DVD Review: Enemy (2013)

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Less a literal adaptation of Jose Saramago’s novel The Double than a grand psychosexual puzzle that centers on the paranoid fears of a man having trouble reconciling his desire to be single with the commitment he’s made in life as a husband and expectant father, Enemy is an avant-garde exploration of a character’s dueling war within his own subconscious brought to cinematic life.

Topically, Enemy channels some of the same irrational, Freudian fears of gender dominance, submission and control, as well as the mother-infused madonna/whore complex that Nicolas Winding Refn chronicled in Only God Forgives.

Yet Denis Villeneuve’s deft navigation between both the surface-level literal storyline as well as the subversively allegorical one going on simultaneously in our character’s eye is vastly superior in his admirably unpretentious existential art film masquerading as a straightforward thriller.

Easily dissected by those willing to put everything together from the repetitive symbolism and lines of dialogue together along with his painstakingly well-composed mise en scenes that are filled with posters and visual cues to help you along the way, Enemy is that rare film that treats its viewers with sophistication.

Laying out its plan from the start as a bit of chaos in need of deciphering, Villeneuve and his screenwriter Javier Gullón respect their intellect enough to meet the film halfway, understanding the scientific and evolutionary significance of a key motif used throughout the film that likewise has some mythological roots, which you can apply to make your own.

Cinematically intertextual, Villeneuve’s influences are apparent throughout the piece, most notably via Enemy’s obvious nod to Vertigo in the set-up of a college professor who one day spots his identical double onscreen in a film he rented from a video store (that had a carefully placed poster of not only Vertigo but also Attack of the 50 Foot Woman).

Yet just like there are two layers to the movie, there are layers of influences as much more subtly, Enemy meanders down the same psychic, stylistic and thematic pathways of David Cronenberg’s Spider, David Fincher’s The Game, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

Released after another acclaimed venture also starring the criminally underrated lead Jake Gyllenhaal, Enemy is the filmic yang to the yin the director had previously released via the Hollywood revenge-fueled kidnap mystery Prisoners.

While that film was far more classically structured and clearly defined, Enemy is like the palette cleansing, admittedly somewhat autobiographical (and likewise slightly self-indulgent) art project you make with your friends outside the confines of the studio system.

Like Winding Refn’s God follow-up to Drive, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing post-Avengers, or Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis, Full Frontal, or any number of works that he’s done for the hell of it, Enemy let the filmmaker clean out the creative cobwebs, exploring his own worst fears, enemies and dreamscapes among the safety net of likeminded friends.

From the name of the DVD that Gyllenhaal’s professor is advised to check out to the number of months a character is pregnant (that’s repeated in another revealing moment to describe how long another character has been gone) and the recurring motifs that echo throughout, some filmgoers might be tempted to throw their hands up in frustration due to (perceived) mental exhaustion.

Yet whereas some prefer the Prisoners paradigm where everything is spelled out in a different but equally impressive opus, others are sure to be seduced by the mystery that plays out on a number of levels throughout Enemy and admire its decision to trust its audience to figure it out for themselves (which is the perceived "enemy" of traditional storytelling).

Honestly, of course there are many interpretations to Enemy and indeed the fun of this kind of film is finding your own way as what you make of it reveals more about you than watching a majority of straightforward narrative features any day of the week.

Nonetheless, viewers needing a definitive answer will be pleased to know that the director has revealed in more than a few interviews what the overall key to the movie is, which I alluded to in my opening paragraph and therefore felt was obvious enough to qualify as spoiler-free.

While I question the chronology of the events depicted, wondering if – for a film that focuses so much energy on repetition – our character may have experienced some of these "incidents" before, Enemy remains a highly recommended, highly effective reel work that begs to be dissected thoroughly with friends, enemies, actors, professors, and doppelgangers in your subconscious mind and real life alike.

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The Fall

Director:
Tarsem Singh
(aka Tarsem)

Those who have spent any significant amount of time convalescing will tell you that nothing speeds recovery along like a worthwhile diversion in the form of an epic tale. When you add thrills, romance, and laughter to the narrative, you create a powerful, side effect free unparalleled prescription for health without the need of co-pays, waiting rooms or HMO red tape where there aren’t any deductions for preexisting conditions and you never have to deal with a clipboard full of paperwork. Imagine your doctors in residence weren’t the test-happy first year medical students still trying to master the right way to hook up a catheter or IV most of us face at our local hospitals but rather Being John Malkovich filmmaker Spike Joze, Zodiac helmer David Fincher and the innovative fellow music video director turned feature filmmaker Tarsem Singh and you’ll begin to get a better sense of their cinematically experimental procedure where reels of film and not dangerous drugs replace mood altering anesthesia. And comparable to the wonderful program Doctors Without Borders, imagine sending this cinematic dream team of Filmmakers Without Borders to expertly stitch together twenty-six locations over four years in more than eighteen countries (IMDb) in Tarsem Singh’s highly anticipated sophomore follow up to his critically acclaimed first feature, The Cell.

Already, the work, entitled The Fall has divided the critics into largely two factions of those who feel his film is a masterpiece and those who call the mad-scientist’s resulting epic an infuriatingly self-important vanity project. However, for my money, Tarsem succeeds where others like Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly failed with his atrocious second feature Southland Tales, in admirably taking risks but like a good doctor, Tarsem contemplates each move with stealth like precision, making sure that the benefits outweigh the negatives for his unforgettably dark, brilliant grown up fairy tale, The Fall.

From the breathtakingly bizarre black and white opening montage set to music and staged as though it were a silent film to its overwhelming eye candy that seems to pour off the screen in each daring frame as it continues, Tarsem’s Fall combines the scope and ambition of a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster with the artistic risk taking of experimental cinema. Admittedly as one who has never been overly keen on fantasy, I worried that it was going to be as bloated and pretentious as some of the critics described but I was quickly taken in by the riveting tale, which was inspired by the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho.

Set in a Los Angeles hospital, we first meet our precocious five year old heroine Alexandria (Romanian newcomer Catinca Untaru) who, still recovering from a broken arm after picking oranges in a grove along with her impoverished family, forms an unlikely attachment with Roy Walker (Lee Pace) a heartbroken, suicidal film stuntman whose legs were damaged after he attempted a ridiculous sequence jumping from a train bridge onto a horse.

Unable to move on with his life because he’s lost the woman he loved, Roy distracts himself along with Alexandria by first sharing with her a story of her namesake Alexander the Great and afterwards, telling her a fictitious epic tale of five heroic men (including Charles Darwin) who aspire to kill the horrible Governor Odious. As the story continually builds from one exciting adventure to the next, Roy begins to subtly blackmail his young friend into procuring enough medicine for himself so that he may end his life, only to have some of his plans backfire in unexpected ways.

Although the bleak nature of Roy’s outlook on life might have been unbearably sad in another’s hands, Singh fills his film with surprising amounts of black comedy, near-misses as the story Roy begins to tell suspiciously morphs into a catharsis when reality and fantasy are blurred as Roy, Alexandria and others they know in the hospital and in their lives begin to make appearances in the emotionally intoxicating and artistically dazzling saga. However, I must warn that it becomes extraordinarily brutal near the end causing us to shift uncomfortably in our seats in trying to anticipate just how Tarsem will conclude the film.

Despite this, admirably The Fall rises from the obvious label of a spectacle picture due to the sheer amazement to be found in the magical sequences that will haunt your dreams after the viewing, by providing a satisfying emotional payoff as well for both of the characters we’ve come to know and love, and both of whom we realize could not have healed without each other nor the unforgettable tale.

And that’s better than an allergic reaction to a prescription medication your insurance won’t cover but the doctor insists you need any day of the week. In other words, go to the cinema and call me in the morning.

I'm Not There

Director: Todd Haynes

“Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
of your useless and pointless knowledge.”
- Bob Dylan’s
“Tombstone Blues” (1965)

With a topic as elusive as Bob Dylan, I knew going into I’m Not There that in the hands of someone like writer/director Todd Haynes who had given Citizen Kane a glam rock makeover with Velvet Goldmine and let Rock Hudson’s Douglas Sirk characters finally come out of the closet in Far From Heaven, he could not craft a film “so plain.” However, after only a few minutes, it does begin to make us feel “insane,” overly relying on all of our “useless and pointless knowledge” about the man, the myth, the Dylan to try and glean any wisdom from its largely incoherent structure. As fascinating as it is infuriating, weaving in and out of one scene and-- what’s more-- one actor to the next, Haynes introduces us relatively quickly to the six performers who represent Dylan at various stages in his career.

Drawing inspiration from Dylan’s countless public personas, evolving interviews, concert performances, films and phases along with the legendary song catalog of the man himself, the script for the film is the initial standout, filled with intoxicatingly evocative imagery that intellectual audiences savor like honey, especially when the dialogue is delivered with such sweetness by its sumptuous cast. In fact, some of the phrases seem so ingenious, they’re damn near worthy of Dylan himself but then again, we constantly ask: just who the hell is Dylan anyway?

Sketching various portraits of the man in broad strokes, relying on prior knowledge of the Dylan mythology to fill in the lines, we encounter our Dylans: the young boxcar hopping Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin), the Greenwich Village “Troubadour of Conscience” Jack Rollins (Christian Bale), gorgeous “Dean, Kerouac, and Brando rolled into one,” actor Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger), poetic Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), press loathing, insecure Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett) just after Dylan goes electric, and the old cowboy Billy the Kid (Richard Gere). While some argue that there’s a seventh Dylan as Bale’s Rollins evolves from New York City folk singing icon to Dylan as the born-again Pentecostal minister, this change is just one of several chameleon like incarnations since Dylan, as he himself said, can become someone else completely in the course of just one day.

Most of the press surrounding the film centered on a richly deserving Cate Blanchett who made headlines for playing a man and she’ll put any fears to rest about “stunt casting” after just a handful of scenes as she masters his mannerisms in ways that defy mimicry. Despite her stunning portrayal, I was particularly struck by both Ledger as the conflicted husband and father as well as an engaging turn by young Marcus Carl Franklin as the mischievous, tall-tale happy youth whose scenes seemed tinged with a touch of gold, similar to the way Hal Asbhy’s biopic on Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory, managed to inspire awe with its innovative cinematography.

However, this praise aside, Haynes’s film wears out its welcome in the final hour after the initial intrigue fades and it becomes far more experimental and nonsensical with each passing frame, quite similar to the way that some of Dylan’s stanzas seem to inspire countless arguments as to their true meaning. Even though Dylan devotees will feel a bit more at home in the narrative than those unfamiliar with the man, I’m Not There spirals into a pretentious vanity project that gets even more preposterous as we journey—for no reason in particular—to the old west with Gere, who nonetheless manages to redeem the segment with a beautiful bookend recalling the opening with Franklin.

Unfortunately, it’s too little too late, as far as this Dylan fan is concerned, despite applauding Haynes for having the courage to forgo traditional trappings of the biopic. However, his filmmaking should have learned a lesson from Dylan at his most irritating, in that if one acts like enough of a self-absorbed jerk, the audience and the fans will begin to lose interest… at least until the next song (or frame) begins in the hopes that it may “ease,” “cool” and “cease the pain.”

The Good Night

Director:
Jake Paltrow

We all flirt but there are often lines that seem to change with each relationship as to what constitutes cheating. Is going out for coffee with an opposite gender friend cheating? How about dinner with an ex? What about those e-mail correspondences that are getting more flirtatious? Do you find it’s easier to chat with an attractive coworker than your mate in the morning? While these questions can lead to more revelations about yourself and your relationship since they all include boundaries that may be easily crossed, how does it fit into the mix if you dream cheat? That is, if in your dreams you have an affair with a perfect stranger that actually feels more like love while embarking on a fantasy relationship you look more forward to than the perfunctory “good night” and “I love you” said to your partner.

For Gary (Martin Freeman), this is the situation he finds himself in fairly quickly into writer/director Jake Paltrow’s feature film debut. In a beginning that feels ike a British version of VH1 Behind the Music, we learn a bit of the background of former Britpop musician Gary who, now in his thirties, resides in New York with his nagging, frumpy, dark-haired girlfriend of seven years Dora (played by Jake’s sister Gwyenth Paltrow). When we first meet him, Gary is busily eking out an unsatisfying career scoring commercial jingles for an advertising agency with his former band-mate turned boss Paul (Simon Pegg). Although he’s approaching an early midlife crisis, unlike his womanizing, lecherous married friend Paul who is currently having an affair with a woman he describes (as only Pegg can) as “sort of tall and hot, in a kind of short, ugly way,” Gary saves his fantasies for himself and finds them indulged in a bizarre way one evening when he dreams of a gorgeous, beguiling stranger (Penelope Cruz) who, speaking to him only in subtitles, tells him that if he pays close attention and shuts his eyes he “can feel a heartbeat” in her lips.

Intoxicated by this imagined encounter, Gary’s ego is given a boost as he decides to explore the field of dream interpretation and lucid dreaming, visiting a new age bookstore before he meets up with a dream coach in the form of a group run by Mel (Danny DeVito). Gary, who decides to avoid the small clique of fellow dreamers all hoping to control their dreams as if they were listening to their favorite song without an ending before the Kendo practice interrupts them, hires Mel for private consultation. Soon their sessions enable him to continue his affair with Cruz that soon takes over his own waking life as he begins darkening and soundproofing his bedroom for better dreaming conditions before Dora is only too happy to have an excuse to leave for an Italian two week business trip. Quickly startled into thinking that fate is the reason for his dreams when he sees Cruz’s likeness adorning fashion ads on city buses, Paul takes it upon himself to arrange an introduction but will the reality be as good as his dream or was Gary just trying to find a way to avoid his own relationship that may be way past the expiration date?

A fascinating premise that would have done better to be played more for laughs than the downbeat drama as penned by Paltrow that concludes into a dark cheat of an ending that feels a bit rushed and disappointing, the film also suffers from as Hollywood Reporter writer Kirk Honeycut noted, Paltrow’s decision to make “ever character thoroughly unlikable” or as he corrects, “actually pathetic would be a better adjective.” With such a brooding tone to the film with self-involved and cringe-worthy characters that may have been more successful on the page, there is little to recommend the work despite the originality of Paltrow’s idea and his unquestionable gift for direction as the film offers plenty of gorgeous scenes that, on their own, show his promise but compounded with the rest result in an uneven mess. This being said, it's nonetheless suitable for the same audiences who found themselves entranced by the similarly themed fellow Penelope Cruz vehicle, Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky (based on the superior Abre los Ojos also starring Cruz).

Slipstream

Director: Anthony Hopkins

“I perceive life as a game, a game that we play at some unconscious level,” Anthony Hopkins explained to journalist Scott Macaulay in the Fall 2007 Filmmaker Magazine article “The Hollywood Life” which chronicled his latest experimental puzzler Slipstream from its birth as a stream-of-consciousness screenplay to its wild shoot and inventive post-production that found Oscar winning Anthony Hopkins both in front of the camera and behind it serving as the writer/director/star and film score composer as well.

While the film, which explores “the strange nature of time” is a wild opus purposely created to “annoy the audience” as the actor explained may be his own version of a game, the question then becomes in asking whether or not viewers will want to take part as, like Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, 8 & ½ and Last Year in Marienbad, it infuriates its audience with constant shifts in plot, character, and text that continually build on itself until we realize that it’s a film within a film within a film just like our main character, the “film’s” screenwriter Felix Bonhoeffer (Hopkins) is, as Vince Vaughn may have said in Swingers, the guy behind the guy behind the guy. Although Felix is perceived to be a main character, the film focuses instead on several others as the movie begins and we meet Michael Clarke Duncan as a bouncer of sorts and two villains played by Jeffrey Tambor and Christian Slater who decide to hold up a diner, not for any monetary gain, but just for the sake of menace as Tambor and Slater ramble out an increasingly crazy story about the 50’s film Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Slater’s typical Jack Nicholson styled cadence becomes far more frightening with each passing minute. Then, as soon as we’re beginning to grasp this nonsensical storyline, a “cut” is yelled and we’re taken behind the scenes of a sloppy film shoot in the desert that will soon find one actor dead and the rest all struggling to figure out how that will affect the film, with studio head John Turturro (given a majority of the picture’s best lines) arriving on the scene like a domineering madman.

Filled with Hollywood in-jokes as Turturro’s character named Harvey seems on some level to be a nod to the controversial tactics and persona of former Miramax head Harvey Weinstein, an off-screen phone call from “Dino” (De Laurentis) about casting Hopkins in Hannibal 4 as long as the price is right and a joke about films being cheesy dreams that can find Huckleberry Finn fishing on the moon similar to the image used as the Dreamworks logo. In addition, Hopkins casts his wife and the film’s producer Stella Arroyave as Gina, the wife of his character Felix and soon the film morphs from an Altman styled Player satire of the film business into one concerned with the past and of how characters came to be where they are in the face of their own mortality.

While an indisputable vanity project and one that will have most viewers reaching for the eject button within the first half an hour, it’s still an artistically imaginative ride for those willing to participate and while it’s nowhere near as effective as the films its emulating such as Marienbad or as I began to feel, literature from Kafka or Calvino, it’s of particular interest to film students who appreciate the amount of work that goes into experimental filmmaking and even more, the amount of dedication and artistry from those involved. Instead of being Hopkins’s film all the way, in the end, the real star of Slipstream and the one responsible for a large majority of its moderate success as a valuable work is the courageous editor Michael Miller who not only respected Hopkins’ vision but also added a dazzling sense of style to the picture giving it a feeling of more depth at times than it actually deserves in the process.