Enemy (2013)

I don’t really know why I chose to watch this early in the morning on a plane, but Enemy had me intrigued since its theatre run. However, its limited release was also the reason I didn’t get the chance to see it then. My goal on this flight, as you will soon realize, consists of movies that are more limited and independent and I felt would add value to watching them since they are less available. Either way, lets check out Enemy 🙂

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Melanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon

Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal),  a monotone history teacher sees his double spontaneously in a movie and decides to track him down. His search leads him to Anthony Claire (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is a married soon to be father and third grade actor. Despite the reluctance, they finally meet and realize that it is perhaps more than they bargained for.

Its hard to sum up this movie without some form of spoiler alert. For the most part, I’m not really sure I completely understood what happened after the ending. If any of you saw it, please tell me that they didn’t waste 90 minutes of my life. Maybe there was something more and I need to give it another viewing.

Its the first time that I encountered Denis Villeneuve’s work. Villeneuve seems to have a rather dark style, at least for Enemy, it was almost completely in the dark. Maybe its the watching it on the tiny in flight entertainment system but I do appreciate what it was trying to do. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that I disliked the movie. To me, it had a really good suspense and psychological thrill factor going until the last shot. I can’t say if that destroyed the sum of its parts but it could. It still boggles my mind and I believe that I might need to catch some more detils with a second viewing to catch its full meaning.

Our main focus in Enemy is Jake Gyllenhaal who spends a good part of the movie playing off himself. Hats off to him for a job well done. I’m also a pretty big fan of Melanie Laurent so as minor as the women in this film were, they helped reveal a bit of a deeper hidden character in both Anthony and Adam. Although both of them are physcially identical, as the movie goes on, it reveals how they have different personalities. I guess you could say it asks the question if its possible to have an evil twin? With no blood bonds, it does beg the question of why they look similar in appearance. To be honest, I think it would be interesting to watch the special features if I got the chance.

Overall, there isn’t a lot that I can say about this because I feel like I am missing something but at the same time, it might be just my wondering whether I get the sudden last twist in the final shot. Feel free to email me about your thoughts so as to not spoil it for others.However, there are a few pretty genius points to Enemy. The first is Denis Villeneuve’s talented way to build a tense and suspenseful atmosphere throughout the entire movie. Second would have to go to Jake Gyllenhaal’s quite masterful acting abilities on playing almost completely against himself in this kind of weird story about doppelgangers. Although as a whole, I haven’t quite formed a concrete opinion, it still did manage to have me intrigued throughout. Deep down, I feel like it might have achieved something pretty amazing, if only I wasn’t so confused. Do I make any sense?

What did you think of Enemy? Are you a fan of Jake Gyllenhaal and/or Denis Villeneuve?