Richard Ayoade 2013 UK
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Yasmin Paige, Noah Taylor, James Fox, Cathy Moriarty, Phyllis Somerville, Craig Roberts, Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine, Gemma Chan, Kierston Wareing, Chris O’Dowd, Rade Šerbedžija, J Mascis, Chris Morris
Richard Ayoade's first film, 2010's Submarine, was one of the freshest, most likeable debuts of recent years but for his latest, The Double, he's changed tack entirely, joining forces with Harmony Korine (executive producer), Korine's brother Avi (co-writer) and Michael Caine (also exec producer) to adapt Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella of the same name and exchanging the former's reality for a futuristic yet retro Gilliamesque dystopia full of shadows and artificial lights, authoritarians who emerge from behind curtains and hands that reach through blinds desperately trying to make a connection. Gone too is the voiceover and the (at times excessive) soundtrack that previously guided his narrative in favour of a more traditional tone that paradoxically becomes more surreal as it goes on although it's not an unconditional surrender and he delights in fast cuts, front-lit camerawork and pacey dialogue, a couple of scenes every bit as ambitious as anything in Submarine. Dostoevsky isn't the only Russian writer whose influence is keenly felt though; the largely pointless job of the main character, Simon James, and the humiliation he undergoes is reminiscent of the protagonists of Nikolai Gogol while a seemingly throwaway line from Simon's colleague and an early glimpse of Mia Wasikowska's Hannah on a neighbouring train calls to mind Hermann from Vladimir Nabokov's Despair, the downfall of both involved with a doppelgänger whose resemblance only they can see, and leaves the distinct impression that perhaps the entire story is of his own invention and, in his spiralling insanity, he's projected his identity (at least in his eyes) onto a co-worker who epitomises everything he isn't. In a surprising twist though the central person here isn't a member of a hierarchy being taken down a peg or a business man trying to understand himself, he's a lowly office worker and his oppressors are undoubtedly better off than him. Ayoade's influences don't stop at literature however and there are a plethora of twists on cinematic classics. Hitchock's Rear Window is referenced in Simon peeping on his neighbours (mostly Hannah, who he's obsessed with) through his telescope and actually witnessing a death and the theme of suicide and sanity gradually dripping away in a communal building could have come straight out of Polanski's The Tenant. Likewise the skittering hum of the industrial setting and the death of a grotesque bird (again apparently the unintended victim of the leading man) strongly evoke David Lynch's Eraserhead while the skyline and the premise of wage slaves working for an unseen upper-echelon who are largely unaware of their very existence mimic Fritz Lang's Metropolis. When Simon's double, James Simon, borrows an unwilling Simon's flat for a series of hook-ups meanwhile there's more than a suggestion of Jack Lemmon's CC in The Apartment, another drudge tempted by suicide. As steeped in cinema as the film is it's also shot through with the theories of Carl Jung, particularly the 'shadow aspect'. In the plot James is the 'shadow', representative of Simon's hidden, repressed and unconscious personality traits (both positive and negative), and for Simon to achieve 'individuation' and become a full and unique individual he has to confront and assimilate with it rather than merely project it onto the outside world, the main risk being that he'll fall victim to it and be overtaken - to use Jung's own words: "A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps ... living below his own level". He also has to integrate with the 'anima', his inner feminine personality, as she can have both a creative or a destructive effect, often being presented as either a muse or a siren, an encouraging force or one who can lead the man to death. At different times Hannah could be seen as both but pleasingly she also rises above being just a tool of a man and, in her paintings and ponderings, appears to be striving for her own sense of feeling. But it's not all just intellectualism, there's also a surprising amount of humour as well as countless momentary cameos from a collection of different actors. From Sally Hawkins' wonderfully schoolteacher-ish receptionist to Paddy Considine's hammy TV sci-fi hero to Chris O'Dowd's finicky hospital official to Kierston Wareing as James' date to a funeral (yes, seriously) to Gemma Chan in a role described in the credits as simply 'the glamorous judge' to the three other stars of Submarine (Yasmin Paige, Craig Roberts and Noah Taylor). Even the satirist Chris Morris and J Mascis of the band Dinosaur Jr appear at different points. As both sides of the leading man Jesse Eisenberg also gives a confident performance, equally good as the shy doormat and the charismatic bastard. As exciting and impressive as Ayoade's cocktail of pastiche, psychology, pop culture and disturbances are however there are flaws. The film does merit multiple viewings but by the end its complexity has become convoluted and a step below Lynchian enigma. I'll still be excited to see Ayoade's next film but hopefully he'll dial things down just a little and concentrate as much on structure and craft as he does on mise-en-scene and confusion.
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