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SPIDER Rating:  Director: David Cronenberg Producers: David Cronenberg, Samuel Hadida, Catherine Bailey Writer: Patrick McGrath Director of Photography: Peter Suschitzky Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew. |
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Review by: Warren
Curry
12/15/02
Featuring one of the most bizarre but powerful lead performances in recent memory, courtesy of Ralph Fiennes, David Cronenberg's (Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch) latest film, Spider, is arguably the most accomplished work of the unique director's career. Based on the book by Irish novelist Patrick McGrath (who also adapted the screenplay), the material is a perfect fit for Cronenberg, as the film centers on the fractured sanity of a man plagued by memories of a nightmarish childhood. Exploring the tenuous line between sanity and insanity, and perception and reality, have been constants in the filmmaker's body of work, but never before has Cronenberg tackled these themes with such focus and maturity.
Spider opens with my favorite single shot of 2002: The camera tracks slowly, starting at one end of a train platform, and pushing forward deliberately past hordes of travelers who exit the cars until it finds the title character (Fiennes). After several years spent in a mental institution, Spider has returned to the neighborhood where he was raised in the East End of London. Staying at a halfway house run by a strict nurse (Lynn Redgrave), Spider writes frequently in his journal, using characters that form his own individual language, and returns to many of the locations of his youth in an attempt to reconstruct memories long since buried.
As the pieces are gradually assembled, Spider recalls bits of his parents' (Gabriel Byrne and Miranda Richardson) rocky relationship and the overbearing presence of his father's mistress (also played by Richardson), who eventually plays an emotionally abusive maternal role in the boy's life. As we cut back from the present to the past, certain realities (which become devastating) take shape that keeps the viewer questioning whether or not the unfolding events are just hallucinations of Spider's troubled mind.
Although most of his time on screen is spent observing or mumbling incomprehensibly, Fiennes' manages to carry quite a big load on his shoulders. You're kept invested in his character the whole way through, which is definitely helped along by young Bradley Halls's superb performance as the childhood Spider. Miranda Richardson is so convincing in her two polar opposite roles that it wasn't until nearly the end of the film when I realized the actress was playing dual parts (she actually ends up taking on 3 roles).
Compared to previous efforts, Spider is one of Cronenberg's quieter films. Many of the static compositions are not only a feast for the eyes (the production design is fantastic), but frame the isolated world of the main character with great effectiveness. While I feel he's come up a few steps short in this department in the past, here Cronenberg has made a genuinely psychologically affecting film. He doesn't force the issue (like in Crash or Naked Lunch) and the resulting work unfolds with a noticeably graceful touch. He's able to create an ethereal atmosphere, which lacks any trace of being manufactured.
On paper it may sound like a potentially difficult film to follow, but Patrick McGrath's tightly structured narrative is not convoluted in the least. It's a script that is less interested in plot (but still remains a well structured story) and more concerned with the internal dilemma of its protagonist. Some may feel that the movie concludes with a gimmick, but unlike a film such as Memento, where the method of storytelling is actually part of the content (and therefore completely justifies its gimmick, if you want to call it that), Spider covers all of its bases before that point to make the ending feel quite natural.
In Spider, David Cronenberg magnificently
puts all of the best elements of his previous work together, and
the result is the crowning achievement of an already distinguished
filmmaking career.
(A Sony Pictures Classics release. Opened December 20 for a
one-week Academy Award qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles.
Re-opens on February 28, 2003 in New York and Los Angeles. Expands
to more cities at later dates.)
(Read the interview with David Cronenberg)
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