Jake Gyllenhaal can't believe his eyes and doesn't see eye to eye... with Jake Gyllenhaal
BY NATHANIEL ROGERS
Have you ever read Jose Saramago's "Blindness"? That genius novel,
about a sudden epidemic that renders the whole world blind, is hugely
unsettling in content. It's also experimental in form. No character is
named, the two protagonists are only referred to as "The Doctor" and
"The Doctor's Wife", and punctuation is so scarce that there's nothing
to guide you; you have to feel your own way through the blocks of words.
The film version in 2008, which starred Mark Ruffalo and Julianne
Moore, was too traditional in execution and couldn't capture the mad
confusion and haunting power of the book. I haven't read Saramago's
novel "The Double" upon which the new film Enemy is based but no one is
playing it safe in the transfer this time. This is the kind of movie
that feels like a true transfer of surreal text to visuals.
I attended the Toronto Film Festival last fall, I didn't know what to
make of Denis Villeneuve's hallucinatory thriller, which is as far
removed from his other recent mainstream thriller (Prisoners, reviewed)
as it could be. As far as I can tell the new movie is about a
university teacher (Jake Gyllenhaal) who, while absentmindedly watching a
video at home, sees a movie actor (Jake Gyllenhaal) who looks exactly
like him. His initial shock gives way to curiousity and then to
obsession. Things only get weirder and more mysterious from there.
At first all I could think of to describe the movie was other movies, jotting down this short description:
"Take Jake Gyllenhaal's endlessly curious puzzle-loving journalist in Zodiac and
bring along that film's evocative cinematography and color palette.
Split Jake in two with one version schlumpy and Adam Goldberg-like and
the other cockier like Ryan Gosling on a motorbike. Mix in a
disorienting trip to Eyes Wide Shut's plinking-soundtrack'ed
'sex party'. Plop the rest of the film down into four separate settings,
Talent Agency and University and two Gyllenhaal Apartments and make
sure that all of them are as nondescript and sterile as the stockbroker
firm in American Psycho. Throw in a curveball with inexplicable
out-of-time trips to a Video Rental Store. Add two glazy blonde love
interests (Melanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon) who are both confusingly
disappointed; You're sleeping with Gyllenhaal, and possibly even Gyllenhaals, ladies. Cheer the fuck up!"
But that's more like a flailing 'what is it?' cry than a useful take. It doesn't do Enemy
justice since it's often so singular a film experience. This Kafkaesque
confrontation between two men who are exactly the same, only not, is as
propulsively compelling as it is offputting - for a film as crazy as
this one, it's too glum-faced. But it's mercifully paced at a very tight
90 minutes and full of surprises and a perfect unthinkable ending.
Which is why we're not going into plot descriptions. Not that
descriptions of the plot are any way to understand this sort of thing.
Six months later I'm not sure I'm any closer to decoding Enemy,
opening this weekend, and keep flashing back to a cameo from Isabella
Rossellini as Jake Gyllenhaal's mother as if it's a rosetta stone. But which Jake Gyllenhaal is her son? I'm haunted worrying that there's no right answer. Enemy shapeshifts that way after you watch it. It's such a disorienting experience we may need Jake Gyllenhaal, the Zodiac-iteration, to help decode it.
Back to the movie theater, then, for a second helping of Jake
Gyllenhaal, who's already doubled. That makes something like eight Jake
Gyllenhaals but never complain about abundance. .
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