MovieChat Forums > A Scanner Darkly (2006) Discussion > The ending (spoiler obviously)

The ending (spoiler obviously)


So at the end when he had the flowers and talked about giving it to his friends at Thanksgiving was he

1) doing this to give his drug buddies another hit
2) giving this as evidence to cops
3) something else that I didn't get

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Number 2.

They destroyed his life to send him to 'rehab', hoping that his police instincts would kick in. The conversation between Winona Ryder's character and the other in the diner reveal this.



I am the prophet of the IMDb Mod Gods. They act when I call.

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It's the whole point of the movie, the agents set him up to become an addict so he would have to go to rehab, where they knew the cops were producing it and getting free labor from the very addicts they destroyed with substance D in the first place. But most addicts lose their minds, let alone keep there memories in tact. The agents were hoping he would be able to snap out of it and bring them evidence one day. They may be doing this other agents aswel.

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The Cops weren’t the ones producing it, New Path was. The very people who were supposed to be curing people of their association were the biggest producer of it. The cops put him their in the hopes of shutting them down.

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I dont think he was aware which reason and he would probably forget it again and the flower would have withered or taken from him.

Interesting part though is if not the POV of the whole movie is the POV of the big brother society, which is the rotoscoping - the scanning made by surveillance, so even the flower pic was registered. Or Linklaters' POV (of course) - or God's (mirror darkly reference in title).

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All of the of the above applies in my opinion, what he did I think was part coincidental, part instinctive, i.e. one side of his split brain told him to take that deadly flower in his possession but why exactly he didn't know, so another side have created a motive, to present it as a gift to his friends at thanksgiving. I've read in a psychology book about people with severed or dysfunctional corpus callosum, it's a very sad existence.

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It was from the conversation with the health check nurse. She suggests to him that he takes flowers to his girl and states that this time of year you can get little blue flowers and he should give them to her.

She placed the memory, so that when he dried out and started to become himself again and remember his life, it would trigger the thought when he was working on the farm. They were a part of the set up.

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Oh wow that makes so much sense.

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Exactly. They show a close up of the nurse's face when she says that, almost as if she is implanting him with a subconscious suggestion. It was all part of the plan.

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I did not like this movie. It went nowhere fast.

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If you've never been into drug culture, I assume this movie would be nonsense. But this is the most realistic portrayal of drug addiction that I've seen.

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