Episode review
Enemy (2013) Review
The short version
Enemy is one of the rare times one of us told the other to watch something and it actually happened. Chris put me onto it years ago. We both love it, and we landed within a fifth of a point of each other.
It starts as a movie about a man who finds out he has a double and turns into a movie about a man at war with himself. Then it ends on a jump scare you will not forget.
How we pitched it
Adam Bell is a history lecturer in Toronto, grinding through the same lecture on totalitarianism, the same apartment, the same joyless routine with his girlfriend. A colleague recommends a forgettable local film, and in one background shot Adam sees a bit part actor who is not just his lookalike but his exact double. Same face, same voice, same scar. He tracks the man down. Anthony Claire has a pregnant wife, a nicer apartment, and an appetite for control that Adam lacks. Neither man can leave it alone, and curiosity curdles into a swap neither of them fully agrees to.
Villeneuve's Toronto
This is Denis Villeneuve before Sicario, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, and you can already see it. Chris loves the look: gray and washed out by day, sickly yellow light at night. The architecture is heavy and drab, the apartments are drab, the routines are drab. Everything screams mundane.
It reportedly cost $3.5 million and made about $3.4 million back worldwide. It barely broke even, and it is still proof of what you can do with a small budget, the right script and the right lead.
The clues it hands you early
Watch closely and the movie tells you what is going on well before it admits it.
- The phone call. Helen, Anthony's wife, goes to see Adam at the school and calls Anthony's phone as Adam walks away. Anthony only picks up once Adam has turned the corner and is out of sight.
- The motorcycle. Anthony tails Adam's girlfriend Mary on his bike and nearly clips her, and she barely reacts. Chris only caught it on this rewatch: nobody fails to notice a motorcycle revving right next to them.
- The mother. Adam visits his mom, and she tells him to give up his fantasy of being a third rate actor. That is the Fight Club hotel room reveal, except it happens in the middle of the movie instead of the end. We like that choice, because there is still plenty left to unpack after it.
- The keys. In the elevator at Anthony's building, a stranger tells him he cannot stop thinking about the other night and asks if they are still giving out keys. It is the scene in Fight Club where everyone recognizes the narrator as Tyler.
The spider over the city
For a split second, a giant spider looms over the Toronto skyline. The way we see it, it fits the whole movie. These lives are so gray that it could be a kind of hell, and the people who live in hell do not know they are in it. It shows up right as everything is falling apart for him, like a cloud he cannot get out from under.
The car crash
Mary finally notices the pale band on his ring finger where a wedding ring would be, and she panics: "Who are you?" He crashes the car. Chris will nitpick the spin as a little wonky, but he loves the slow push in on the windshield, where the cracked glass looks like a spider web. It leaves you asking whether anyone died, and how one of them can die if they are the same man.
That ending
The first time you see it, you jump out of your seat. Anthony finds the key to the secret club in his jacket, the same key Adam claimed to have picked up earlier, and asks Helen whether she has plans tonight. He walks into the bedroom, and a spider the size of the wall is cowering in the corner.
Chris reads the spider as Helen. She knows exactly what that question means, because he is going back to his old ways. And it ties back to the opening scene, a room of older men watching a woman crush a tarantula under her heel. Chris sees married men with the same routine every day, getting their release from watching commitment and responsibility get crushed.
Watch Gyllenhaal's face when he finds that key. It is almost the first time in the whole movie he looks alive.
Adam and Anthony are the same man
We are fairly sure there is only one man here. Same body, same scar, same ring mark. One half is the dull, quiet professor, and the other is the confident, cheating actor who rides a motorcycle. The movie is ambiguous enough to leave a little doubt, which is what keeps you rewatching.
The question is which one is real, and which one is Tyler Durden. You would think Adam, since his mother treats him as her only son. But Anthony has the pregnant wife, the affair and the key. Our answer is maybe neither. He splits himself into good and bad in his own head, but everyone around him can see both halves in one guy.
Your worst enemy is your own mind
The title is the thesis. The enemy is his own subconscious: the compulsions and self destruction he keeps sliding back into. We spent a while on this. Your conscious mind wants one thing, but it is outgunned by programming laid down when you were young, and you do not think your way out of that. The only thing that rewrites it is doing something over and over until it sticks. That works for getting to the gym. It is a lot harder with a mindset.
Chris's take on the cheating is practical: keeping two lives going is exhausting, and being normal is less work. My question back was how much of that is upbringing. If you grew up in a family that stayed together, cheating is extra effort. If you watched a parent do it, maybe it feels like the default. In Enemy, his mother seems to be on her own.
Literally us
I'm Adam, mostly because I want to wear the professor clothes every day. Chris is Anthony, the low tier actor.
Why Chris gives it an 8.2
It is exactly his kind of movie: a psychological thriller, minimal action, twists that make you think. He has seen it more times than he can count. He loves how much everyone involved clearly cared about it, from Villeneuve down, and that Javier Bardem turned the lead down because he knew he was not the right fit. And he likes that it can be read a dozen ways. That is good writing.
Why I give it an 8
It starts with a question I could chew on for days: what would you do if you found out you had a twin? My first move would be to question my parents, then stake the guy out. Then the movie pulls the floor out, and you start questioning everything you are seeing on screen.
I love a movie where the mind is the battlefield. For me this is the Jungian shadow at work: a man confronting his shadow, the same thing Fight Club is about. That is why the whole time your gut keeps asking whether you are watching Fight Club again.
Behind the scenes
A few things we dug up for the episode:
- The cast reportedly signed an agreement not to explain the spiders to the press.
- Javier Bardem was offered the lead and turned it down because he felt he did not suit the character. Christian Bale wanted it but had a scheduling conflict.
- For the scenes with Adam and Anthony in the same room, Villeneuve gave Gyllenhaal a tennis ball on a stick to look at.
- José Saramago, who wrote the novel it is based on, The Double, is said to have died just as the film went into production. His widow saw the finished film and loved it, even though it strays a long way from the book.
Listen to the full episode
Fifty five minutes on Enemy, from the opening club to that last shot.
Also on the show: There Will Be Blood, Moon, and Fight Club. Every episode is on the Regular or Menthol homepage.