Enemy (2013)
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Enemy Movie Review
Enemy is a 2013 psychological thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. It is a solid and initially intriguing, but eventually overly pretentious movie.
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“Chaos is order yet undeciphered“
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Adam, a college professor, spots an actor in a movie who looks exactly like him. Adam tracks down his doppelganger and starts living his life secretly, which gives birth to a complex situation. This thriller was made at a time when Villeneuve was very much concerned with this genre before he moved onto science fiction, which is when he became much more interesting to me personally. This one is better than most of his other early works, but it was still far from great.
My main issue with Enemy is the director’s overly pretentious direction. The premise was excellent and who doesn’t love a cool doppelganger story. The first half was suitably intense, thrilling and highly engaging. The dialogue, cinematography and acting were all excellent.
But the second half is where the movie turned into this overly ostentatious display of style over substance. Yes, the metaphor about the male id and adultery was interesting, but it was handled in the most infuriatingly pretentious manner possible. It was way too vague and too artsy just for the sake of it with the ending being particularly frustrating in its imagery.
These themes deserve to be explored in cinema, but they need a more cohesive, more sophisticated and messaged approach at them. This overly ambiguous, cold and disorienting tone did not work for me and it made me question Villeneuve’s intentions. He is usually much more direct and coherent, but in this film he appeased the critics too much.
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Enemy is worth seeing for the terrific dual (or maybe not?) role from Jake Gyllenhaal. He is always fantastic and here his nuanced performance managed to differentiate well between these two men while connecting them physically and emotionally. The movie was obviously made on the cheap, but it still looked interesting due to its intriguing lighting and dreamlike atmosphere.
Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy had a terrific doppelganger premise and an excellent first half that was both intense and highly atmospheric. Jake Gyllenhaal was reliably outstanding in the main dual role whereas the cinematography is quite strong too. The issues here can all be found in the second half as this is where the film turned into an overly artsy, ostentatious and vague mish-mash of ideas and styles that didn’t work, culminating in a particularly frustrating ending.
My Rating – 3.5
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#1. What other Denis Villeneuve movie was released in 2013?
