Reply to Topic
The picture was made in 2013, and released in the U.S. in 2014, however we just saw it the other night. If you haven’t seen it, there will be spoilers in the following.
The film right away pulls the viewer into a noir-like, dark mystery thriller mood. A college history professor, who leads a rigid routine life, discovers a look-alike while watching a DVD. He pursues the double until they eventually meet, which provides the basis for the film.
There are plenty of twists and turns, along with confusing subplots. Some of the action is not believable. For example if one were to meet up with his doppelganger, the first thought would not likely be how he could bed the other man’s wife. So as a result of illogic, the feeling starts to creep in that what we’re seeing is not really what’s happening.
In the last 10 minutes the film seems to settle into a measure of normalcy with the remaining characters. One’s thoughts turn to how this will end. At that point we’re startled by a shocking scene that literally comes out of left field, then the movie quickly finishes. After initial surprise, my very next emotion was that we’d been duped by a Kafkaesque ending-- a Dada ripoff.
The feeling still lingers that this was a mediocre story masked by art. My guess is that Villeneuve simply decided to take the base story (the novel The Double by Saramago) as a small quirky project, and turn it into a film. It was probably a labor of love, since it was only to gross $3.5M.
There have been no end to interpretations of the screen play, and my feeling is that when there are many interpretations, none of them must be very good. The director hasn’t offered much by way of interpretation. My own notion is that Gyllenhaal’s character, Adam, is imagining his double as an alter ego. Since the two were never seen together by anyone else, the story seems to be saying that much of the story is not real. The ending might represent Adam’s resignation of the banality of his life.
This film will be highly appreciated by a select group, especially those who already feel that Denis Villeneuve is a brilliant auteur. Most will find the movie confusing, and in the end, incoherent. Doc’s rating: 6.5 of 10.
~Doc
