Ryan McNeil
If there’s a lingering image in Denis Villeneuve’s ENEMY, it’s the image of a spider. It’s an image we watch creep towards a stripper on a stage, and image we watch tower over the downtown core, and an image that stands as the weirdest moment in a movie that primarily plays it straight. It’s an interesting visual considering their general ugliness, the deliberate and precise nature of their movements, and the fear they instil in so many. I’m not sure how many would find ENEMY a source of fear, but it certainly does come across as ugly, deliberate, and precise.
As ENEMY begins, we meet Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal). Adam is a history professor at the University of Toronto living a rather unspectacular life. He lives in a filing cabinet of an apartment building, surrounded by identical filing cabinets. He wears clothes that don’t seem to fit him right and sports a haircut that almost demands another haircut. His girlfriend is Mary (Melanie Laurent), who seems rather unimpressed with the nature of their relationship and the lack of attention Adam gives it.
One day at lunch, one of Adam’s fellow faculty members starts talking about movies, apropos of nothing. When Adam presses him to get to the point, the co-worker can only suggest a recent film he’s watched that Adam might find interesting. Upon getting his mitts on said movie, Adam quietly understands the recommendation. In the background of the film is an extra who looks exactly like Adam.
Thrown off by this odd co-incidence, Adam looks into the extra. The actor’s name is Anthony St. Claire (Gyllenhaal again), and he has strung together a small amount of bit parts that Adam goes on to watch. Unnerved by the fact that there is another person in the world that looks exactly like him, Adam seeks out Anthony in a quest to know more about him. Their identical nature is so striking in fact that Adam is able to pass for Anthony at his talent agency, and even on the phone when speaking to his wife Helen (Sarah Gadon).
The stage is set for the man in the mirror to talk back to his reflection. One has to wonder if that is ever a good idea.
It should surprise absolutely nobody that ENEMY is fascinated with duality. Heck, it’s probably something of a failure if a film about doppelgangers isn’t fascinated with duality. What the film gets right is the way both Adam and Anthony look and sound the same, yet act so completely different. Neither one really has much of an advantage in stature or physique, but one of them knows how to work what he’s been gifted with, while the other one wears it like a suit two sizes two big and his dad’s old shoes. Like many other tales of this ilk, it shows what sort of tune various musicians can get out of the same instrument – and how unnerving it is for the lesser musician to hear it.
That unnerving feeling is played up in ENEMY in several ways. There’s an overall stillness to the film, underscored by the quiet way in which both Adam and Anthony move about their surroundings. There’s also a griminess to the world in which the film is set, so the corners of Toronto these characters move through is captured with a grimy yellow film on it. It never seems like the sort of place where good things happen, and even when we meet someone who is living more “upscale”, his life still seems wrapped in cheap cellophane.
What’s interesting about being freaked by a double is the way it strikes to a great fear we seldom articulate. We don’t always admit it out loud, but we all want to believe that we are a rare and precious snowflake. We all want to believe that nobody else out there could walk like us, or talk like us, or move through this world in the way that we do. We’re all “special”, even if we’re “special” in the most ordinary way possible. To know concretely that we are not special would shatter that pep talk we all give ourselves to navigate our mundane lives. Here’s the crazy thing though: If we’re all so special and unique, why do we spend so much time trying to fit in and emulate one-another? Why do we buy the same sweatshirts and listen to the same songs if we’re so afraid of being carbon copies?
As the dust settled at the end of ENEMY – actually, as the dust was kicked square in the audience’s eye at the end of ENEMY – I found myself thinking two things. The first was that this film wouldn’t be for everybody. It’s not that this film has things in it I feel like some audiences “won’t get”. It’s more like I feel that this film is filled with details and techniques that audiences will totally get, and then flat-out hate. I’d never argue that. ENEMY is cold, aloof, and overly introverted…which leads me to point number two. In the deep dark winter we’ve just endured, watching something as quiet and introverted as ENEMY was just what I wanted.
It felt like watching a snow bank melt…seeing all the garbage that had collected in it through the past few months, and finding a curious beauty in the ugliness.
Enemy is one of the few films of 2014 that I find myself reflecting on from time to time. It has really grown on me over the last few months. Similar to Upstream Color, I foresee this film only getting better upon repeat viewings.
Hell of an ending, ain’t it?
My favourite film of the year so far. And that paragraph at the end of you review, my be my favourite review paragraph of the year so far.
Thanks man – I kept getting distracted through the film with its portrayal of Toronto and asking myself how it fit within my other favorite portrayals of Toronto (Chloe, Take This Waltz, etc).
When it clicked that this film made Toronto look so ugly, and that I was fascinated by that ugliness, the whole theory clicked into place.
This will definitely be in my Top 10 of 2014. One of the most puzzling, horrifying, all together fascinating films I’ve seen in quite some time, loved it.
“…but one of them knows how to work what he’s been gifted with, while the other one wears it like a suit two sizes two big and his dad’s old shoes.” What a perfect way to describe Adam and Anthony. But really, great analysis throughout your review.
The more I think back on it, the higher up it’s climbing in my regard. I love it when a film can do that – stick in your craw and give you things to mull in the weeks that follow its viewing. Sort of a rarity in this era of franchise films!
Thanks for reading sir – and for the kind words.