Skip to main content

The Double (2013)

I can typically create a film summary in just a sentence. On other occasions, I come up against a movie like The Double that just tickles my brain with its many, many (obvious) sources of inspiration and it leaves me scrambling to wrap up the details into just one tasty morsel.

Double is best described as "compellingly weird". It has the visual quality of a music video or like something Spike Jonze directed in the early 90's (Being John Malkovich or Adaptation). Smoosh that together with the surrealist dystopian masterpiece,  Brazil. Sprinkle on top the nagging feeling that Alex Proyas could have made it in between The Crow and Dark City. Mix the whole thing up and it feels like the perfect marriage of Jim Jarmusch and Wes Anderson.  Whew.

The story is reminiscent of Metropolis, and carries with it a similar soul crushing feeling about industrialization and the mechanization of humanity. There is an excess of subtext around feeling like you don't exist. Double also has a bit of the emotional tone of Mary and Max; primarily sad, yet somehow up-lifting or hopeful or just not all together depressing. On top of all of this is the undeniable specter of 1984, shrouding the entire story in this uber-controlled nightmare.

If I didn't pause here to bring up the elephant in the room, I'd be a very, very poor movie blogger. Call me "ruined by Fight Club", but really? I can't watch a surrealist movie in which a shy man is suddenly befriended by a guy who is completely his opposite WITHOUT thinking they are actually THE SAME person. A thought that is challenged or complicated by the fact that the two men in question are played by the same actor. Twist this one any way you like, it is still the key to understanding this movie and will tell you how things are going to end.

Overall enjoyable and absolutely sure to make those who get squirmy during awkward moments extremely uncomfortable.

You can get the NPR take here, in case you trust those folks more than me. You don't, do you?...

And you can watch the trailer here:



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rebuttal: 17 Disturbing Horror Movies You Will Never Watch Again

When I'm not watching movies, I'm reading about movies. I stumble across all kinds of articles, blog posts, book excerpts, etc. in my quest to absorb as much movie knowledge as possible. Now, I'm snotty and loud-mouthed and opinionated but I'd never begrudge another human their opinion. Seriously. You're absolutely welcome to have any opinion about any thing you want. However, I must warn you, if I think your opinion is stupid, I'm absolutely going to say so. I've recently stumbled on an article completely  brimming with so many idiotic opinions that I'm actually compelled to craft a response. Here's the gist of the original article: there are some horror movies out there that are so disturbing , you'll only ever want to watch them once. I've have taken her original list and refuted her claims without pulling her entire article over. You can read the original article here . Let's start at the beginning, with her opening statement
Post a Comment
Read more

What Is Genre And Why Should I Care?

There are terms that always seem to come up when talking about films: director, actor, plot, theme, score, etc. These terms are all self-explanatory; no one ever asks, ‘what’s a director?’ However, there are other terms that are equally common but less clear: genre, sub-genre, auteur, oeuvre, etc. These terms are more abstract then ‘director’ or ‘actor.’ It is entirely likely that someone will ask, ‘what is genre, anyway?’ This question specifically is what I will be answering with this paper. The answer to the question ‘what is genre,’ is multi-layered: genre is a means of classification. Genre is a means of communication. Genre is a means of understanding films. Genre is a means of relating to films. To one person all movies rated “PG” are a genre – possibly one also known as “children’s movies” – while to another all movies with similar topics treated in similar ways are a genre: i.e. movies dealing with frontier life depicted in a nostalgic manner are a genre often kn
Post a Comment
Read more

Contracted Or I Just Watched A Zombie Movie

Seems like horror fans fall into two buckets these days: zombie lovers and zombie haters. That dividing line just keeps getting deeper and darker the more zombies gain "mainstream popularity". I currently fall into the "I am so tired of zombies I could puke" bucket. I haven't stopped  watching zombie movies so much as I've started avoiding them at all costs, literally watching every other subgenre offering I stumble onto, regardless of how terrible it is. I seriously re-watched Wishmaster  this past week. That's how far out of my way I've been going to avoid the significant number of zombie movies flooding Netflix. Then I accidentally watched one. Contracted - 2013 I'm sure it was partially due to the really terrible movie synopsis that Netflix provided, which I'm prepared to admit that they may have nothing to do with and  that I likely didn't read it very well. In a strange twist of events, the movie cover actually helped
Post a Comment
Read more