The Double
Director: Richard Ayoade
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska
Length: 93 minutes
Country: UK
Richard Ayoade’s mind-bending black comedy is often disconcerting yet mesmerising to watch. Based on a Dostoyevsky novella, The Double is set in an unnamed time and place, with a range of actor nationalities and accents alongside echoes of a gloomy past with the inclusion of 1960s-style retro computer systems that could place the story in a dystopian other world. Jesse Eisenberg leads the cast with his socially inept Simon James who feels he is ‘like Pinocchio’, a wooden boy, a non-person. He is anonymous to everyone around him despite his best efforts; he has had the same job for seven years yet his boss doesn’t know his name, he is physically incapable of uttering a word to the woman he is fixated on and even his mother thinks he is a ‘strange boy’. His invisibility is literalised as he loses his work pass and the security guard refuses to let him in despite seeing him nearly every day and soon he disappears from the system entirely, essentially rendering him non-existent.
Everything in Simon’s life is grey: his dingy urban bedroom, his office, even his suit. Everything except for his beautiful co-worker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska) with her shining blonde hair and pristine white dresses. Although at times hard to sympathise with as she plays Hannah as a complicated yet unexplained character, Wasikowska shows a vulnerability and intensity that draws Simon to her.
A feast for both the eyes and the mind, The Double confirms that Ayoade’s directorial career is looking more exciting than ever.
It is not until halfway through the film that the surrealism truly begins with the appearance of new co-worker, James Simon, who just happens to be an exact doppelganger of Simon James. To Simon’s frustration, he is so irrelevant to everyone around him that they cannot even notice their similarities. James is everything Simon is not: confident, popular and a womaniser. One brilliant scene where their contrasting personalities become apparent takes place in a gloomy diner. Simon is indecisive and stumbles over his words when he orders, yet James demands the grumpy waitress make him breakfast despite it being dark outside; “Do you still have eggs here? Do you have a frying pan? Then give me the damn food!” At first the pair forge a friendship but it soon becomes clear that James is out to get Simon, manipulating him into doing his work, stealing his reports and even charming Hannah. Eisenberg transforms himself in his portrayal of James as despite the pair being styled and even dressed in the exact same way, James exudes a cockiness and charisma you can’t imagine Simon ever possessing. It is clear why Ayoade claims that Eisenberg was his only choice for the film and that it would be inconceivable without him, as he plays both characters entirely convincingly whilst also maintaining that impossibly fast-talking, charmingly geeky persona we know and love from The Social Network (2010) and Adventureland (2009).
Fun is also to be had spotting all of the cameos from Ayoade’s previous work including Yasmin Paige and Craig Roberts all-grown-up from Ayoade’s fantastic debut Submarine (2010) and his partner Chris O’Dowd from The IT Crowd. The supporting cast are hilariously caricatured, from the detectives who deal exclusively in neighbourhood suicides who are unsettlingly keen on their jobs to the moody intern whose only desire at the office is to have inappropriate sex with James, who also happens to be posing as Simon at this point. As James continues to manipulate and blackmail Simon, what follows is a disturbing finale, with echoes of Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010), which is impossible to look away from as you begin to piece together how the film may end. Ayoade throws so many surprises your way, however, that you will find yourself still trying to make sense of it all long after you’ve left the cinema, which for me is always a good thing.
The film is interestingly shot and often unconventional with its camera angles and editing. Shot primarily at night and underground, The Double is appropriately dark and disorientating, any lights often too bright to look natural. Ayoade’s filmmaking is certainly quirky and at times you will find yourself unsure whether to laugh or grimace at the absurdity of it all. Overall it is a complex meditation on success, mental health, love and suicide as well as what it really means to live one’s life to the fullest. A feast for both the eyes and the mind, The Double confirms that Ayoade’s directorial career is looking more exciting than ever.
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