Enemy

2013 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy with a split personality lives in a city attacked by giant spiders.

Just watch this movie. Don't read this crap because it won't make any sense and it will more than likely spoil the experience.

And don't watch this one unless you're willing to wrestle with it. It's the type of movie I really love--one that I just don't completely understand. This is the second doppelganger movie I've seen in the last month, but while the other (The Double) was more of a quirky dark comedy, this one's kind of a Hitchcockian subtle thriller. Generally, I like more humor in my existential funk, but this one ends up being wonderfully ambiguous and crawls all over your mind like a spider. It's a movie that breaks storytelling rules. Things are probably not chronologically ordered and reality's all bent out of shape, the sort of experience that matches what's probably going on in the protagonist's (protagonists', if that makes you happier) mind. A quote at the beginning--"Chaos is yet order undeciphered."--clues you in that this is going to be a struggle for anybody not willing to pay attention. I'm not going to offer any interpretation or explanation because I have a fear of being wrong about things. Suffice it to say that the movie is a storytelling puzzle, like a more twisted Memento; that Jake Gyllenhaal, in a terrifically-nuanced pair of performances, is actually supposed to just be one person instead of a pair of doppelgangers; that there aren't really any giant spiders in the story although there might be little spiders; and that the movie is an artsy-fartsy look at infidelity and one man's inability to commit; that recurring themes of dictatorships and historical patterns are meaningful. It's really more of a movie that you feel more than you understand, but unlike some movies I don't fully understand where I just end up frustrated, I felt I had enough of a grasp on this one.

It's one you feel the need to rewatch immediate afterward or research a bit, and since there were a handful of ideas that slipped through the cracks, I did the latter. I was really impressed with this very thorough explanation/analysis. I'm not sure I buy the chronology presented here or if this all adds up, but it does fit in mostly with what I thought was going on. And it's interesting, though very long. Check it out if you've seen the movie.

I'm going to give this movie another spin in a few months.