Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a worker that everyone walks over and barely notices as he secretly pines for a girl at work called Hannah (Mia Wasikowska) who also happens to live across the way from him.  His misfortune starts when his work badge tsops working and when his briefcase gets stuck in the subway doors.  In a Kafkaesque world, his world goes further down the toilet when his doppelganger James Simon (Jesse Eisenberg) comes to work at the same company and starts to steal the life that Simon always wanted for himself.  It becomes a struggle for Simon as he tries to get back his world that his doppelganger is stealing away in this adaptation of the novella by Fydor Dostoyevsky.

 

Jesse Eisenberg manages to craft two opposites of the same coin while Mia Wasikowska manages to transform herself into another role where she looks different from the roles she played before.   The set design and environment is so Kafka and also wants me to rewatch Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL.   Watching THE DOUBLE looks like the early 1980s as viewed as a homage to BRAZIL mixed with Ridley Scott’s 1984 commercial for Apple.  THE DOUBLE work on the same ideas as those two works while drawing apt comparisons to Kafka as this adaptation of Dostoyevsky is a clear commentary on the loss of the individual self and the struggle against being lost among the bureaucracy of business.  

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

CAST AND CHARACTERS- the actors talk about the characters they play

CREATING THE DOUBLE: THE STORY AND DESIGN- the director, writer, and Jesse Eisenberg talk about the story while it all focuses on the production design (the writer wanted the story to originally take place in glass skyscrapers).

BEHIND THE SCNES COMPARISONS- a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film along with comparisons of how the filmed scenes looks against the final version.

 

INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR RICHARD AYOADE- a short interview with the director

AXS TV: A LOOK AT THE DOUBLE- a promo featurette on the film

 

Theatrical trailer

Previews for FILTH, THE PROTECTOR 2, and THE SACRAMENT

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  THE DOUBLE is a great darkly surreal character movie mixed with humor,  a retro 1980s alternate universe, 1984, and a Kafkaesque atmosphere.

 

This review is ©9-2-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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