Enemy (Denis Villeneuve, 2014)

[DarkImbecile]

I caught this on VOD this weekend and was surprised to see no dedicated thread for it (and if I'm a simpleton and just missed it, somebody please delete this for me). I thoroughly enjoyed Villeneuve's Prisoners last fall, but hadn't seen any of his other work, including Incendies - a mistake which I will be rectifying shortly, because I was entranced by just about everything about Enemy.

I was intrigued enough by the trailer (attached below) to seek the movie out (and pay 13 more dollars to DirecTv on top of the piles of cash I send them every month), but I was still pleasantly surprised by the unconventional directions the film took and haven't been able to stop thinking about it all weekend. I haven't read Jose Saramago's source novel, "The Double", so I don't know if that would have better prepared me, but I'm still processing some of the intricacies of how the film unfolds (and I'd love to hear what others have to say about it). I was particularly enamored with

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the way the film works from multiple perspectives: both men are real, or both represent elements of the same man; the timeline is linear, or the timeline is non-linear and overlapping. I can absolutely see how different viewers could each read it in entirely different and equally interesting and compelling ways.

However one chooses to interpret the main plot, the visuals (particularly the yellow filter, skyline shots, and the often surreal use of spider imagery) are unique and hypnotic, as is the music. The evocative use of location (Toronto, in this case) seems to be a particular skill of Villeneuve's, and the unsettling, unreal way he presents the city and his characters movements within it skillfully feeds into the paranoid and off-kilter atmosphere of the film as a whole.

Gyllenhaal does a really intricate job of differentiating his two leads with their physical and vocal tics and traits, and between this performance and his role in Prisoners, I have to say that I hope he and Villeneuve continue to collaborate in a (literally) poorer-man's Scorsese/DiCaprio partnership.

I'm really interested to hear how others interpreted some of the more ambiguous elements, especially the final shot; I have my thoughts, but until I get a chance to re-watch it with a particular interpretation in mind, I'm very open to other ways of reading it.

Here's the trailer, just to have it in this thread, and I really like and will be aiming to get my hands on that late '60s-style yellow erased-heads poster as well...

[oh yeah]

Thanks for making this thread, I'm pretty intrigued by the film after seeing Prisoners last year and finding a lot to like there. And that poster can't help but bring to mind this Polish one for Antonioni's The Passenger:

[DarkImbecile]

Great comparison...

Speaking of the poster, I'm really impressed with A24 so far, both from a releasing and marketing standpoint. Just since last year they've released or acquired Spring Breakers, The Bling Ring, The Spectacular Now, Enemy, Under the Skin, Locke, The Rover, and Laggies (all of which I've either thoroughly enjoyed or am eagerly anticipating), while their Under the Skin poster is also fantastic and all of the trailers I've seen for their films have done what trailers should do: evoke tone and atmosphere, establish themes, and give as little of the plot away as possible.

I realize now that I've typed this that it sounds like I'm an investor or paid marketing hack or something, but I swear I just like the company's taste in movies and promotional materials.

[ianungstad]

They use the same designers as Criterion. Sam's Myth; Neil Kellerhouse; etc.

[warren oates]

I liked this film quite a bit too. And I'd certainly be curious to hear DarkImbecile's more elaborate take on it. I've not read the novel either, but if the Wikipedia plot summary I did read was accurate, the film and Villeneuve's approach probably improves on the story. Between this film, which was apparently shot first, and Prisoners, there's nobody currently working who's better at creating this kind of atmosphere of sustained tension and dread. For me, some of the imagery, one mysterious subplot and, of course, that final moment was a little head-scratching, but I didn't mind that it all wasn't more resolved. Or that the entirety of the film, compared to something like Mulholland Drive, feels a little insubstantial. The ride was still a better one than 99.9% of other directors making this sort of thriller would offer, so I don't feel like it's problem that it wasn't wrapped up more neatly or that it didn't quite stick those twists into ever greater dimensions of weirdness. The result feels more of a piece with some of the older fantastic fiction that informs the novel, especially a story like Poe's "William Wilson."

[dad1153]

Caught this at the Angelika in NYC. I really liked "Prisoners" (warts and all, i.e. Hugh Jackman trying too hard to be noticed for Oscar gold) and Gyllenhaal was one of the main reasons why, he just flat-out made that movie a lot better than it should have been without him in it. "Enemy" threw me for a loop constantly because, while not being what I expected (at all!) it so worked at being its own divergent but parallel-track complementary piece to Villeneuve's other films. You look at one and you could immediately see it's the same man who directed the others, which comes with its flaws (lack of character development/personality) but also consistency (Villeneuve can visualize moody loneliness and inner turmoil better than anyone I've seen recently). A Canadian city on film has never looked more menacingly dull, alien and outwardly disconnected from reality (think the Italian sights in Antonioni's "Red Desert" but with buildings) since the last time Cronenberg was in town shooting. The shots of spiders are few and in-between (I remember only three) but man, talk about making the one's in "The Hobbit" flicks look like puppies! :-)

Gyllenhaal is perfect in a dual role that skews show-of scenes (split-screen trick shots are kept mercifully short and stunt-free) and it's easy to tell Adam and Anthony apart even when they switch clothes/places by just the slightest of ways Jake lowers his shoulders (Adam) or perks up (Anthony). Again, what is it about Villenueve (and/or the material he chooses) that brings the best out of Gyllenhaal? I haven't been this excited about a director/actor duo since Brit Marling became tight with Mike Cahill and Zal Batmanglij. Supporting cast is fine, but this is The Jake Gyllenhaal and Denis Villenueve Show all the way, and that's a good thing. And, like an old lady that told me on the way out the theater, 'Now that's how you end a movie!'

[criterion10]

Utterly bizarre and maddeningly impenetrable, Enemy is quite a different cinematic experience from Denis Villeneuve's previous film, Prisoners. While Prisoners attempts to serve as a fresh take on a familiar genre, Enemy is more or less a surreal, Kafkaesque head trip that most reminded me of what one would expect had David Lynch directed Persona.

The film's biggest flaw is that it does have trouble adding up to anything of major significance. The film is a wild ride that constantly kept me entertained, wondering what was real and what was not, whether or not events were presented in a linear fashion, and simply what the hell was going on beneath the film's surface, and in that regard it succeeds in spades.

Is the film about male empowerment? What occurs when a man is stripped of his individuality? Or possibly even a commentary about different government regimes?

Villeneuve never provides us with the answers (this isn't a flaw, rather an asset), but he does sure as hell make the film one hell of a ride. He experiments with silence in unique ways, the manner in which Jake Gyllenhaal occupies the space of the frame, and the way in which his character(s) interacts with others.

Speaking of Gyllenhaal, his performance is rather good, although, like many of the other actors in the film, it is more of a subtle, nuanced one, especially when compared with the raw intensity he exhibits in Prisoners. Sarah Gadon, a name that I was previously unfamiliar with, really is the highlight of the cast. She takes a minor, somewhat underdeveloped character and makes her feel real and alive.

The ideas, basic plot structure, and vibe that the film all offers is rather sublime, though it does attempt to chew off a bit more than it can handle. Some plot developments feel a little contrived and others do not feel as memorable as they could have been (I was surprised by how anti-climactic the first interaction between the two doppelgangers felt).

Many have praised the film's inexplicable ending, though it felt a little too ridiculous for my tastes. That, juxtaposed with an odd song choice, ended the film on a lesser note for me. Still, it didn't ruin the other assets that the film demonstrates beforehand.

While it may be imperfect, like Prisoners, Enemy is a film I look forward to spending more time with and attempting to decipher along the way.

[mfunk9786]

Just so you know, "penultimate" would indicate that Prisoners is the 2nd to last film in a career that wasn't going to continue beyond Enemy. It doesn't merely mean "previous."

[criterion10]

Just so you know, "penultimate" would indicate that Prisoners is the 2nd to last film in a career that wasn't going to continue beyond Enemy. It doesn't merely mean "previous."

Thanks. Fixed.

[TheDudeAbides]

I watched this film and I was completely blown away. This is only the second film I've seen by Villeneuve, the first being Prisoners, and now this has made me want to go out and seek out his entire body of work. His direction was fantastic, the film was beautiful; every single shot was expertly choreographed and had a beautiful movement to it, I really felt that the camera was directing the action and pushing the plot forward rather than simply capturing. Villeneuve is truly a very strong visual director and Enemy definitely makes me rethink the visuals in Prisoners, a film I thought was gorgeously shot and directed, but most of which I honestly attributed to Roger Deakins.

The story was definitely quite a clustercuss. In the end I still don't know what to make of it but my assumption is that

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Adam and Anthony are in fact the same person. I think that Anthony is his real name and Adam, the school professor, is the person he created in his subconscious to deal with what he had done. I think that Anthony was cheating on his wife Helen, Sarah Gadon's character with Melanie Laurent's character Mary. I think in the scene was Anthony is yelling at Adam that he involved his wife in it by calling her, was actually a conversation he had with Mary. I think he and Mary got into a fight in the car and got in to a car crash that killed her, which is where I think he got the scar from. I think Helen knows all of this and this is why she is acting in a manner as if she knows more than she is letting on. I think that the events of the film are either non linear or are his subconscious playing out what happened and blurring the past tragedies together with the present in a sort of a psychological break. I think that the spider acts as a symbol, a symbolism of his fears. His lectures are about dictatorships controlling populations and I think he is referring to our modern metropolitan world as controlled by corporations and consumerism and that we are in fact being controlled, that our so called freedoms are just the circus' like the romans gave their people. I think he is also afraid of true intimacy and that was why he left his wife and cheated on her. I think the ending scene of the gigantic spider represents his fears of becoming a father and of being tied to a family, of being in a situation that was out of his control.

But my thoughts are highly theoretical as Villeneuve makes nothing apparently obvious in this Lynchian/Kaufkaesque mystery

[DarkImbecile]

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I read it the same way in that both Gyllenhaals are the same man, except I think Adam is his real name, and the professor role isn't a creation but what he actually does/is on a day-to-day basis. The conversation with his mother and with his wife near the end (among other things) both hint that he's a professor and that the acting career (and the Anthony name/persona) is an identity he tries, with varying rates of success, to adopt when he needs it.

I'm also not entirely convinced that the Adam storyline (spare bachelor apartment, detached girlfriend, etc.) isn't happening after the Anthony portions; the torn picture of him and his wife indicates that that relationship ended, and that his more introverted, unsure self as Adam is a reflection of that divorce. The timeline appears to me to be that while he was pursuing an dead-end acting career, he cheated on his wife, she left, he becomes unmoored, rediscovers his Anthony persona, brings it into his relationship with his girlfriend, which leads to their crash (and probable deaths).

As for the spider imagery and the ending, these seem more like the products of his subconscious. He's tortured by the way in which he's trapped by the life-altering choices he's made, all of which revolve around women, and he tends to see/experience the spiders when reliving the key moments in the aforementioned chain of events.

Admittedly, I've only seen the film once and pieced this perspective of it together afterwards, which leaves me decidedly willing to consider other views of this, especially as there are a few scenes that seem difficult to explain with this interpretation (the scene where his wife visits the university and their conversation on the benches, for example). It's indicative of the quality of the film that I enjoyed it so thoroughly while watching it and yet weeks later still haven't settled on conclusions about some of the more basic facts about its narrative, and still very much enjoy puzzling over its mysteries.

[warren oates]

Okay DarkImbecile, what about

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the weird scenes in the secret basement club and what seems like the consensus reality experience of going there? Who's the doorman who so desperately needs to go back to see and do the thing he can't quite articulate? Or if the narrative is all so subjective, and driven by the consciousness of a breaking down Adam, why do we get scenes from the POV of Anthony's wife Helen, like the one where she goes to sit on the bench and see where Adam works?

[DarkImbecile]

Okay DarkImbecile, what about

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the weird scenes in the secret basement club and what seems like the consensus reality experience of going there? Who's the doorman who so desperately needs to go back to see and do the thing he can't quite articulate? Or if the narrative is all so subjective, and driven by the consciousness of a breaking down Adam, why do we get scenes from the POV of Anthony's wife Helen, like the one where she goes to sit on the bench and see where Adam works?

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Well, like I said, the bench scene with his wife doesn't fit very well into the interpretation I described, so I've got no concrete response on that point. The dialogue they share doesn't seem to necessitate it being their first meeting (as it would be if the Adam/Anthony split is literal), but I'd have to go back and rewatch to try to conjure an explanation for the way they react to each other (unlike the phone call, where the awkwardness could be read as resulting from this being the first time he's called her in some time since the divorce). As for the club, I had assumed it was a fetish club that was part of the double life Gyllenhaal had been leading that got him into trouble in the first place; unfortunately, the eroticized crushing of small animals is a real fetishization, and I saw the spider-crushing as being the stimulus for the rest of the more obviously unreal spider imagery.

It's also probably the sign of a good film that anyone who hasn't seen it and is reading these spoiler sections is saying to themselves, "What the fuck is this movie?

[javi82]

It's interesting to read all the theories, but I haven't yet found one that accounts for everything (nor have I come up with one myself).
Here are some other things that don't add up for me:

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1. Is there any significance to Anthony's liking blueberries and Adam not?
2. There are a lot of slow creeping overhead shots of the apartment buildings that seem to suggest the presence of something observing the city.
3. The half naked woman with the spider head walking down a corridor in one of his dreams.
4. Why are there (for me at least) prominent shots of high heel shoes?
5. At what point in the timeline does Mary notice the ring mark? The whole timeline is fractured, but I can't figure this out.
6. Why are we shown Anthony practicing his spiel in front of the mirror prior to going to visit Adam?

My own theory (at present) is that the Spider represents the institution of marriage. At the club in the beginning, it is about to be squished. At the end, it looms larger than ever. Although the shot of the spider looming over the city doesnt quite fit.

I'm still open to better/smarter explanations.

[warren oates]

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My own theory (at present) is that the Spider represents the institution of marriage. At the club in the beginning, it is about to be squished. At the end, it looms larger than ever. Although the shot of the spider looming over the city doesn't quite fit.

If only Bergman had made that film, which doesn't really seem like the Enemy I saw. Like you say about the others' theories, interesting, but not quite capable of reconciling the irreducible weirdness of the whole.

[javi82]

Also, for anyone who has seen the film and hasn't read the Villeneuve interview from Film Comment, I think it might help.

http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/interv ... villeneuve

In particular, this quote:

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When somebody asked me recently to explain the movie I said: “You know what, this movie is a very simple story, it’s a man who decides to leave his mistress and go back to his wife, and we see this story from his subconscious point of view.” This is the way I read the book, and this is what I tried to do in making the movie. It’s the simplest story but told in a very complex way.

Still, I think it is impossible to process everything in one viewing.

[warren oates]

Regarding javi82's spoilered quotation:

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Weird that Adam/Anthony's imagination would then give his transgressive cheating self such a schlubby demeanor and unsatisfying job. Or that what would then appear to be his jobs in "real life" would include both film acting and what feels a lot like like organized crime. I guess the unconscious grass is always greener!

Unless the mental transposition and doubling is way more entangled then Villeneuve's own thumbnail sketch of his metaphorical intention suggests. Which is what I'd argue. Enemy, as a finished film is way less legible regarding its own intentions and inspirations than something like Mulholland Drive, the richness of which also sort of subverts its own purported "all just a dream/nightmare" interpretation.

This one is really an exploration of suspense, and for me it was like a neurotic spy movie. That was the kind of tension that I was trying to create between the fantastique elements and everyday life, so that you would feel the pressure of the horror of someone meeting himself for real. There was something about trying to explore the fantastique elements and put them in reality. The movie’s very stylized but at the same time we tried to keep the feeling of reality always there so that the tension would be stronger.

This is my favorite bit from that Film Comment interview, and one that speaks to what I like most about the film, how it succeeds in making the fantastique so concrete and everyday that it's sort of hard to view it as representing anything else.

[swo17]

Discussion of this not getting a Blu-ray release in R1 moved here.

[swo17]

I've read some pretty out-there attempts to make sense of this movie, but I agree with the thoughts shared above that it's really rather simple.

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The film traffics in spatial incongruities in order to explore the theme of a man's guilt over having an affair (as well as what drove him to it in the first place). The spiders represent his fear of intimacy/womanhood/responsibility/what have you. That's the whole movie in a nutshell. The actual plot distracts you from this to some extent by gradually revealing the story as a kind of sci-fi mystery, but I don't think that the particulars really matter all that much, e.g. the chronology of events, whether the two Gyllenhaals are really the same person, etc. I mean, there's discussion to be had about these details, but I don't see any need to arrange all the pieces in a particular fashion in order to solve the puzzle. I'm okay with the story not entirely having logical coherence. It's actually somewhat similar to a story that I've been meaning to write about a man who starts cheating on his wife with an exact double of her. My story doesn't make any sense either, but, um, it's like symbolic or something.

Despite what I perceive as the film's simplistic symbolism, I actually liked this a lot more than I thought I would, since I've had issues with Villeneuve's last two films. As a mood piece, it was rather well done, and I really liked the soundtrack. Speaking of which:

That, juxtaposed with an odd song choice, ended the film on a lesser note for me.

Scott Walker is going to murder you in your sleep.

[mfunk9786]

I was similarly pleased with this and even more pleased that I didn't immediately forget it when it was over, I've been thinking about it a lot over the last couple of days.

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It seems to me that the moment that, in the space of the film, the two Jakes become one is when we meet his mother - it seems that the more nervous, slouched, insecure Adam is making the visit until his mother mentions how odd everyone finds his obsession with being a third-rate actor. This is when the fabric of what's being presented on the film's face really began to tear and it became clear through the rest of the film that:

- The inn was a common getaway spot for Adam/Anthony and his mistress, hence the strange choice for a meetup spot an hour outside of the city
- The keys were symbolic, as was the spider-stomping dream, of the freedom of his affair, not necessarily of some involvement in some sort of literal bizarre cultish sex group - as you mentioned, swo, the spiders were a stand-in for responsibility and monogamy and intrarelationship decency
- Adam's apartment was merely his mistress' - Adam never seems at home there, at one point he drags an internet cable across the length of the apartment in order to Google something on his laptop, for example

What continues to baffle me in the surface-level of the film is the role of the wife - she's very involved in the situation with the doppelganger, going to his school and sitting on the opposite bench from him, getting very emotional about this meeting, and the sexual encounter toward the end of the film during which she asks how his class went... everything else is handled vaguely enough to be able to work between both the surface and the metaphorical levels of the film, but she's the only character to be able to see both planes. It seems to make her very upset to see that the depressive, adulterous side of her husband is bubbling to the surface again, though on the surface level we're supposed to believe that she was merely upset that there was confirmation of the doppelganger. I don't think, much like (had to eventually reference it) in the work of someone like Kafka, we can't necessarily take an actual interaction with another human being at face value.

I made a comparison to my wife between this film and a cereal box with a bunch of encoded blocks on the back of it, coupled with some piece of red transparent plastic to be waved over them to "decode them" and reveal whatever marketing message is hidden beneath. We're watching the cypher, and have to rely upon our imaginations to be the stand-in for that square of red plastic. Definitely demands a re-viewing from me, and while at first glance it doesn't feel like an excellent film to me by any stretch, it's still absolutely delightful that movies like this are still getting made now that it seems that David Lynch has hung up his camera for good. It might not be an ideal stand-in, and I hardly expect Villeneuve to consistently do this kind of work without veering into more broad studio fare on a regular basis, but it'll do for now.

[DarkImbecile]

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The keys were symbolic, as was the spider-stomping dream, of the freedom of his affair, not necessarily of some involvement in some sort of literal bizarre cultish sex group - as you mentioned, swo, the spiders were a stand-in for responsibility and monogamy and intrarelationship decency

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I haven't been able to rewatch yet (and hopefully the Blu-ray A24 promised is forthcoming to rectify that), but I think the club is real, largely because of the interaction with the man at the apartment who asks Gyllenhaal to take him back to it. The reality of the crushing club wouldn't negate the symbolism surrounding the recurring spider imagery, but would anchor it in the character's actual experience of his past infidelities.

It's a minor point, but it ties to my (decidedly aware of its limitations) interpretation, in which almost everything except the most obviously fantastical elements (the interaction between the doubles, the skyline spider, the dream of the woman in the club with a spider's head, and the last shot) actually happened, and it's the non-chronological arrangement of these events that piles on even more surrealism and misdirection of the viewer.

[mfunk9786]

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Pretty much everything we see in the film is through a lens of surrealism, though. The "club" could merely be some strip club or brothel, and I'm guessing that there's no way in hell that the film is trying to sell us on the idea that there's a sex cult in Toronto where men sit and stare at women getting out of silk robes and stomping on tarantulas. I don't doubt that the doorman at the apartment might have had a conversation like that with Anthony, but I doubt that if, again, we hold a lens of reality up to what we're seeing:

- he's likely not actually being as emphatic about what he's seen/where he's been as we're being shown, again, everything in the film is happening through a sheen of metaphor
- what he's describing is likely not what we're seeing in the dream sequences, but likely just some strip club or brothel

If I had to guess, that conversation was likely more "Hey man, The Landing Strip was pretty great, was weird seeing you there" rather than a wide, glistening-eyed "I CANNOT GET THAT PLACE OUT OF MY MIND" - very little that we see in the film is really happening, it's a metaphorical surface layered over the reality of what's happening.

[warren oates]

I agree with mfunk. Which is why I've been arguing in this thread that, regardless of the apparent simplicity of the film's subtext, the experience of watching it kind of has to remain opaque. You can only go so far into specifics in your interpretation of just what it is the film is "really" about before, by the film's own design, you lose the thread. Heck, maybe mfunk even went too far himself. Who can say whether, underneath it all, there's supposed to be some kind of much more mundane real world correlate to that basement club.

[mfunk9786]

I mean, within the language of the film it's there. But the film is about something much more mundane, so I don't think we're supposed to take it at face value. But as you mentioned, just my opinion.

[DarkImbecile]

I think it's another sign of a quality film that I both personally disagree and simultaneously totally get what you both are saying; the fact that it allows for such different perspectives and is something I find worth picking over six weeks after seeing it is a sign of its value, even if, as mfunk said, it's probably less a great film than a very good one with several great elements (the cinematography and Gyllenhaal in particular).