The whole film of "The Enemy" is the visual consciousness of the male protagonist.
The whole story is based on his perspective, his consciousness, and the city of Toronto in the picture is the materialization of his brain. In this time and space, there is no linear timeline, the past and the present are intertwined, and what you see may not necessarily have happened. The illusory is embedded in the reality, and everything is chaos.
The plot is actually very simple. The central idea is summed up in the director Dennis's own words. A man decides to break up with his mistress and return to his pregnant wife. This is a documentary about the subconscious mind of the male protagonist.
Enemy is a documentary about jake gyllenhaal's subconscious . It's a exploration of masculine intimacy, it's a very simple story, it's a man who decides to leave his mistress to go back to his pregent wife, and we see the story from his point of view. It's really a surrealistic movie and a psychological thriller. - Denis Villeneuve
In the poster, the city occupies the position of the hero's brain, and a spider walks through it. The gloomy yellow filter covers the whole city. Even if the weather forecast on the radio says the weather is sunny, the picture given by the camera is an inextricable yellow haze, because what we see is actually the mood of the male protagonist. The male protagonist sat in the car and listened to her mother's voice message, she was not satisfied with the new house that the male protagonist moved to. Then the pregnant wife Helen flashed by, and there was a sentence, chaos is order undeciphered, chaos is an order that has not yet been identified.
Then the male protagonist and the security guard entered the underground area with the keys, and a woman stepped on the tarantula with high heels. The image of the spider is an important element of the film. Then the associate professor of history (associate professor is between the professor and the assistant professor) Adam appeared, and the first sentence he said was "control, it's all about control." Everything is inseparable from control. He introduced dictatorship, a pattern sure to repeat in history. Some historians and philosophers are marked on the blackboard. For example, in the photo below, the male protagonist has Hegelian dialectics written on his head, that is, abstract→negative→concrete written next to it, that is, abstract→negative→concrete. It extends to the following thesis→antithesis→synthesis, that is, thesis→antithesis→synthesis. These two processes correspond to the three stages of the film. Both negative and antithesis refer to Anthony, representing the more aggressive side of the male protagonist.
The male protagonist projects himself onto two individuals in his mind, Adam Bell, a history professor who doesn't understand the repetitive and depressing life of love, and Anthony Clarie, an arrogant and conceited actor. These two names actually have a hidden mystery. There is a saying called clear as a bell, clarie is clear, and adam bell corresponds to a bell, implying that the two are the same person. The bellhop (hotel waiter) played by Anthony in the film also corresponds to Bell.
Everyone has multiple faces, but not everyone is a split personality, so multiple personalities will not be discussed here. José Saramago's original novel "The Double" isn't actually about double personalities either. Of course, the adaptation of this film also makes it different from the original novel in appearance.
In general, Anthony is more like Adam in the past, but for some reason, the male protagonist has forgotten his past self, like he deliberately chose to forget, and disengaged from the past. For example, now he doesn't watch movies and doesn't like blueberries. Adam and Anthony are opposites, yet attracted to each other until they inevitably meet in room 221. Adam refused to show the scar on the rib, "Adam" and "rib" are linked together, what can you think of? God took a rib from Adam and created Eve, still implying that they are the same person. Adam was disturbed, like a ghost, he subconsciously resisted this part of himself, said "this was a bad idea, I think I made a mistake here" and left. The mistake here is a bit of a second. One layer means that they should not meet, and the other layer is like saying that Anthony is a fault. The best part is that in the later plot, Anthony brings Mary (representing his mistress) to open the house, and this one is the one who opened the room. The room can be regarded as the usual place for the male protagonist to cheat. Looking back at the sentence I think I made a mistake here, it seems like he is talking about the mistake he made. Note that this film is a non-linear stream of consciousness, and you need to compare the whole chaos to decipher. Just when Adam and Anthony called to meet in the classroom, chaos and order were written on the blackboard, not yet deciphered was written below, and dialetic analysis was written next to it.
There is a saying that if you forget the mistakes you made, you will make the same mistakes again.
After meeting, Adam came to consult his mother for advice. Judging from his clothes and not wearing a ring, it was indeed Adam, but her mother's words seemed to be said to Anthony, pointing out his infidelity and telling him to stop dreaming of being an actor. The decent job in 's refers to a professorship again, so it's very confusing at first glance. Here, Dennis is "playing" with the judgment of the audience, and he is also implying that they are the same person. From the dissatisfaction with the new home in the voice message at the beginning, to the outspoken male protagonist's infidelity and career choice, this mother's strength is evident. There is no trace of the male protagonist's father in the whole film, and the mother is a painter who is independent and self-improving. Presumably in the growth of the male protagonist, the mother's opinion swayed many choices. In the eyes of the protagonist, this is control. The most intuitive manifestation of his resistance to his mother is that he does not answer her phone many times. Immediately after the mother's shot, is the big spider roaming the city. Obviously, this spider represents the mother. This large spider is based on the large spider sculpture "Maman" located in the National Gallery of Canada in Ontario. It is the work of French artist Louise Bourgeois in 1999. Maman means mother in French. The sculpture is a tribute and tribute to his mother. .
The spider elements that appear many times in this film are not from the original novel. Dennis said in the interview that some films will use some very bold and provocative elements, images or pictures, which may make people afraid and resist, leaving a deep impression, and the film will not clearly say what they symbolize, they are common. To the door of imagination, the audience will have different interpretations. Spiders are such elements. Dennis said that the charm and depth contained in the image of the spider matched his ideal expression of femininity.
It's an image that I found that was a pretty hypnotic and profound to express something about femininity that I was looking to express in one image. Because in the book you can use chapters to express something, but in cinema you have one shot, and the spider was exactly the perfect image. ——Denis Villeneuve
In the middle of the film, Anthony dreams of a naked spider-faced woman and is awakened. Then Adam arrives at the hotel, and a sexy woman walks past him in the hallway. These two scenes are very similar. The latter's sexual implication, thinking from the perspective of the male protagonist, this hotel means seduction, cheating, and infidelity. In his eyes, women are like spiders. A woman can be a mother, symbolizing power; a wife, symbolizing responsibility; a mistress, symbolizing temptation. And power, responsibility, and temptation all bring control. Remember the first words he said? "Everything is inseparable from control." Cobwebs can be understood as control. In the tidbits, the main creator revealed that there is a painting in my mother's house that occupies a large wall, and the painting is a spider web. The male protagonist wants to get out of control, so in his fantasy dark underground place, spiders are trampled under the feet by women, he doesn't even have to do it himself, just watch with his peers.
His wife, Helen, suffered a lot because of the male lead's infidelity. When she returned home one day, she found that the man standing in front of her had become what he imagined. Of course she knew it was the same person. The male protagonist is very guilty, he owes Helen too much. So he deliberately exposed Anthony's legs, making him and his mistress conflict intensified. As Anthony promised, he really disappeared in the end, with his mistress (the seductive spider). The shattered spider web on the window glass was the thread of love he cut off. But the process of making this decision was also very painful, and he was crying alone in the living room in the middle of the night.
The next day Adam turned the radio that was broadcasting the news of the car accident to music, and it could be seen that he had forgotten the pain of last night. What you think is a new beginning is actually a new cycle. The patterns on the glass as Helen showered, like spider webs surrounding her. Adam found the new key to the underground place, and without thinking much, he tentatively said he was going out tonight, expecting Helen's reaction. She was probably suspicious, so at the moment (in his eyes) the wife became a spider. But watch the spider see Adam's reaction is to shrink into the corner, because the wife is subconsciously afraid of the damage caused by her husband's repeated cheating. And Adam not only was not frightened, but sighed. He just decided to be a new person. He just glanced at the key of temptation and failed to control himself. He repeated the same mistakes and fell into the whirlpool of reciprocation. He realized that this was like what he taught in his history class. That way, it became a farce, "first time it was a tragedy, the second time a farce". And the radio was singing, "the girl is crying for her guy again."
Next, probably the male protagonist divorced Helen and moved out. The new residence is not very good. After my mother read it, she left a voice message saying how can you live like this. The photo of the two was torn apart to keep only themselves. The dream of an actor is hopeless, and the new life is boring and boring. The protagonist in the original novel is a divorced history teacher.
Maybe the male protagonist was sitting in the car at that time, brewing all the above in his mind.
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