surviving through suicide
By
Douglas Messerli
Richard
Ayoade and Avi Korine (screenplay, based on Dostoevsky’s novella, The Double), Richard Ayoade (director) The Double / 2013, USA 2014
So
intertwined are the successes and failures of Richard Ayoade’s film, The Double, which I saw the other day at
Landmark’s Nu-Art Theatre, that I increasingly become uncertain whether I can succulently
unweave the various elements of the film in order to properly evaluate it. I
guess we
should say, right out—in a time when most films are so banal and
adolescent that they are not even worth talking about—that a film dedicated, even
at the skeletal level of Ayoade’s movie, to a Dostoevsky story ought to be
celebrated. And the opportunity it gives its star(s), Jesse Eisenberg (as both
Simon James and James Simon), to act out two oppositional figures, should be seen
as a significant theatrical gift, particularly within the acting community.
That Eisenberg’s performance, particularly early on as the nerdy, unimaginative
Simon James is somewhat muddled, is perhaps to be expected; and he surely
redeems himself as he slips into Simon’s polar opposite, as the likeable,
sociable, and, apparently for nearly every woman he meets, sexually desirable
James Simon.
Perhaps it is also inevitable that, given
the surrealist-like elements of such a story, that the youngish (37) British
director would also allow himself the influences and palettes of figures such
as Gogol (also an influence for Dostoevsky), Kafka, and Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil. The later allows him a truly
memorable excursion into an office world of sickly green lights, permanent
cubicles, and noisy machines from a distant past that strangely are asked to
function in a slightly futurist environment. All of this is overseen by a
boorish hoot of a manipulator-office manager, Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn).
From Gogol, the director has stolen an
entirely bureaucratic world where, even though employees are “required” to
attend a company party, Simon cannot gain entry since he has no current
identification papers. Strangely, he is perhaps the only employee who might
have something to truly offer the owner, The Colonel (James Fox): a paper
outlining the inefficiency of the organization.
The only seemingly joy this loser has is
the beauty of his neighbor, also an employee in his company, Hannah (Mia
Washikowska), whom each night he watches through a telescope as she mysteriously
paints figures which she cuts up and tosses into the trash bin. Simon rushes
out to the bin to retrieve the pieces, pasting them into what we later
perceive as a album dedicated to her lost art.
One night he sees a young man, whom he
immediately recognizes as a carbon copy of himself, who waves at him before
jumping from a window to his death. Reporting the incident to the police, Simon
suddenly enters a strange relationship with the “ghost” of his own being, a
doppelgänger that in Dostoevsky leads to his mental breakdown and in Ayoade’s
film ends with his near suicide.
At first, the relationship develops as a kind
of intense friendship, perhaps—as his double suggests—with a repressed element
of homosexuality, as we watch Simon readily invite James to live with him, and
we observe him lovingly stroking the intruder’s face. But that friendship
quickly is transformed into anger and even hate as he watches his doppelgänger
hired by his own company, which quickly praises James’ talents, and offers him a
position far above that which, despite the several years of servitude, Simon
has attained. Like others in the company, James takes advantage of Simon’s
intelligence by forcing him to take the battery of tests the company requires,
while admitting that he does not even know what the company does. Simon’s
abilities allow James to easily pass the test and move even higher in the
company structure, or, at least, in the Papadopoulos’ and the Colonel’s
appreciation of him.
Seemingly out of pity, James attempts to
help Simon woo the woman he loves, Hannah; but soon after Simon perceives that
James has not only moved romantically in on Hannah, but has used some of Simon’s
own words to describe his feelings. James has also taken Simon’s inefficiency
report directly to the Colonel, garnering him further acclaim within the halls
of this ambiguous business. Although none of his fellow employees seem to be
able to recognize that the two men look alike, Simon and James find that not
only do they share appearances, but they share, so it seems, the functions of
their bodies, as Simon grows violent and attempts to destroy his double.
He quickly recognizes, however, that to do
so would be to destroy himself. Fired from the company which has almost served
as his home, the “simple Smon” of this tale figures out simply how to
survive. Like James, Simon will wave to his doppelgänger as he leaps to his
death. In the earlier scene in which he have watched Simon fall, the police
have noted that had he only landed momentarily on a overhang nearly, he might
have survived, severely hurt of course, but able to recover. Simon does just
that and is awarded, in turn, praise from both the detective and the love of
Hannah.
What happens to James seems murky at best:
is he now truly destroyed, believing Simon has died? Has Simon’s survival
determined the end of opponent’s activities? Ayoade’s film does not even
attempt to reveal the fictional reality it has created. And that is, indeed,
the problem with much of film. What does the sickly retro landscape of this
film have to do with its subjects? I suppose we can see a society that steals
from an age before it in order to make over reality as being a kind of doubling.
But it seems, at best, a kind of charming tick: as some reviewers simply
commented,
Ayoalde, like Wes Anderson, has his own private landscape in which he
works.
Although Kafka does not seem far away
from the bureaucratic ridiculousness of Golyadkin Jr./ Golyadkin Sr. tale of Dostoevsky,
the various intense encounters Simon has with authority throughout the film, only
reiterates his own nerdish sensibilities, without particularly offering us new
insights into James’ condition. Ayoade does, through at least two scenes, takes
his character back into the horrific relationship he has had with his mother, but
other than her being a kind gorgon who can enjoy nothing in life, she seems,
living in a perverse nursing home, to be basically far-removed from his current
life, and he seems to have a perspective about it that allows him to distance
himself from her oppressive demands. And what are we to make, finally, about
the whole sequence of life and death events between the two major figures, with
its vaguely vampire-like implications?
If
Ayoade, at times, seems like a talented director, he is also a sometimes amateur one,
who is still unable to make all the references that apparently so charm him
cohere. There are many pleasing elements in The
Double, the comic-seriousness of its tone, the slightly estranged landscape
it creates, and the oppositional characters it represents; but at moments this
movie seems to be pulling in too many directions at all once, forcing some of
its elements into highly symbolical significance, while rendering other aspects
into something like comic riffs to which the director never returns.
So let The Double be just that, an apprenticeship-like work of a
director discovering his themes and techniques. We need such movies, for they
are what eventually result in great film-making. It’s clear, finally, that
Ayoade, is learning quickly about what he wants to do and how to do it
effectively. If The Double is not
great film-making, it is surely far and away better than most of movies we must
currently endure by so-called "professionals."
Los Angeles, May
14, 2014
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