“You’re in my place.” That’s the opening line to “The Double,” and it’s the on-the-nose thesis to both that movie and a similar film also released this year, “Enemy.” In each film, a timid and lonely protagonist comes face to face with a more confident doppelganger, causing the original’s life to unravel.
Two copycat movies in a given year is a jarring coincidence, but to call them doppelgangers of each other would be a misnomer. However, it certainly doesn’t help that both are based off books called “The Double” and that neither is particularly good.
More so than a replica of “Enemy”, “The Double” is actually a pastiche of Orwellian dystopias, most notably Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”. Director Richard Ayoade’s first film was yet another cinematic pastiche (or homage if you prefer) called “Submarine” that reimagined the French New Wave with its own dark comedy turns. This new film owes Gilliam a lot, with drab colors and cold, boxy, ‘80s machinery and technology filling every part of the set design.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon James, the most quietly nebbish and awkward character he’s ever portrayed. Simon is an office drone crunching numbers at a company without any clear purpose. His coworkers are all centuries older than he is, photos of the company president leave a watchful eye, and technology literally seems to be against him. The elevator won’t close on him, his keycard won’t work and the security guard won’t let him in the door day in and day out.
Simon’s life sucks, and the movie spends the next 90 minutes draining him of what little dignity he had to begin with. At the nursing home where his surly, loathing mother lives, a nurse plainly tells him the cost of living has gone up. A curt waitress always brings him a fizzy, blue liquid he hasn’t ordered. In his shoebox of an apartment, he witnesses a man committing suicide, and the detectives peg him as a “maybe”. The world hates him so much we wonder why we bother to care.
Things begin to change when James Simon, an exact look-a-like of him, shows up to the office. They start friendly, and James’s confident, forthright, womanizer behavior initially gives Simon some confidence. But before long James is taking credit for Simon’s work and scoring with the one girl he likes (Mia Wasikowska).
James’s invasion and takeover of Simon’s life is both figurative and literal, and the movie won’t let us forget it. Just about every detail is so on the nose, every line of dialogue serves as an analogy, and every set piece and turn of events is just another tiny knife in our backs. The rapid-fire pacing shoots barbs about Simon never existing, being a non-person or the act of him making “just one copy”.
Ayoade has made a nightmarish film with great craft and attention to detail that arguably surpasses the calculated whimsy of Gilliam. What’s more, Eisenberg nails the dual performance with aplomb, going for the polar opposites of his range as an actor and living there. But it’s all trapped in a movie that isn’t just bleak but is also cynical and depressing.
One prays for a film that’s a little more subtle and less bludgeoning of its ideas, and yet the alternative that is “Enemy” is simply way too opaque.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays the two-fur role in Denis Villeneuve’s film. We first meet him as Adam, a dull college history professor who, unlike Simon in “The Double” seems to be against the world rather than the other way around. His gorgeous girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent) comes over nightly for sex, but they do or say little else. His lectures tediously repeat themselves, and he hasn’t gotten out to see a movie or do anything social in quite some time.
When he does finally rent a movie, he notices a bit-part actor who looks just like him. The man’s name is Anthony, and upon calling his home, Adam gets a hold of Anthony’s pregnant wife Helen (Sarah Gadon), who thinks she’s speaking to her husband. When Adam and Anthony finally do speak, Anthony threatens him as though he were a stalker, and Helen suspects Anthony is hiding something deeper.
While the resemblance is more than uncanny, the cloak and dagger stuff that Villeneuve piles on seems to go too far. He hints at marital and personal mistrust as character themes and flaws, but the film’s minimalist nature makes them come across as plot holes.
Villeneuve shoots in David Fincher’s yellowish hues, lays a booming brass score over the top and stalks around the room as though there’s something behind every corner. He also punctuates the film with perplexingly surreal sequences of some perverse ritual involving spiders and lingerie models. It amounts to a lot of tension but not a lot of clarity, and the twist ending is not only implausible but inconclusive and strange.
Neither film is truly about what they seem on paper. “Enemy” hides themes of broken relationships and volatile people amid a frustratingly obtuse story, while “The Double” challenges what it is to be a person in a cluttered, excruciating screenplay. Neither is strictly about identity or competition between rivals. These films show that this fantastical element can serve as a compelling analogy rather than just a plot device.
One of the best movies about two people essentially living the same life is “Adaptation”, a movie that is as meta as “The Double” but also as surreal and even as thrilling as “Enemy”. It lays out the root of where each of these movies establish their bleak premises, and perhaps where they falter in following through: “You and I share the same DNA. Is there anything more lonely than that?”
The Double: 2 stars
Enemy: 2 ½ stars
So you like Enemy a bit more than The Double. I have to agree with you on that one (scored Enemy quite high myself). Love the whole mystery of Enemy with the spiders and questioning if there is just one person or if there are actually two. And that last scene…that really was an unexpected and scary shot.
Yes, I did like Enemy a bit more than The Double, although it’d be a stretch for me to say I actually liked Enemy.