War of the Doppelgängers : Enemy and The Double

 It seems to happen every few years: two films come out at roughly the same time that have a similar narrative "hook". You might remember this from years past: asteroids (Armageddon and Deep Impact), magicians (The Prestige and The Illusionist), biopics (Capote and Infamous). fighter jets (Top Gun and Iron Eagle), or, uh, insects (A Bug's Life, Antz). This past weekend, I decided to look at such a pairing, this time dealing with a favorite subject of mine: the doppelgänger. Both films are from 2013 but were widely released this year: Enemy and The Double.

 Okay, so I'm going to need you to bear with me here: after finishing a doppelgänger double feature, my head is swimming a bit. I'm trying to avoid Foreigner jokes, so feel free to make them yourselves. Enemy and The Double are distinct enough that they haven't bled together, but there is one unusual, albeit tertiary, connection: The Double is adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella of the same name. Enemy is also adapted from The Double, but not Dostoevsky's; it's based on José Saramago's novel of the same name. So even the source material has a "doppelgänger effect."  Still following me? We've only scratched the surface of these strange films.

 Starting in the order I watched them, Enemy is adapted from The Double by Javier Gullón and directed by Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Incendes), and is ostensibly the story of Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal), a history professor in Ontario. On a whim, he decides to break from his daily pattern and rents a film, and in it he notices something very strange. The actor playing a bellhop looks exactly like Adam. Obsessed with finding out more about the local background actor, Adam follows a trail of breadcrumbs to Anthony Claire (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is, in every way his physical double. When Adam foolishly calls, Anthony's pregnant wife, Helen (Sarah Gadon) answers, and thinking she's speaking to her husband, suspects him of cheating (again). Intrigued by Adam, both Anthony and Helen decide to meet him (separately), but for the sheepish professor, it's too much to take in. Unfortunately for Adam, Anthony isn't going to back off so easily, and when he turns his eye to Adam's girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent), it's only a matter of time before the line between identities blurs.

 Or has it already? Enemy is thick with suggestive imagery, particularly of arachnids. The film actually begins with Anthony and the doorman from his apartments (Tim Post) entering a "hush hush" club in the sort of building you'd expect to see in Hostel. The main attraction for sweaty, uncomfortable businessmen, appears to be a woman wearing nothing but heels crushing a tarantula, which may or may not have a direct bearing on the narrative. Depending on how you interpret the "web" imagery throughout Enemy, or the eventual presence of a spider floating above the city, it's hard to miss the cyclical nature of the film. Villeneuve and Gullón spell it out early in the picture, both through Adam's lectures but also in the repetition of his day (teach, go home, sex with Mary, Mary leaves, visibly upset).

 What the spiders represent and their connection to Adam and Anthony is also a matter of interpretation, as nothing is directly spelled out. A few visual clues sprinkled throughout Enemy suggest what might actually be going on, and there's a telling conversation between Adam and his mother (Isabella Rossellini) the nearly gives it away. But there's no real "twist" in Enemy - only a gradual unfolding of the repercussions of Adam's first lecture(s?). The final shot is, depending on how you read the spider metaphor, either a puzzler or the last piece of the puzzle, but I suspect that one could come to various "readings" of what Enemy "means."

  The entire film is cast in a sickly, yellow pallor, indicative of the state of mind of at least one (but probably all) of the main characters. Gyllenhaal distinguishes Adam from Anthony so well, both in physical performance and in delivery of dialogue that I never doubted they were two distinct characters, despite knowing it was the same actor. Laurent is in less of the film than Gadon, but makes an impression that's hard to shake. Gadon carries much of the emotional arc of the film - she meets Adam before Anthony does, and her perplexed reaction to him (he doesn't know who she is) is crushing. The impact of his existence hurts her more deeply than it does Adam, a meek and shrunken individual every bit the opposite of the confident, scheming Anthony. That is, if either really exists. Without giving too much away, there are elements of Enemy that reminded me of Mulholland Dr, but in a more abstract sense. The shared dreams and experiences of the doppelgängers don't directly point towards a revelation in the story: Villeneuve and Gullón are content to imply, to suggest, right up until the very end. Or the beginning.

 The Double is a less abstract but in many ways more impressionistic film exploring similar territory, albeit based on an older (and arguably more bizarre) story. A colleague of mine mentioned that he was impressed anyone would even try to adapt Dostoevsky's "weirdest" novel, which he described as "Jung 50 years before Jung." If there was anyone with a sensibility to make it work, The Double landed in the capable hands of Richard Ayoade (Submarine), who crafts it into a film that I can only describe as unique. I feel like doing The Double an injustice by suggesting that it resembles Fight Club by way of Brazil, but there's an element to Ayoade's stylistic approach that is highly reminiscent of the latter, with elements towards the end similar to the former. That said, The Double isn't quite like anything most of the time.

 The universe seems to hate Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg), a shy, withdrawn employee of a nameless corporation run by The Colonel (James Fox). His supervisor, Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn) calls him Stanley and assumes he's new - Simon has been there for seven years - and his security badge has somehow gone corrupt. The surly security guard downstairs (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) insists that Simon is a visitor and threatens him at every opportunity. His printer doesn't work. He loses his briefcase on the subway. The waitress at the restaurant he frequents (Cathy Moriarty) is openly hostile to him. His mother calls him a "disappointment." Even the elevators refuse to work when he's on them. And yet, Simon takes this all in stride. This, it would seem, is his life.

 His one bright spot is a fascination (or is it obsession) with Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), his co-worker who lives in the apartment complex across from him. He senses they're kindred spirits, but can't muster the courage to tell her. Instead, he spies on her with a telescope at night. It's the highlight of his otherwise miserable day, it would seem. One night, he looks up and sees a man staring back at him with a pair of binoculars. The man waves, and them leaps to his death. The police sent to investigate (John Corkes and Craig Roberts) ask Simon a few questions and determine he's a "maybe" for a future suicide attempt. This won't be the last time someone tells Simon he's going to kill himself, but let's not get too far ahead.

 After being ejected from a mandatory company ball, Simon has a bit of a break, mentally, and the next day at work, James Simon (Jesse Eisenberg) starts in a similar job. Everybody loves James, and no one seems to notice that he looks exactly like Simon, much to Simon's consternation. Simon's co-worker Harris (Noah Taylor) admits that "maybe" they look alike, but that Simon has a forgettable face. Now, much to my surprise, unlike Enemy - which puts Adam and Anthony together sparingly - Simon and James are frequently inhabiting the same space, interacting, getting into trouble together, and pretending to be the other ("How can we get in trouble? We have the same face.") The outgoing, gregarious James gives Simon advice, and helps ease him out of his shell, while Simon gives James the necessary assistance to do a job he knows literally nothing about. But, of course, as with any doppelgänger, James has an ulterior agenda.

 There is a predictability built into the story structure of The Double that worried me early on - the deck is stacked against Simon to almost comical extremes, but rather than make me sympathetic towards him, I kind of disliked his willingness just to take it. Ayoade asked Eisenberg to study Buster Keaton, whose body language epitomizes a man who accepts the rotten luck in life, and Simon is just content to take it. But there's only so much I could take at the outset of the picture. Thankfully, James is not immediately antagonistic, and the building of their relationship (if it exists in the first place) provides The Double with a breath of fresh air, like Sam Lowry's dreams in Brazil. The inevitable betrayal of that trust, coupled with Jame's conquest of Hannah, at least happens after Simon feels confident enough not just to take it. He begins to fight back, not always successfully, but a late revelation about the nature of his doppelgänger loops the film back on itself, and allows Simon to take advantage of James in a way the latter couldn't anticipate.

 Ayoade's visual presentation of The Double gives it the feeling of a lucid nightmare, of a dystopian future that's simultaneously retro (while I don't think it's ever stated, The Double seems to take place in an alternate 1980s). It's doesn't draw attention to itself, but the television program Simon is fond of and the computers they use are clearly several generations removed from the 21st Century. His scene transitions are often inspired, capitalizing on isolated faces in darkness that suddenly emerge in new settings. While Enemy sparingly uses split screen or digital technology, Eisenberg is almost constantly interacting with himself, and the seams aren't apparent in the slightest. Simon and James are so different that it only becomes confusing near the end of the film which is which (you have to look at the shoes). Hannah is introduced in another subway car, bathed in an impossibly angelic light that I can only compare to cut-aways of Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers. Like Fight Club, that's not something I would imagine I'd be using to reference in The Double.

 The screenplay by Ayoade and Avi Korine (Mr. Lonely) doesn't spend too much time worrying about the nature of Simon and James - there's a visual suggestion of when it happens, but not why. The film is, instead, focused on not wasting a single moment on superfluous information; everything (and everyone) is in some way relevant to how The Double ends. Every plot point, or seemingly irrelevant detail, comes into play as Simon goes barreling off the rails, to the final scene, which can be interpreted in a few ways. Oh, and without spoiling anything, Simon isn't the only person in the film who has a doppelgänger. It's a small scene, but one that hints at something larger in the world of the film.

 Eisenberg is good - maybe too good - as the put-upon Simon, so much so that I was happy when James appeared to make the little weenie stand up for himself. James is less sketched out - Eisenberg plays him as an Id out of control, and it's easy to loathe him late in the film. It would be easy to suggest Wasikowska plays Hannah as the newly coined "Manic Pixie Girl" type, but there's something much more interesting about her performance. She taps into a longing that Simon senses, but not one that requires him to be complete. Her arc with James is arguably more interesting as the film goes on, reaching a conclusion that improves the overall narrative. There are a number of cameos from well known names and faces, some of whom worked with Ayoade in the past, but I won't spoil them for you. I will say that I didn't recognize Sally Hawkins, who has a tiny role in the film, but I did immediately catch the extended cameo from Dinosaur Jr. frontman J. Mascis as the janitor in Hannah's apartment building.

 When it comes to this particular doppelgänger double feature, I'm not sure which one I would recommend more. On the one hand, Enemy is more abstract and relies on a serious reality "break" to make it clear what we're seeing isn't necessarily what "is." On the other, The Double is much less concerned with the "why" than its repercussions, but is more impressionistic in its presentation. Another friend of mine couldn't finish The Double - he said it was "too weird," and it does take a certain willingness to accept Ayoade's world on his terms (and, I would gather, Dostoevsky's). I wish I could speak to either of them as adaptations, but in this instance I can only judge them as films. Enemy makes for a great discussion piece, but might be too frustrating in its unwillingness to do more than imply for audiences. The Double is reminiscent of a number of films I'm very fond of but might alienate viewers at the outset with a protagonist who is only barely likable.

 I don't wish to make it sound like I didn't enjoy either film. Quite the opposite is the case, and I'm hesitant to give either one the edge. Unlike, say, The Prestige, which I prefer to The Illusionist, it's harder to say clearly that Enemy or The Double is the better "doppelgänger" film. Each has its own merits, its own problems, and I feel like either film could spark a fascinating conversation between viewers. One is a distinctly suggestive mystery, filled with unaddressed symbolism, and the other is a very black comedy that makes little effort to suggest reality applies. I enjoy them for different reasons, and find the contrasts help, rather than hinder, the act of seeing them back-to-back. That said, I think you'd be just fine watching one or the other on their own, depending on which suits your tastes more. Double doppelgänger features might be too much to digest. At least you have two appealing choices.

Horror Fest VIII (Day Two): All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and A Nightmare on Elm Street

 As some of you have already noticed, I re-posted a review of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane earlier this month, with more contemporaneous thoughts about the film (as much as two years’ worth of reflection allows, at any rate), so I don’t have much more to add. It’s strange how the intervening years (Jonathan Levine made the film before the smartphone was a regular presence in the life of teenagers) make Mandy Lane more “quaint” than it would be otherwise: the choice in music and many choices in editing resemble any of the CW-style “modern” slasher film, but the lack of always connected, social networking makes for strange bedfellows.

 It’s a modern horror movie that isn’t quite modern enough, and not enough of a “throwback” (as loathe as I am to use that term) to feel different. I understand why people aren’t responding to it now, but I’m curious how it would fare in the height of remake-mania seven years ago. I apologize again for not spoiling the end of the movie – this is the third time I’ve brought up All the Boys Love Mandy Lane without directly addressing the ending of the film. To be honest, it’s why I like the movie, and why I think people interested in Final Girls as a horror trope would find it worthwhile. If this gives you any hint to how it ends, Mandy Lane would have beaten Scream 4’s “twist” to the punch by five years, and only been behind High Tension by a year. It’s a newer, if under-examined, development in Final Girl theory.

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Along similar lines, I feel like I’ve written about A Nightmare on Elm Street so many times that I’m not sure what to say about it. I appreciate how grimy Freddy Krueger is in the film, how disgusting and creepy without relying on puns or horror showmanship. Robert Englund is clearly relishing the opportunity to make Freddy (really, it’s more “Fred” in the first film) as sadistic as possible. The more I watch A Nightmare on Elm Street, the more I notice that, frankly, surprise me that I didn’t remember from the last time. To wit:

The “dream logic” of the first film is much more, let’s say “practical” than in the subsequent films. It’s more like actual dreams are than what people might associate with the series (although Dream Warriors did push it in a direction that was almost impossible to come back from). The craziest “nightmare” moment early in the film is a goat in Tina (Amanda Wyss)’s dream that opens the film, and after that it’s largely limited to things Freddy can do: the (terrible) extended arm effect, cutting off his fingers, pulling off his face, etc. When Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) starts experimenting with her dreams, we see simple things, like the door into her basement leading to the boiler room at the high school. It’s more of an Inception level of “dream logic” than what people assume when they think of the series. They resemble dreams we’ve had, where one place becomes another but it seems to make sense in the dream.

 This is not to say there isn’t some nightmarish imagery in Nancy’s dreams – while it’s hard to forget Tina in the body bag while Nancy sleeps at school, I’d totally forgotten about the second time she appears later in the film. Nancy is dreaming and Glen (Johnny Depp) is supposed to be watching her (more on this in a moment), and in the dream Tina appears again, her feet covered with worms writhing around on the pavement. It’s an effectively unsettling image, as much so as the trail of blood Nancy follows in the hallways of school.

 Now, speaking of Glen, it’s worth pointing out that Wes Craven does something in A Nightmare on Elm Street that would subsequently be picked apart and reconfigured for the sequels (and, apropos to this discussion, a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment) that I completely forgot was in the film. Nancy is at home, watching The Evil Dead, and nodding off when Glen climbs in through the window. She asks him to sit next to her while she’s dreaming and wake her up if she starts struggling, which he agrees to do.

 Nancy then enters the “dream world” and is walking down Elm Street, when she turns and asks Glen if he’s still watching her. Inside the dream, Glen appears from behind a tree with to let her know that he is, and then disappears again. With the other films, and also The Simpsons in mind, this is an odd moment, because Nancy is dreaming, not talking out loud, and if Glen is in her dream, there’s a good chance he’s not awake. Now it turns out he isn’t, but they aren’t sharing the dream, so either Nancy imagined Glen reassuring her in the dream or he really was responding to her from the “real” world. I bring up The Simpsons because when Lisa appears in Bart’s dream, that’s how Bart knows she isn’t awake to save him. It’s not something that harms the film – as I mentioned before, I forgot it even happened – but upon reflection, it’s an odd moment.

I also picked up some dumb details that I’d never seen before, like the poster of a cat wearing a Hawaiian t-shirt and riding a trolley in San Francisco in Dr. King (Charles Fleischer)’s office. While he’s monitoring Nancy, you can’t miss it behind him on the wall.

It’s not difficult to spot the palm trees in the background of A Nightmare on Elm Street (like in John Carpenter’s Halloween, Craven is doubling California for the Midwest – Springwood is supposed to be in Ohio and Haddonfield in Illinois), but for some reason I’d never focused on how prominently a palm tree appears in one scene. When Nancy and Glen are on the bridge having a conversation about homemade weapons and giving dreams power, there’s a rather large palm tree right in the middle of the frame. I guess I’d been focused enough on the story that I willingly blocked it out, but it’s really hard to miss.

The last one is just an odd tidbit I picked up, one that only has any relevance if you’ve listened to the Wes Craven / Heather Langenkamp commentary before: during the bathtub scene, Langenkamp and Craven point out that the girl pulled into the tub and trying to escape is a body double. No, fanboys, that’s not a nude Heather Langenkamp you’re seeing. On the other hand, when Nancy is pretending to sleep so her mother will leave her alone, she does get up and change shirts, exposing her bare back to the camera in a shot that is Langenkamp. I suppose it’s a “neither here nor there” addition to the conversation, but I did know because of the commentary that she avoided any nudity in the film, so it was a scene I didn’t remember being in the film (technically it’s not nudity, but it’s a shot that implies it and doesn’t necessarily add anything to the plot).

 Up Next: John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, the middle chapter of his “Apocalypse Trilogy.”

Horror Fest VIII (Day One): Demons and Suspiria

 Lamberto Bava’s Demons is a movie with a great premise… and that’s about it. I will grant you that the gore and makeup effects are nice, but after a spell even those become tiresome, in large part because there’s so little happening in the film that even the demons are boring after a while. For a film that isn’t even ninety minutes, Demons feels padded and overlong, and it’s a shame.

  Quickly, I’d like to dispel an erroneous assumption on the part of attendees at Horror Fest VIII: Dario Argento did not direct Demons; he wrote it and has a “Presented By” title card at the beginning of the film. Now it’s not inconceivable that one would leap to that conclusion, as a) the titles were in Italian (even though I chose the English dub) and b) if you don’t know Italian horror cinema very well, you could make the mistake that if Dario Argento is involved at all, he was a strong influence, but no, it’s a Lamberto Bava film. Bava was Argento’s assistant director on Inferno and Tenebre, but he’s probably better known as a director in his own right (A Blade in the Dark), or for being the son of the legendary Mario Bava.

  At any rate, Argento and Bava co-wrote Demons with Dardano Sacchetti and Franco Ferrini, and it’s hard to imagine that it took four people to write a movie where so little happens. The film is based around a mysterious “Man in Black” (Michele Saovi, director of Cemetery Man and The Church, also known as Demons 3) handing out golden tickets to the Metropol theatre. The tickets are for a very special screening, and we meet a handful of people in the lobby, including a student (Natasha Hovey), a blind man (Alex Serra), and a pimp (Bobby Rhodes). Okay, I’m making an assumption on that last one, and IMDB’s synopsis doesn’t exactly match my reading of it, but it’s not hard to leap to that conclusion when he brings to girlfriends to the movie.

 The plot of the movie within a movie is that four college students are looking for the grave of Nostradamus, and they find one that seems to match, but in the coffin they find a strange mask and a book (which, of course, they read from). If you put the mask on, something sharp cuts into your face and you become a demon, which is interesting because one of the pimp’s girlfriends put on a similar mask in the lobby and has a similar cut on her face…

 As the move plays out, more people are infected and become demons, and as the audience desperately tries to escape, they discover the doors are a façade – the front of the building is now simply concrete, and they’re trapped inside. If anyone is injured by a demon, they become a demon, so they barricade themselves on the balcony and try in vain to find a way out. And that’s pretty much when Demons ceases to be interesting in any way, shape, or form. There’s only so much “bait and switch” Bava can employ when people pair up and split off from the main group, and it’s always the “which one is going to be the demon?” variety. The survivors eventually break through the wall of the balcony and cut off the projector and find an adjacent building, but even that goes nowhere as the building is abandoned and the only room they bother going into is walled off.

 To demonstrate just how disjointed (and front loaded) the plot of Demons is, Bava introduces four totally unrelated punks in the middle of the film, tooling around town and doing coke out of a Coke can (okay, I will admit that’s clever). If you’re under the impression that they’ll be saving the survivors in any way, don’t hold your breath – their purpose in the story is to enter the theatre, but only because one of the demons needs to get out in order for the ending to make any sense.

 Aside from a ridiculous scene involving a motorbike, a samurai sword, and a helicopter crashing through the theatre’s ceiling – all of which happen without any sense of causality – nothing happens in the second half of Demons. People wander around, they die. There’s no sense of tension at all, and the apocalyptic ending is just an excuse for another “bait and switch” to end the film on after the credits finish rolling. Characters abruptly change personalities – the usherette, for example, when introduced appears to be in on what’s happening (or about to happen), but as soon as the demons run amok she transforms into another terrified patron, seemingly without reason.  I understand that people really like Demons, and I remembered enjoying it when I was younger, but the film is too threadbare to really invest in. Sometimes gore just isn’t enough, and the atmosphere only goes so far.

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  Are you ready for the fun part of this recap? I just slammed Demons for its slight narrative and I’m about to do the exact opposite for Dario Argento’s Suspiria. To be fair, Suspiria has a “through-line” story to go along with strong atmospherics, stylish color schemes, and at times disturbing gore, but the main difference is that while Demons peters out as soon as the plot should be kicking into high gear, Suspiria builds to a literally explosive conclusion. I’m also more willing to accept Suspiria’s dream logic structure over Demons nightmarish buildup, but perhaps it’s just a matter of personal preference.

I’ve also seen Suspiria more often than Demons, and have come to have a certain affinity for its story construction. We know as much as Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) does when she arrives at a ballet academy in Germany, with an added benefit of a brutal murder for a former student and her friend (this is an Argento film, after all). Information is revealed slowly, punctuated by strange events and even stranger behavior (maggots in the ceiling, suspicious activity by the staff, people leaving and then being murdered), mostly without clear reasons. Anyone who tries to find out too much about the staff, particularly Ms. Tanner (Alida Valli) and Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett) end up dead, under mysterious circumstances. At least, to the students: as the audience, we’re privy to what happens to the pianist and Suzy’s friend Sara (Stefania Casini), although the how is often unclear.

Am I spoiling anything by telling you that Madam Blanc and Ms. Tanner are familiars for the witch Helena Markos? If so, I guess *SPOILER*, but I can’t imagine anybody reading a Horror Fest recap this far hasn’t heard of or seen Suspiria, the first of Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy (followed by Inferno and, much later, Mother of Tears). I’ve been meaning to show it at a Horror Fest for years, but it always gets bumped at the last minute by something or would fall victim to exhaustion from participants. To be honest, the dreamlike logic of the film was even more effective for me this time because towards the end of the film (specifically around the dubbed Udo Kier scene), I was drifting in and out of consciousness myself. It’s how I always intended Suspiria to play at one of these festivals – late at night, when the mind is prone to wander, leaving you unsure whether what you saw really happened in the film or your imagination.

 I wouldn’t recommend anyone watch Suspiria this way for the first time, but the film lends itself well to a relaxed mind, one that wants to remain invested but is also hovering between lucid and sleepy. Never fear, because just when you think you’ll drift off, the memorably creepy score by Goblin rattles you awake. It was an excellent way to close out the first night of Horror Fest, but there’s a lot more fun to go tomorrow…

 Up Next: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and A Nightmare on Elm Street!