Al's Omniflick: Enemy

Friday, March 7, 2014

Enemy

**Spoiler Alert**Dir. Denis Villeneuve, Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Melanie Laurent and Isabella Rossellini. Based on a novel by Jose Saramago

Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners was sadly overlooked in 2013, in my opinion, for end-of-the-year honors but the subject matter and movie may have been too dark for the Academy's and the Golden Globes' tastes. It was certainly more interesting, in my opinion, than Gravity and August: Osage County but so it goes.
Enemy is another dark offering, heavy with dread and anxiety and a challenge to parse. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a history professor who discovers he bears more than a passing resemblance to an actor in a dvd rental. This causes much angst, which prompts a search for said actor. In doing so, the two eventually meet, causing mutual distrust and fear.
The premise sounds simple, right? With Villeneuve, nothing is ever so. Strange imagery, a spider metaphor and an unconventional, David Lynchian "story" make for a near-opaque mystery. Accompanying the viewer in this creepfest are Stygian interiors and a soundtrack fraught with ominousness and unrelenting dread.
Both men, played expertly by Gyllenhaal, have blonde, significant others who figure prominently in the drama. The actor is married to an expectant, young woman, to whom he seems indifferent most of the time while the history teacher is in a relationship with a woman to whom he also seems aloof.
A key to fathoming the story involves the riddle of the spider motif, a symbol inspiring many interpretations. The climax involves the actor's weekend with the history professor's girlfriend; an act accomplished with intimidation and the teacher's reluctant consent. The film's final scene is frighening and jarring. The audience with whom I saw the film jumped and gasped, as did I. It was apt, consistent and a perfect conclusion to a film that was sure to reach an ambiguous and nightmarish end.
I enjoy films that resist interpretation and challenge the viewer's capacity to fathom the seeming unfathomable. Enemy is just that kind of film and one I enjoyed.
Jake Gyllenhaal has taken to playing dark characters or characters in dark films: Donnie Darko, Zodiac, Prisoners and now Enemy. His roles reflect a determination to challenge himself as an actor and his performances have responded in kind. I would have liked to see more of Isabella Rossellini, whose appears more in a cameo role than as a fully-realized character. Villeneuve offers us another fascinating, psychological drama; one sure to stimulate the mind and make the audience simmer in anxiety and unease.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.