Entertainment
Denis Villeneuve’s Darkest Film Is Streaming on HBO Max and It’s Nothing Like His Blockbusters
An inexplicably eerie pan over a city skyline. A nude pregnant woman looks straight into the camera. A quote is shown onscreen: “Chaos is order yet undeciphered.” It’s a striking way to open Denis Villeneuve‘s simple yet mind-bending 2014 psychological thriller Enemy — especially considering that megastar Jake Gyllenhaal heads it up. But while he’s known today for blockbusters like the Dune trilogy, Blade Runner 2049, and the upcoming James Bond series reboot, Villeneuve began his English-language film career with the one-two punch of crime thrillers Prisoners and Enemy, released a year apart and both starring Gyllenhaal. While Prisoners was received rapturously by critics, Enemy dives so deeply into symbolism and Lynchian surreality that it left many audiences at the time baffled.
It’s inconceivable today that the director would release something as idiosyncratic as Enemy, but audiences are lucky he did. If you watch the film now on HBO Max, where it’s currently streaming, the eerie film shows Villeneuve’s flare for visual storytelling, which he would continue to hone throughout his career, pairing it with a visceral finish that stands as one of the most startling endings to any thriller ever made.
‘Enemy’ Turns the Classic Identity Thriller Into Surreal Horror
Enemy stars Gyllenhaal as two identical men (or is there really just one?): a college professor focusing on totalitarian societies and a small-time actor. While a traditional thriller would build this up to the revelation of a big secret, in Enemy, the encounter between these doppelgängers triggers a descent into madness. But even that madness — and the film’s exploration of the men’s shared fear of commitment to their partners — is rendered vividly and visually, with hallucinatory imagery and, well, a lot of spiders (arachnophobes are strongly discouraged from watching Enemy, as fantastic as it is.)
From the first moments we see college professor Anthony (Gyllenhaal) and his girlfriend Mary’s (Mélanie Laurent) relationship, it’s clear that something’s off: She goes to bed while he grades papers or watches a film, and the one time they try to make love, she cries out and pushes him off of her. Once Anthony discovers, while watching a movie, that he has a double in an actor named Adam (also, of course, Gyllenhaal), he becomes obsessed to the point of stalking. This is followed by sexual confusion and frightening dreams (including a kaiju-esque image that’s unfortunately spoiled by the film’s poster).
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I’m thinking of ending this movie and watching it again.
Villeneuve Seems To Be Going for David Lynch … Until The Final Reveal
In case the shadowy underground club, complete with a secret key, doesn’t clue you in to the fact that Villeneuve is paying homage to David Lynch here, the presence of the magisterial Isabella Rossellini as Adam’s mother will leave no doubt. After her unforgettable roles in Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, Rossellini only needs a few minutes of screen time in Enemy to establish her eerily powerful presence in Adam’s life. Add to that the film’s disconcerting score, brutalist architecture, and oddly mannered dialogue, and Enemy is one of the most Lynchian films that the master director never made.
However, it’s the final moments of Enemy that stick with virtually everyone who sees it — and move it from Lynchian territory into something even more surreal. After Mary and Anthony die together in a car wreck after a night of identity swapping, Adam dresses as Anthony and goes to the actor’s home. He calls out to Helen, Adam’s wife, while she’s in the bedroom and, after receiving no reply, walks in … only to find a massive tarantula that hisses and climbs the wall in apparent fear of him. It’s a genuinely frightening moment in its matter-of-fact surreality. Perhaps even creepier is Adam’s resigned expression as he looks at Helen/the spider.
Enemy resists a simple beat-by-beat interpretation, though many have tried online. From a commentary on life within the totalitarian societies Adam lectures about, to the presence of his mother, to his and Anthony’s shared fear of women, every and any explanation can fit with the horror of that final shot. But no explanation equals the pure shuddery impact of that final shot.
- Release Date
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March 14, 2014
- Runtime
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91 minutes
- Director
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Denis Villeneuve
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