Bill O’Byrne’s Bargain Bin Blues: The Double

THE DOUBLE

☆☆☆☆☆

Director: Richard Ayoade.

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Yasmin Paige.

PHIL vs BILL
This ingeniously funny, tragic, retro-futuristic adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 19th-century novella stars Jesse Eisenberg as an anonymous data clerk whose lonely life is made even more forlorn when his exact double invades his world and turns out to be his opposite in every other way. Extras are limited to deleted/extended scenes and interviews with the film makers, where co-writer/director Richard Ayoade (Submarine, Moss in TV’s The IT Crowd) aptly observes: “What I think is funny about The Double is you have this character whose doppelganger appears and no one else notices … It seems like life to me – it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just that no one’s looking.” — Phil Wakefield.

Some movies you just enjoy watching – they’re full of interesting bits and twists and great characters and you’re thinking, ‘wow, this is fantastic, now all we need is a really great ending to tie this together and by hokey, it’ll be one helluva movie!’”

Except for the great ending, The Double is exactly that sort of a movie.

But god it comes close to working.

How close? Well, The Guardian gives it five stars — which means a good four-star movie with that extra special dollop of pretension worthy to get the bonus Guardian artsy smartsy/ stick-it-to-the-deadheads-of-capitalism extra stellar approval. 

But in spite of the fantastic acting, and its look, sound and feel, it just falls at the last due to the script trying to pull a fast one at the end, throwing its hands up and going, “Hey, it’s all been so clever so far, just ignore the ending and feel the quality of the art.”

Well nope to that. Sure, film fans can accept the preposterous notion of such things as Fight Club with its one-on-none fighting sequence which looks ridiculous but still kind of works.

But The Double writes itself into a corner of dark quirkiness and there is no logical denouement. (Three point deduction for use of the word denouement.)

That said, I watched it twice and enjoyed it very much till I got ripped off at the end. Twice.

But! Jesse Eisenberg! He carries the film completely in both roles as the crushingly self aware, miserable, lonely guy Simon James. He is, in turn, crushing on Mia Wasikowska while enduring days in a surreal data centre that is so dark and awful that it is a wonder they don’t all have rickets.

Because of chronic milquetoast syndrome, Simon is everyone’s doormat. Even his mum in the rest home gives him grief when he goes to visit, as does the guy on the rest home reception desk. And the other rest home inhabitants, come to think of it.

He is self aware enough to know he is a spineless plaything of life, but he can’t fix himself, as he points out in a poignant speech on a train which itself goes to waste because, well, he’s Simon James.

But then James Simon is hired. He is Simon, but with uber confidence, charm, ruthlessness of the alpha on the make, and the weird thing is that no-one can see they look identical.

They become friends as Simon helps James to fake it at work and James shows Simon how to act in ways the world rewards. That alas, includes bedding every woman including Ms Wasikowska, which riles Simon who plots James’ downfall.

It kind of escalates quickly.

The world looks like proto steam punk meets 1980s Sega computer tech, and it is as artificial a vision of the world as Brazil. (The whole thing looks like it could have been taken from Terry Gilliam’s corporate office design sketch pad). Though with a very different look, it reminded me of Space Station 76 which is in its own way as bonkers a creation. (No really, if you want to see a torrid, camp daytime soap with 1970s gender politics set on Moonbase Alpha from Space 1999, that’s your movie. Liv Tyler is great, though how the hell she got involved I can’t imagine)

One reason I can’t dislike The Double’s pretensions is that I loved The IT Crowd and director Richard Ayoade (Moss, from said show) is a fave. Plus, Gadget Man. And The Mighty Boosh.

And in looking up IMDB or whatever people do to look learned when reviewing movies, I saw much praise for his first movie Submarine, so I bought that. It is indeed a corker, funny and sweet, and sad and well written. In every way superior to The Double but in a completely different genre.

Ayoade had a hand in writing both movies (The Double being originally a novel by Dostoevesky, tldnr), and the screenplay was co-written with Avi Korine. 

The Blu-ray extras say it took five years of collaboration to get this baby on to the screens (but I hope that’s a wild exaggeration). There are four brief extra bits in total, a bit about the production and shooting Eisenberg twice is interesting but there’s no Ayoade commentary, alas.

He does throws a few family members into the cast though. Well, his dachshunds Marv and O’Grady make an appearance, as does his father in law James Fox as The Colonel, who is head of the strange corporation at the heart of the plot.

Watch it, you’ll enjoy most of it. Unless you’re feeling bleak and isolated from humanity. Then maybe not till that feeling has passed.

If you don’t want to buy it, send me a note at bill.obyrne @gmail.com and I will post it out.

First in, first gets.