointed this out. I should have done that first...
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.
Woah it's quite an ingenious bit of writing i think. ie. How to get your undercover agent to still do his job even when virtually brain-dead.
Also i guess, symbolically, the blue flower is the 'beautiful' memories of PKD's friends before they 'fell'... and by that memory, society can finally find a way to stop this tragedy from continuing to happen, so they (Arctor and others) didn't all die in vain. Like the Diner Agent was saying, God was transmuting evil into good in a reality that was below the level of perception.
Unfortunately for PKD, not much has changed. 'Society' still doesn't realize that those profiting from the drug trade, are the last people you'd expect.(CIA, Elites, etc) and people still become addicts/junkies with no way out.
The only thing that seems implausible is how the drug squad would hope to bust New Path, which is a government-connected facility. Any official investigation would eventually be quashed by someone higher up who would be aware of the situation.
This all depends on the 'Mike' character though. If the plan was expose New Path through some major media expose, then it's understandable. Donna and Mike are sacrificing Arctor for a greater cause and feel it's the only way. OTOH if Donna and Mike are simply a part of the DEA, then it's kind of pointless that they would expect anything to happen in an official sense.
It's a brilliant plot but would make more sense (for today) if Donna was running a rogue operation under the influence of Mike; Mike being some representative of an organization looking to expose the truth.
This all depends on the 'Mike' character though. If the plan was expose New Path through some major media expose, then it's understandable. Donna and Mike are sacrificing Arctor for a greater cause and feel it's the only way.
It's a brilliant plot but would make more sense (for today) if Donna was running a rogue operation under the influence of Mike; Mike being some representative of an organization looking to expose the truth.
This is hinted at many times, although it's never said explicitly. Donna wants out, for instance. Basically they are snitching on the government much like Bob's roommate was snitching on him. "There's no difference between us and them" says Donna at one point. Donna also fears for her career's future. It's never actually made clear whether this is because the government destroys the lives of the people it employs or because she's exposing the government and fears retribution.
The point of the whole story is if the ends justify the means. It's up to interpretation, but it's more negative than positive on this.
I am the prophet of the IMDb Mod Gods. They act when I call. share
Ah ok that makes more sense. It was a little ambiguous for me. The sad thing is, how pointless it would have all been if we consider the situation today. Most people are aware/suspect that the CIA and others are heavily involved in the drug trade and just don't care all that much. They even had US soldiers on TV guarding the poppy fields in Afghanistan.
An epilogue would've been interesting. Some Newsreport 2 years later exposing New Path... then a government investigation which found no proof of the claims. This would've cemented the tragedy of Arctor's sacrifice.
He was more than likely gonna make a recovery because he noticed the flowers were blue and strange.
shareI caught most of this when I watched it. But I have some questions still.
1. While he was watching the scanner feeds as a narc, he was openly popping substance D at his desk. Why would he not try to hide this from other narcs?
2. The two doctors who were testing him for substance D in one scene made it sound like they were all in on some joke about Agent Fred. It sounded to me like they all knew that most people were hooked on D and the tests were pointless.
I need to watch this movie again.
check this out www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkdjIDzE2n8
1. Why would he not try to hide this from other narcs?
You could argue that at that point, he was so deep into addiction that he wasn't even consciously aware he was popping them. However, all the other cops at the safehouse were busy in their own cubicles working on their own cases/surveilance, so they probably wouldn't have paid much attention to what someone else was doing... if they saw it, they'd probably think he was taking aspirin or something. After all, in the scenes in the safehouse, can you tell what the other scramble suits in the background are really doing?
2. The two doctors who were testing him for substance D in one scene made it sound like they were all in on some joke about Agent Fred. It sounded to me like they all knew that most people were hooked on D and the tests were pointless.
I'm assuming you mean the first set of doctors. There is actually some debate whether they actually existed, or if they were subconscious projections from Arctor. Consider, though: the two doctors are polar oposites (black woman, white man) and the way they talk is diametric: she gives logical answers, he gives illistrative (creative) answers. More to the point, they keep interrupting each other. Take it as a metaphor for brain hemispheres, and the building damage from Sub D in his brain.
I wouldn't say the tests were "pointless" but yeah, the doctors (at least those two) were "in on the joke" and it's no accident that the female one told him to get some blue flowers for Donna.
"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism: you don't dare kill it." - Parker share
1. Why would he not try to hide this from other narcs?
In the novel, he nevers drops Death in front of the other narcs in the surveillance house. He goes into the bathroom and pops about 10 of them. share
1) Addicts do what they need to do to get their fix. If he thinks he can get away with it at work he'll do it.
2) The doctors were in on the scheme to let him get addicted so he could find the blue flowers later in the New Path clinic and bring it back as evidence.
I fear saint655 is rather off base...
Seven years from now, drug enforcement loses the big fight, and a new, highly addictive drug (Substance D) enters the scene. There is no "police state"; the only ones under constant video surveillance are those involved in illicit activity... and even then, it's not until there is enough evidence compiled to warrant the cameras. In essence, the 'War on Drugs' was lost, and drug enforcement have become the equivalent of an underground resistance, relying on covert instead of overt tactics.
Everyone... Arctor, his co-workers and superiors... conceal their identities for their own protection. Arctor is not a dealer, his (undercover) girlfriend is. He never has a 'split personality', and never tries to actually 'bust himself'. He is intentionally put in charge of maintaining and reviewing the surveillance on his undercover persona, and is given complete editing freedom. He starts showing signs of addiction (confusion, apathy), and he is strategically led along by his boss and by the psychologists the department employs.
As for "two brain cells" (with all the rest)... this was not a literal diagnosis; it was said in part to convey to Arctor a metaphor... and in part to continue with the film's central duality theme. Two living brain cells is death a few billion brain cells ago. His addiction is carefully orchestrated, and never reaches a chronic phase (as demonstrated by the character Freck).
Summation:
Arctor was placed in a low-profile undercover operation in order to become addicted, so that later he could be planted at the facility that grows the flower Substance D is derived from. The initial undercover work was, unknown to Arctor, a front. Arctor's undercover girlfriend-dealer is actually his department superior (Arctor does not know this, as his superiors also conceal their identities). The addiction that resulted from this operation was the real reason for the initial undercover work; so that his superiors could place Arctor convincingly (i.e., unwittingly) at the facility that grows the flower Substance D is derived from.
Arctor did not sacrifice himself... his superiors sacrificed him.
[deleted]
i find every time i watch this i understand it better. All these comments have been helpful no matter who is right or wrong. I guess I'll have to read the book. I just hope it's not over my head!
shareThe above summation seems to better follow the movie though. He didn't seem to really have the split personality issue in the movie.
shareI fear saint655 is rather off base...
My explanation was overly-simplistic, and (as I admitted in an earlier post) poorly worded in a few places. This was for simplicity's sake. I could nit-pick your rebuttal as you did mine, but (to paraphrase Jules Winnefield) you caught me in a transitional period and I don't wanna argue. :)
"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism: you don't dare kill it." - Parker share
I don't think it was a stab at you. "I fear saint655 is rather off base" is not a attack, that you need to argue. It was just saying, he thinks your wrong on some things. Don't get too defensive.
Death smiles at you, All I can do is smile back.
Excellent summary, thanks, that cleared up a few questions I had had as well.
One final question I had, which has to do with the theme. What was PKD trying to say? Was he implying that the government really is playing both sides of the coin? For example, the CIA/DEA/FBI is bringing drugs and allowing drugs to flow into the country and making money off of it, and at the same time operating these counter drug operations (i.e. the "War on Drugs") and making money off of fighting the very thing they are facilitating?
For example, New Path (i.e. the CIA) is run by one 'cell' or branch of the government, and manufacturing the drugs, and the DEA is run by another 'cell' of the government, this one fighting drugs. And they don't necessarily know that they are essentially and actually working for the same people (i.e. Wynona Ryder and the other guy in the diner, and the guy in the suit that Keanue Reeves meets at the very end).
Is this what PKD was hinting at? When, in the diner scene at the end, the guy says something to the effect of "our grandchildren won't know what we had to go through, but maybe someday there will be a list of names of the fallen." And then not 5 minutes later when the credits roll, there is a list of the fallen that PKD knew. He was at the same time both paying respects to the people he personally knew that suffered from the drug trade, and also referencing the quote from the story that he just wrote that all these people were victims of this grand shell game.
MY view on what PKD was trying to say:
Taking the events of the movie/book before the end note from PKD himself, It's at the same time a condemnation of 1) People using others for profit (the new path group and the cops) 2)The overall pointless self destruction of junkies and what it is slowly doing to society at large.
I can see where the diner scene can send cross messages, but I think Dick is trying to say that we need to rid ourselves of the possibility of these addicting substances to make the world better (the "our childrens children" line really points to this) and that yes, there are going to be people fed through the grinder in order to make that happen. Donna is used as our human side, seeing how it is necessary but still not liking it very much.
The epilogue by Dick, though lays out his personal feelings that lay at the heart of this story: Hate the junk and pity the junkie. This is mirrored in Archters speech to the Lodge at the very beginning where he likens a junky to someone who needs insulin. PKD is very somber about all this, saying that all they wanted to do was have fun and paid an amazingly high cost for it,he even states that he hopes those who have passed have found another way to enjoy themselves.
The whole New path conspiracy angle at the end of the book seemed to me, at first, to be a way for PKD to push the responsibility of his and others addictions onto the world at large. It could also be a way for him to find hope that it will someday end, that somewhere there is one entity responsible for all this pain and that we will eventually excise it like cancer.
Just my two bits worth
i must say thank you.
years ago i watched this with someone i liked. i did not understand the plot at all and i think i might have been not paying attention to more than half the movie because at some point everything just felt like incohesive animated-ness.
Now your plot description actually makes it seem like a good movie and i am sad that I didn't pay attention. I think it was the animated-ness that made me not pay attention.
i am tired.
The whole New path conspiracy angle at the end of the book seemed to me, at first, to be a way for PKD to push the responsibility of his and others addictions onto the world at large. It could also be a way for him to find hope that it will someday end, that somewhere there is one entity responsible for all this pain and that we will eventually excise it like cancer.
---------------------------------------------------
I think that the whole idea with the film is that PKD was ones a addict against his will and now when his brain is returning to normal he it's his duty to tell the truth about it all. Nothing good comes from using drugs etc.
And that is also what happened in the story. Bob Arctor is becoming a drug addict, against his will, only so that he can expose the people responsible for the drug. When his brain is back and working again, that is.
And the whole tragedy with it all. Why did he(both Arctor and K. Dick) have to become addicts in the first place? Why does drugs exist in the first place? Why, when it's doing so much harm. And now he has to tell the world so that it will go away.
What bothers me about this story (although I know it's fictional and I appreciate the notion; individuals are at fault if they don't read up on the facts) is that people will inevitably think that somehow *all* drugs are like this (and they'll probably do that while sipping their morning coffee, of course).
Also, the effects represented in this movie (hallucinations) I presume are some form of delirium induced by these stimulants that substance D represented (in real life). But some people are bound to think that this is what 'hallucinogens' do (considering hallucinogens are supposed to produce 'hallucinations' like in this movie; in reality, hallucinogens like psychedelics only distort perception) and that they're addictive, when in reality Dick had stimulants like amphetamines in mind, as that is what he was apparently addicted to.
Long time abusers of meth often suffer from paranoid delusions and psychotic breaks from reality. It would not be unreasonable for meth addicts to experience episodes where they thought they had bugs under their skin, thought they were being "watched" by the government, or thought they were involved in some kind of conspiracy. I've seen this often in ER patients brought in by the police.
The challenge with the drug use we see in this movie is that it is all from the perspective of long time users (hence the aphids, the flickering identity of the prostitute, and Arctor's identity crisis); we don't see what the effects of the drug are on novice users. If there had been a scene with novice users we would have been able to identify whether it was meant to be a form of speed, a hallucinogen, or some combo.
RD's character's paranoid conspiracy ramblings sound like speed to me. WH's character seems to temper his Substance D experiences by smoking a lot of pot and eats more than any other character.
Fred didnt know he was Arctor??
thats the one thing i couldnt believe in this movie..
You are saying he was spying on himself unknowingly..
then why did he freak out watching the tape of 'Luckman fainting and Barris just watching him'...????
if he diddnt know he was Arctor how could he identify his friends?
How can the cops not know ‘who he is’? He’s walking into the cop-shop every day looking like Bruce - the man who signed up to be a cop.
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