Enemy is a 2013 psychological thriller directed by Dennis Villeneuve, loosely adapted for the screen by Javier Gullon, from Jose Saramago’s novel- ‘The Double’ and just like any other Villenevue’s movie it grows on you even after you finish watching it, like a slow burning firework. Jake Gyllenhal plays two men -Adam and Anthony, physically identical, but different in personality, where the look-alikes meet in real life and the rest is a vortex open to interpretations. If you haven’t watched the movie, we suggest you immediately do and if you have;
Why do you think Helen turned into a spider?
There have been many discussions about Adam and Anthony, if they are two lives of the same person, or one the aspiration of the other, or what we see is a non-linear depiction of what happens in Jake’s psychotic mind. It could be described as a man (or two) trapped in a web of his own making. Adam- a university professor, living a rather dull life, with a girlfriend he is emotionally distant from, looking for an escape from his mundane existence, meets his doppelganger- a local actor named Anthony Claire. Every scene that follows is as intense and deep as it can get. The most hypnotic visual from the entire movie is from the final scene where Adam walks into the room Helen just entered and finds a humongous tarantula hunched in a corner of the room. When asked about the symbolism behind the depiction of spiders in the movie, which appears more than a few times - in a sex show, and a giant one let loose over the city of Toronto, Villenue’s rather mysterious remark is a guideline for many interesting readings of the entire theme of the movie.
“There’s movies that I saw in my life that propose images that were not explained, but were provocative, that were opening doors from a subconscious point of view- images that are frightening and oppressive, but at the same time, you feel the image. It prints itself in your brain, but you feel uncomfortable with it”
The Dichotomy of strong-willed women and morally compromised men is a set characteristic of all of Villeneu’s works. In Enemy, the character named Helen, Anthony’s very pregnant wife, played by Sarah Gadon, is first seen when she answers Adam’s phone call when Anthony is not at home. She enacts her own investigation and tracks down the man who looks exactly like her husband Anthony, while Anthony schemes to live Adam’s life and tries to sleep with Adam’s girlfriend Mary, played by Melanie Laurent. Undoubtedly this leads to a calamitous peak for both Adam and Anthony Adam and the women in their life.
Helen - the pregnant wife that Adam’s adulterous side cheats on, the one who turns into a tarantula, when Adam decides to go to the sex show while passing off as Anthony, could be a symbol of the entrapment that Adam/Anthony face in their lives, indicating the suffocation by the life they themselves chose. But what if the spider or the spiders were not mere symbolism or metaphors of Adam’s psyche but part of a vindictive female cult that runs the city by trapping promiscuous men?
In the opening we see an exotic woman putting on a show in a sex club Anthony visits, coming inches away from crushing a tarantula beneath her heels. As we see the lives of Adam and Anthony, we can see that they are oscillations of the same mind, from one end to the other. The actor with a committed wife, wants freedom and the professor with a lonely life, needs a wife to go home to. But it is the same person desiring two different lives just like they are desiring two different women, never happy with either.
Anthony did not know he took home the spider from the Club and induced himself of the antidote for his promiscuous masculine side. The spider entrapped in Anthony’s home does its sorcery and Anthony gets discovered by his alter ego and swaps lives with him only to realize that his aspirations are short lived and merely sexual. Meanwhile we see Adam engaging with Helen possessed by the spider from the club, getting comfortable with his emotional and vulnerable side and she even asks him to say, but he is enticed again by the fantasies of the outside world. He gets an invite from the sex club and decides to visit, without realizing that he is repeating the pattern yet again, Just like a spider that weaves its web, trapping himself in his own making, becoming his own enemy. He walks into Helen’s room to only discover that the spider from the club has taken over Helen and grown into a giant tarantula trapped in his home. The final haunting image is the indication that the spider and Helen have become one, both looking right into Adam/Anthony's psyche and him staring back at it with an expression of familiarity and horror all at the same time, suggesting his general feeling towards femininity. Both male characters in the story has a very indifferent attitude towards the women in their life, which says a lot about power dynamics in a heteronormative romantic relationship in modern life.
Enemy is a rare gem, among psychological thrillers, because of its seamless ability to incorporate various interpretations and readings, without giving away its hand, all the while providing the thrill of watching top-tier talent at work.
