| Spider, the new film by David Cronenberg, is not just a portrait of a schizophrenic, but a complex web that incorporates many strands of the acclaimed director’s career to date.
The film opens with one of Cronenberg’s trademark credits sequences, as patterns of water-damaged walls that look much like Rorschach blots prepare us for the film’s psychological inquiry, while an Elizabethan hymn on the soundtrack lulls us into the movie’s deliberate rhythm. Cronenberg then takes us right inside the troubled mind of the film’s central character, Dennis "Spider" Cleg (Ralph Fiennes), a mentally ill man who has recently been released from an asylum and taken up residence in London’s East End, not far from his boyhood home.
As Spider struggles to piece together the remnants of his past, Cronenberg delivers an Oedipal tragedy worthy of Sophocles himself. Given that the audience’s point of view is strictly aligned with Spider’s, the character’s tragic flaw isn’t immediately discernible, but is revealed methodically as the film progresses. It’s a brilliant manoeuvre by Cronenberg, although it isn’t new to his work – he has dropped us unannounced into hallucinatory territory before (in Videodrome, Naked Lunch and eXistenZ, among other films).
The first-person nature of the narrative requires an equally masterful contribution from Fiennes in the title role. Shuffling despondently across the frame like he’s just waiting for his chance to get off this mortal coil, Fiennes makes Spider part madman and part artist. That balance is another recurring theme in Cronenberg’s work (see Dead Ringers for a chilling example), and may possibly prove the greatest challenge for viewers trying to unravel the film’s mysteries.
Cronenberg has long been obsessed with the artistic process, and Spider’s attempts to order his memories in writing reveal both the necessity of the creative impulse and artists’ responsibility to show the truth no matter how unpleasant. Spider, not unlike Cronenberg, knows that it’s not enough to tell the story – how it’s told and what it reveals about ourselves and the world we inhabit are crucial.
That Cronenberg can weave ideas like this into a film that also operates on the level of a psychological thriller is one of the reasons he’s a great cinematic artist.
Certainly, he’s fortunate to be working with some of the finest actors in cinema – not just Fiennes, but Gabriel Byrne as Spider’s father and Miranda Richardson in a dual role as Spider’s mother and his father’s mistress. The supporting cast also includes excellent performances from U.K. character actors John Neville and Lynn Redgrave.
In the end, though, the final stamp on Spider is Cronenberg’s – and, with any luck, the film’s striking visual style and thematic similarities to the rest of his oeuvre will capture the imaginations of devoted fans and neophytes alike. |
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