Summary:
A man spots his doppelganger in a film and tries to seek him out.
My Thoughts:
I’m a fan of Denis Villeneuve’s work (“Blade Runner 2049”, “Arrival”, “Sicario”). I think Villeneuve is an incredible director that is able to bring a sense of pervasive, underlying dread to even the simplest of his films. While I honestly think this film is very well done, it’s also probably one of my least favorite of Villeneuve’s films, primarily because, when compared to Villeneuve’s other films, this movie is relatively simple and slight. The themes don’t take too much unspooling, and the script, while compelling and intense, doesn’t really hint at any deeper themes beyond what is already apparent on the surface. The best parts of the film are the way that Villeneuve is able to heighten the atmosphere with great direction; the way Jake Gyllenhaal (“The Sisters Brothers”) is able to portray both doppelgangers in a way that is simultaneously unsettling and engaging; and the way the cinematography looks: almost every frame of which is stained an ugly iodine color, making the whole film feel gross and sleazy, as if there were a patina of slime smeared across its surface.
“Chaos is order yet undeciphered.”
Adam (Gyllenhaal) is a professor in Toronto who lives in a routine. He gets up, goes to work, comes home, has sex with his girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent, “Inglourious Basterds”), goes to sleep, gets up, goes to work, comes home, has sex with his girlfriend Mary, and goes to sleep. One day, a co-worker recommends a movie to Adam, and when Adam watches the film, he sees Anthony (Gyllenhaal), a man that looks exactly like him. Adam feels a growing connection to the man and tries to find him, but when they finally meet up, Adam realizes he may have made a mistake contacting Anthony in the first place. Anthony also has a wife, Helen (Sarah Gadon, “Cosmopolis”), who is six months pregnant.
One of the things that work best about this film is the way that it builds an atmosphere of oppression. It feels as our characters are trapped, caught in a web of boredom, monotony, and routine, and they’re just looking for something, anything to give them a sense of excitement. I feel like we’ve all felt this sort of fringe-depression; the feeling that our days are doomed to repeat themselves, over and over and over again, until at last we finally stop sucking oxygen and can slumber eternally. The need for some spark of excitement, something to break up the humdrum routine, is real and relatable, so that’s part of what makes Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of Adam/Anthony so interesting. Both Adam and Anthony are bored in their daily routines. Though we don’t really know much about either character at the start of the film, other than whom they are sleeping with, we start to learn about their jobs and hobbies as the film progresses. Notice the way that Adam first spots Anthony in the film he’s watching; he doesn’t recognize him immediately- it’s not until after the film is done, and he can’t sleep, that he realizes what his eyes had seen.
When you get to the point in your life when everything seems routine and boring, you sort of enter into auto-pilot mode: the days carry you through the world like a canoe down a stream, rather than you actively navigating the stream of life intentionally, steering away from rocks and other hazards. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had moments in my life- interactions with people in lines at grocery stores, at parties, in passing at work- where I was so entrenched in my auto-pilot that I completely misread signals or completely misunderstood what someone was getting at, just because I was intent on doing whatever it was I needed to do and getting on to the next thing. So, when it takes Adam a moment to realize that he’s seen something different, I really appreciated that; it’s as if Adam heard the first chime of an alarm clock. Even if you’re a light sleeper, you don’t just immediately jump up and switch off the alarm; it takes a second for your brain to realize what it is you’re hearing, process it, and then you wake up, and by the third or fourth chime, you switch off the alarm and you’re ready to start your day. It takes Adam a second to realize something is off, but then he goes back, sees something out of the ordinary, and suddenly, he’s awake, engaged in the world again because something has given him a purpose to live: he has to find out who this person is. You can see that shift from autopilot to manual in Gyllenhaal’s eyes when he goes back and watches the clip for a second time.
I honestly think this is a well-done film that deserves to be seen without too many spoilers, but I do want to go over some of the themes that I think this film addresses towards the end of the movie. If you’ve seen the film, feel free to keep reading, but if you haven’t seen it and plan on watching it later, then I’d skip the lower part of this review.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW)
In the end it’s revealed that both Gyllenhaals are exactly, inexplicably identical. Anthony threatens Adam, telling him that he will leave Adam alone if Adam allows him to sleep with Mary. Adam begrudgingly agrees, and then, after Mary and Anthony leave for a romantic getaway, Adam goes to Anthony’s house to sleep with Helen, unaware that she’s six months pregnant.
From the way that this film plays out, I took the meaning to be that both Adam and Anthony were one person, and the whole film is a metaphor for a man having an affair. The split in personalities arise when one of the personalities (or fraction of a personality) decides to have an extramarital affair. This is about the feelings of insecurity, doubt, regret, and paranoia that having an extramarital affair could cause (I’d assume- I’ve never been married, nor have I ever cheated on any of my partners). The ending also hints at the fact that both personalities cannot exist forever; the personalities are both built on lies, and one of them is doomed to collapse at one point.
Verdict:
This is another very solid entry from Denis Villeneuve. I wouldn’t even put this film in my top three Villeneuve films, but it’s still easily a 4/5 star movie for me, and that right there just goes to show you how great of a director he is.
Please, please don’t let me down with “Dune”, Villeneuve. The Sands of Arrakis and the great Paul Maud’Dib deserve better than Lynch’s “Dune”.
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