Chaos. So begins "Enemy," a film even darker than the previous movie Jake Gyllenhaal and director Denis Villeneuve did, last year's "Prisoners." (Perhaps there's some sort of Von Triers-like melancholy trilogy in the making.) There are genuinely few films quite like "Enemy," so bizarre, so rich, so likely to inspire nausea. It's not a perfect film--at times it becomes a bit full of itself, with upside cameras and bizarre dreams and that sort of thing. But it's quite a thought-provoking one, and one that's gorgeous to look at. The cinematography should elevate Nicolas Bolduc as the new "prince of darkness," and it's as if Villeneuve found the absolute creepiest areas in all of Canada for the scenery.
Gyllenhaal is Adam Bell, a history professor telling his students about dictators and control. Control and obsession. It's a pattern that repeats itself through history, he tells them. His life is fairly mundane. He has a beautiful girlfriend (played by Melanie Laurent) but there doesn't seem to be much in their love life. Upon the recommendation of a colleague, he decides to watch a "feel-good" movie called "When There's a Will There's a Way." He doesn't appear to enjoy it too much. But a bizarre dream (set to operatic music) suddenly shoots him awake and he immediately returns to the movie to find the scene which appeared in his dream. And here he finds himself, or at these someone who looks exactly like him, as if it's his twin brother or something. His twin is Anthony and also is played by Gyllenhaal (obviously). He is the complete antithesis to Adam. Whereas Adam is meak, Anthony is confident. Adam is sloppy, Anthony is neat. The only similarity other than their looks and sharing the same first-letter is the fact that they both have beautiful girlfriends.
Such an eerie movie. There's truly exceptional cinematography here. The whole thing looks so Kubrickesque, with the obvious comparison being "Eyes Wide Shut," as both share themes of obsession, golden cinematography, and eroticism. But "Enemy" is more than that (and superior to "Eyes Wide Shut"). The best analysis of the film has been from Forrest Whickman in Slate. He hints that this is a monster movie without explicitly stating so; Whickman points out several clues, including repeated images of spider webs, some of which are obvious, and some of which aren't. The image of the spider is everywhere, and serves as an interesting representative of totalitarianism. He also notes that while the novel "The Double," which serves as the film's inspiration, is not a story of authoritarianism, its author, Jose Saramago, lived under a fascist regime in Portugal and "his work frequently explores totalitarianism and his experiences under a fascist regime through metaphor and allegory."
Spiders like patterns, don't they?
Gyllenhaal is Adam Bell, a history professor telling his students about dictators and control. Control and obsession. It's a pattern that repeats itself through history, he tells them. His life is fairly mundane. He has a beautiful girlfriend (played by Melanie Laurent) but there doesn't seem to be much in their love life. Upon the recommendation of a colleague, he decides to watch a "feel-good" movie called "When There's a Will There's a Way." He doesn't appear to enjoy it too much. But a bizarre dream (set to operatic music) suddenly shoots him awake and he immediately returns to the movie to find the scene which appeared in his dream. And here he finds himself, or at these someone who looks exactly like him, as if it's his twin brother or something. His twin is Anthony and also is played by Gyllenhaal (obviously). He is the complete antithesis to Adam. Whereas Adam is meak, Anthony is confident. Adam is sloppy, Anthony is neat. The only similarity other than their looks and sharing the same first-letter is the fact that they both have beautiful girlfriends.
Such an eerie movie. There's truly exceptional cinematography here. The whole thing looks so Kubrickesque, with the obvious comparison being "Eyes Wide Shut," as both share themes of obsession, golden cinematography, and eroticism. But "Enemy" is more than that (and superior to "Eyes Wide Shut"). The best analysis of the film has been from Forrest Whickman in Slate. He hints that this is a monster movie without explicitly stating so; Whickman points out several clues, including repeated images of spider webs, some of which are obvious, and some of which aren't. The image of the spider is everywhere, and serves as an interesting representative of totalitarianism. He also notes that while the novel "The Double," which serves as the film's inspiration, is not a story of authoritarianism, its author, Jose Saramago, lived under a fascist regime in Portugal and "his work frequently explores totalitarianism and his experiences under a fascist regime through metaphor and allegory."
Spiders like patterns, don't they?
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