Denis Villeneuve made this film before Prisoners but Enemy had a limited release after it.
The clues are there regarding any possible meaning about the film and its inspirations. Some people liken it to Fight Club, which tend to be people who think film history started from 1999.
Villeneuve is Canadian and so is David Cronenberg who once made a film called Dead Ringers which is about paranoia and delusion among identical twins. You can go back to 1970 with The Man Who Haunted Himself where Roger Moore had a double which appeared after he had an accident.
The film opens with a telephone message from a character's mother played by Isabella Rossellini. She was once married to Martin Scorsese whose recent film is Shutter Island. She also lived with David Lynch and also appeared in some of his movies, Lynch films are well known to visit weirdsville just check out Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and the television series Twin Peaks which also had a doppelganger.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Adam Bell, a History professor in Toronto. He looks dishevelled, his hair and beard rather unkempt. He very much has routine, the daily grind of going to work teaching the same thing to students and going back home where he lives with his girlfriend. He rents a movie based on a recommendation of a colleague and shot locally. He notices that the actor playing the bellboy looks just like him and decides to seek him out.
The film opens with a scene of an underground club where people are given a key to access a sex show/orgy taking place. Think a low rent version of the orgy from Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. One of the men in this club looks like Adam. We also for the first time here see the spider motif, here a tarantula on the verge of being squashed by a lady in high heels.
Adam identifies the actor as Anthony Claire who had bit parts in a few other films. Adam stalks Anthony, visiting his office and calling him at home. Everyone, including Anthony's pregnant wife Helen confuse the two men. In a separate dreamlike image, a giant spider lurks among and above the skyscrapers of Toronto. Helen is suspicious of Anthony, she suspects he is having an affair.
Adam and Anthony eventually meet in a hotel room and discover they are identical which includes having a scar in the same place. Adam is reserved, intellectual. Anthony is a hot head, sexual also neater and dresses better.
Of course two men can look alike, have the same voice but the same scar? This just indicates a split personality, two sides of the same coin. Is Adam the man going to the sex clubs, having an affair, a man who feels trapped like he was in a spider's web?
This is a film that has a left field ending full of symbolism which means you end up watching it again in order to see the clues. Bad luck if you did not like the film the first time around and the post production grading of dark yellow, teal, murky brown that I found so off putting. Every film seems to have a similar colour scheme even straight to DVD movies with Z list stars. When cinematographers like Vilmos Zsigmond and Nestor Almendros were shooting with rays of golden hues they were using real skill and artistry not using Photoshop during post production.
The real highlight was when you see the film within the film, brightly lit and colourful and you think why could not the rest of the movie look like that.
Enemy, is bound to be a cult film with a cultish following. Its intriguing, its like a puzzle box and open to different interpretation, full of symbolism and pretensions. Even the title of one of the songs used is called The Cheater.
The title of the movie signifies that Adam is his own worst enemy, a man destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, its almost farcical something he said earlier in his lectures. Even when he might have rid of his double for good we see him with a new key of the type at the beginning of the film, telling the pregnant Helen he will be going out that night. A serial adulterer who does not want to be trapped.
The film is good, it burns slowly into you but never immediately grabbed my attention afterwards but its not a great film. Something about it is too heavy handed like the murky colours and the garish yellows used in the film.
The clues are there regarding any possible meaning about the film and its inspirations. Some people liken it to Fight Club, which tend to be people who think film history started from 1999.
Villeneuve is Canadian and so is David Cronenberg who once made a film called Dead Ringers which is about paranoia and delusion among identical twins. You can go back to 1970 with The Man Who Haunted Himself where Roger Moore had a double which appeared after he had an accident.
The film opens with a telephone message from a character's mother played by Isabella Rossellini. She was once married to Martin Scorsese whose recent film is Shutter Island. She also lived with David Lynch and also appeared in some of his movies, Lynch films are well known to visit weirdsville just check out Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and the television series Twin Peaks which also had a doppelganger.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Adam Bell, a History professor in Toronto. He looks dishevelled, his hair and beard rather unkempt. He very much has routine, the daily grind of going to work teaching the same thing to students and going back home where he lives with his girlfriend. He rents a movie based on a recommendation of a colleague and shot locally. He notices that the actor playing the bellboy looks just like him and decides to seek him out.
The film opens with a scene of an underground club where people are given a key to access a sex show/orgy taking place. Think a low rent version of the orgy from Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. One of the men in this club looks like Adam. We also for the first time here see the spider motif, here a tarantula on the verge of being squashed by a lady in high heels.
Adam identifies the actor as Anthony Claire who had bit parts in a few other films. Adam stalks Anthony, visiting his office and calling him at home. Everyone, including Anthony's pregnant wife Helen confuse the two men. In a separate dreamlike image, a giant spider lurks among and above the skyscrapers of Toronto. Helen is suspicious of Anthony, she suspects he is having an affair.
Adam and Anthony eventually meet in a hotel room and discover they are identical which includes having a scar in the same place. Adam is reserved, intellectual. Anthony is a hot head, sexual also neater and dresses better.
Of course two men can look alike, have the same voice but the same scar? This just indicates a split personality, two sides of the same coin. Is Adam the man going to the sex clubs, having an affair, a man who feels trapped like he was in a spider's web?
This is a film that has a left field ending full of symbolism which means you end up watching it again in order to see the clues. Bad luck if you did not like the film the first time around and the post production grading of dark yellow, teal, murky brown that I found so off putting. Every film seems to have a similar colour scheme even straight to DVD movies with Z list stars. When cinematographers like Vilmos Zsigmond and Nestor Almendros were shooting with rays of golden hues they were using real skill and artistry not using Photoshop during post production.
The real highlight was when you see the film within the film, brightly lit and colourful and you think why could not the rest of the movie look like that.
Enemy, is bound to be a cult film with a cultish following. Its intriguing, its like a puzzle box and open to different interpretation, full of symbolism and pretensions. Even the title of one of the songs used is called The Cheater.
The title of the movie signifies that Adam is his own worst enemy, a man destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, its almost farcical something he said earlier in his lectures. Even when he might have rid of his double for good we see him with a new key of the type at the beginning of the film, telling the pregnant Helen he will be going out that night. A serial adulterer who does not want to be trapped.
The film is good, it burns slowly into you but never immediately grabbed my attention afterwards but its not a great film. Something about it is too heavy handed like the murky colours and the garish yellows used in the film.