Enemy (2013)

Yesterday I started to watch Enemy, a movie loosely adopted from the José Saramago novel - O Homem Duplicado, or “The Duplicated Man.”.Despite of some strong recommendations from my friends, I found the first 30 minutes of the movie, extremely unbearable. Thought the movie was wayward and it failed to capture the essence of the Novel. But having finished watching it today, I think, I loved the movie. It opens with the epigraph “Chaos is order yet un deciphered,”.I don’t think any other epigraph can precisely describe the real meaning of this movie.

 As in the Novel, protagonist Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal), a depressed history professor and we soon find him stalking his double- Anthony St. Claire, an actor of no substance. Their interactions and their common pursuit to understand their condition devours our concentration and attune ourselves to the common pattern of a thriller and we expect a climax and an ending where every tangled bows are neatly framed, apposite for a better perspective. But the ending offers nothing similar to it. You get to know that, Enemy is not a melancholy thriller like Prisoners, movie from the same Director. You rewind the whole movie from the very beginning. You even start reading the epigraph again and understand that,the movie is meant to reverberate you. It has multiple level of understanding and each and every thing in the movie is meant to serve that purpose.

The movie opens in a dark corridor and a door to the sex show is opened with a key. Men in suits and identical in expression watch a nude woman perform orgasm on stage. Another one brings a spider and it’s crushed brutally. You meet Adam Bell and we see him teaching the ways of totalitarian governments and their tricks to misguide the people. We hear the same voice over even when he makes love with his girl friend in an inadequately furnished apartment. Adam watches a local film ‘Where there is will, there is a way ‘ DVD late one night with minimal interest. But later in a dream, he remembers that, his double was in the movie. He rewinds and convinces himself and then starts his pursuit to track the other man.

You understand from his visions that he is totally disconnected and disoriented in many ways. You also understand that whatever we see on screen has different dimensions. Repeated focusing on web like wires intertwining the city presents the    gravity of totalitarianism .It also manifests Adams fear of it. Antony Claire is also like Adam. His wife is pregnant and she presents herself as the human form of totalitarianism. She controls him. She checks everything about him. She has woven a web around him and we get to know that, nothing about him escapes her.

Gradually it becomes clear that, she is the central character of the movie. We also understand that, both Adam and Antony Claire are different adaptation of same person in separate times. Adam re-visits the failed actor in him after six months. He re-visits the same locations, people, circumstances, failures and finally realizes that, the same totalitarian spider has completely invaded him.

Director Denis Villeneuve uses a different narrative which is remarkable. Enemy also showcases the talent of Gyllenhaal.He breathes life to Adam and Antony and he never fails to understand their singularity. Helen (Sarah Gadon), Anthony’s wife did a wonderful job. She excels in the last scene. She convinces us that, she likes this history professor version of the same man who is gentle and faithful. She has completely arrived and the key to sex show becomes totally useless to the man, irrespective of his names..