Review: Enemy (2013) · 7:58pm Jun 24th, 2016
SPIDERS.
The best possible way to try and describe Denis Villeneuve's psychological thriller Enemy is as some strange, aberrant, yet utterly absorbing blend of David Lynch Lost Highway, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Except with duplicate Jake Gyllenhaals, and gigantic spiders.
Villeneuve's direction is unnerving and impeccably precise. An intense, oppressive aura of unease and isolation permeates every scene, a continual aura of steadily building dread that seeps deep into your bones and stays with you. This aura is enhanced by cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc's sepia tinted photography, and the avant-garde, eerie moaning and twitching of composer duo Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans' score, which enhances the disturbing subtle horror of unease that the film breathes in every frame.
The screenplay, loosely based on the Portuguese language novel The Double by José Saramago, is written by Spanish screenwriter Javier Gullón, is a stark, minimalist adaptation. Dialogue is often sparse and self contained, with much of the story being told through pure visual imagery, and intentionally leaving much unexplained, making the film a wellspring for those who love to analyze. I'm not gonna even try to analyze this film, since trying to do so is, without a doubt, a mind bending exercise.
Of course, it goes without saying that Jake Gyllenhaal's double performance as Adam Bell (an introverted, lonely history teacher) and Anthony Claire (an egotistic, arrogant actor), is simply stellar. Without really speaking much, Gyllenhaal manages to perfectly differentiate between the two men, often in the subtle body language and inflection. Adam Bell is a quiet, stammering introvert, whose apparent only interests in life are grading his students papers, and having sex with his girlfriend, Mary (Mélanie Laurent). His interactions with everyone are halting and shy, with him seemingly unable to naturally interact with anyone, not even his own mother (Isabella Rossellini). Meanwhile, as Anthony Claire, Gyllenhaal is far more confident and talkative, and is a man very much self absorbed. He has a wife, Helen Claire (Sarah Gadon), who is sixth months pregnant, but seems to be, at best, somewhat distant, seemingly more absorbed with his jogging then their relationship. The two men are a study in differences, and as the film slowly unwinds over the course of an hour and a half, we're trapped with the two of them, as their world slowly and steadily seems to unwind, and their lives slowly and steadily intertwine and combine into some freakish, spider-web like trap.
Speaking of spiders, they are a recurrent symbol in the film. From the disturbing, Eyes Wide Shut styled opening sequence where a woman seems ready to crush one underfoot, to recurrent shots of the complex web of wires and cables that cut across Toronto's skylines, to a gigantic, ominously looming spider in a dream sequence, to the disturbing image of a naked woman with a spider's head, spiders continually creep into the film, culminating in a room sized one replacing Sarah Gadon's character, seemingly frightened of Gyllenhaal, even when Gyllenhaal seems, at best, resigned to its existence. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not even gonna try to pretend like I know what this means, but it makes for fascinating imagery, and makes the film like a complex puzzle, beckoning you to continually try and solve it.
Suffice to say, the film refuses to explain itself, but in a way, that's what makes it so unrelentingly fascinating. A strange fever dream not quite like any other film, Enemy is chaos, but, as the opening quote of the film states, "Order is but Chaos undeciphered."
5 out of 5 stars.
I have to say this went a lot better than the last time a Saramago book was adapted to the big screen.
Loved the movie.
You lost me at "spiders."
4046606 which movie was that????
4046722
Blindness. Based on Ensaio sobre a Cegueira
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The movie was alright, but I read the book a few years later and maaaaan, the movie can't hold a candle to the source material.
Mostly because Saramago's writing style doesn't lend itself to cinema all that well.
4047484 yeah i read the synopsis.
sounded pretentious