“Chaos is order yet undeciphered.”
Without a doubt one of the most shocking movie endings you will never see coming. This is one of the few films that left me completely clueless and feeling as though I were a 6-year-old whose parents had unknowingly taken to see a horror movie at the cinema.
History professor Adam Bell (Gyllenhaal) stumbles across his doppleganger, actor Anthony Clair (also Gyllenhaal) whilst watching a movie and becomes obsessed with finding him. Interesting concept, but believe me when I say this is just the beginning of the mind-boogling ride that is Enemy.
If you’re looking for an easy breezy feel-good movie, then Enemy is probably not the movie for you.
From the get go, there’s a sense that there’s more to the simple story of a guy who happens to stumble across his look-a-like and that something more sinister is at play. There are moments when the film feels like it’s set in a dystopian future – especially the scene where Adam and Anthony meet for the first time and realise that are they similar in their appearance, but in fact physically identical – down to the exact same scar across their stomach. Gyllenhaall really carries the entire film with his performance – as the confident and womanising B-list actor as well as the history professor leading a hopeless existence.
Before we get to the ending, you have to understand that unlike most of the movies we see these days, this film was not intended to be taken quite so literally. Now that we have that established, it becomes a lot easier to decode the series of clues that director Denis Villeneuve laid out throughout the film. Villeneuve has previously declined to comment on the real meaning behind the movie so technically there is no one true explanation available (clearly seen in the pages and pages of Reddit posts offering different theories). But, having said that there are certainly some interpretations that are more popular than others and to me at least, make more sense in the context of the film.
*Spoiler Alert*
My take is that Adam and Anthony merely represent two facets of the same person. While it might be true that many of the film’s details may not match up with this theory (e.g. the encounter between Anthony’s wife, Helen, and Adam at his university), again I think it’s important to be able to separate the plot of the film which serves more of an entertainment purpose from the deeper meanings which are carefully disguised in the metaphors and symbols in the story.
Helen is the the character that serves as a bridge between the two personas and it is her reaction to Adam towards the end of the movie which reaffirms that she was aware of the split personalities of her husband. This also explains her relief when she realised it was Adam rather than Anthony who came back to her in the end.
Now as for the final shocker, Forrest Wickman of Slate offers one explanation of the totalitarian allusions throughout the film, which is represented by the gradual encroachment of the spider. For me the spider acts as just another metaphor for the darkness in Anthony’s past – no matter how hard Adam tries to change and put his past behind him, his actions as Anthony will continue to come back to haunt him.
Although it took me a while, I ended up appreciating the subtlety and surreal qualities of the film. This is one of those movies that dared to mess with the mind of the audience and still had fun doing it.
My rating:
p r o j e c t r e e l 