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Spider [2003]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Internal madness is hypnotically externalized in David Cronenberg's Spider, a disturbing portrait of schizophrenia. Adapted by Patrick McGrath from his celebrated novel, this no-frills production begins when "Spider" Cleg (Ralph Fiennes, in a daring, nearly nonverbal role) returns to his childhood neighbourhood in London's dreary East End, where a traumatic event from his past percolates to the surface of his still-erratic consciousness.

Released from a mental institution and left to fend for himself, he pursues elusive memories while staying in a halfway house run by a stern matron (Lynn Redgrave), unable to distinguish between past, present, and psychological fabrication. The distorting influence of Spider's mind is directly reflected in Cronenberg's cunning visual strategy, presenting a shifting "reality" that's deliberately untrustworthy, until the veracity of nearly every scene is called into question. With an impressive dual-role performance by Miranda Richardson, Spider falls prey to its own lugubrious rhythms, but like the acclaimed 1995 indie film Clean, Shaven, it's a compelling glimpse of mental illness, seen from the inside out. --Jeff Shannon


Patience Will Be Rewarded
Review date: 2008-07-28 Rating: 10 out of 10

A subtle, slow and sad film, this. Ralph Fiennes, when he's on top of his game, does understatement as well as anybody, as anoyone who's seen his performance in The Constant Gardener will know. Here, he is heartbreaking as the deeply troubled protaganist of the title; a stutterning, shambling man in a scruffy coat, whose stubby, chewed, nocotine-stained fingers speak of a soul in torment as poignantly as any words could. Released from an asylum after an unspecified number of years, Spider returns to his old haunts and slowly, gradually, the ghosts from his past that have helped shape this piece of human wreckage begin to emerge.
This is not an easy film to watch. Cronenberg will not be rushed, and does not patronise the viewer by offering easy answers or solutions. As it's essentially seen through the eyes of a delusional schizophrenic, neither does he make it entirely clear what's real and what's fantasy. But these things are what make it such a unique and rewarding experience. I'm not going to ruin it by telling you what I think it means - watch it and make up your own minds.
Fiennes is, as I've already said, superb. Gabriel Byrne also lends his usual presence as Spider's taciturn, brooding father, and Bradley Hall is creepily effective as his younger self, but it's Miranda Richardson who steals the show in a dual role as Spider's mother and the loud-mouthed, tarty Yvonne.
This is an excellent study of madness and maternal obsession (to call it Freudian would be to underate its subtlety), which keeps you thinking until long after the credits roll. It's not a film to watch on a romantic evening in, and will probably test the patience of many. But if you are a grown-up seeking a perfect antidote to Hollywood shlock, then I urge you to watch it.


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Reviews


Gets better
Review date: 2008-07-12 Rating: 8 out of 10

The 4 stars are for the ending only. For 3/4 of this film, I sat there, the only reason I carried on watching it was because I wanted to get my money's worth. But then, about 10 minutes before the end, it got good. This is one of those films you sit there for ages bored, then something suddenly happens that makes you say "wow" outloud. I still don't really understand what happened, but that's half the fun of it. Weird film, worth a watch, though.

Highly underrated psychological drama from David Cronenberg.
Review date: 2008-01-10 Rating: 10 out of 10

After glancing over some the previous comments for Spider (2002), as well as several other somewhat similar films that explore various comparable themes, I have come to the conclusion that audiences today don't want to be challenged. A sad fact indeed, since David Cronenberg's Spider is one of the more challenging English-language films of the last couple of years.

Told in an entirely subjective fashion that owes much to the work of writers like William S. Burroughs, Franz Kafka, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, the film draws the audience into the lead character's mind and leaves them there to wander through a wavering maze of fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, the conscious and the subconscious, etc. The symbolic side of the film sees Cronenberg at his best; rejecting the adolescent sex and violence of his earlier work and instead building on the same highly psychological mind-space previously explored in his 1988 film Dead Ringers. There's also a certain reminiscent feeling to his two controversial literary adaptations of the 1990's, Naked Lunch (1991) and Crash (1998), both of which depicted a world as viewed through the eyes of a tormented character.

Cronenberg has always enjoyed chronicling the downward spiral of characters that have been psychologically damaged, but with Spider, novelist Patrick McGrath has created one of the ultimate cinematic schizophrenics. From his oversized shoes, to his nonsense book of gibberish, Spider is every rambling lunatic we've ever come across rolled into one. In lesser hands, the performance could have very easily veered towards Rain Man territory; however, with Fiennes in the lead role, this was never a danger. Having exorcised all traces of hammy overacting as The Tooth Fairy in Red Dragon (2002), he is here free to create a subtle, less showy role that requires little besides simply 'reacting'. His appearance is one of outright dishevelment throughout, as he sits in smoky canteens decked out in a dirty rain-coat, scruffy trousers and with bright yellow nicotine stains on his fingers. If we could walk into the film, we get the feeling that the stench of urine would be everywhere.

When not chronicling the darker side of mental illness or the terrible living conditions of the British halfway-house system, Spider works best as a gripping detective story. We, the audience are here to follow Spider as he traces his various webs back to that one fateful night; studying the facts and putting the pieces back together. There is even a semi-nonsense voice over/stream of conscious thought pattern mumbled by our 'hero' throughout, which helps shed some light on the mystery at hand without necessarily giving too much away. The film also works as a showcase for underrated actors. Fiennes, of course, in the lead is outstanding, but we also have Miranda Richardson as young spider's mother, as well as acting as the film's central enigma. Some have criticised her performance as being almost larger than life, like a caricature, but she is supposed to be playing the fevered incarnation of womanhood as depicted from the mind of a very troubled boy; so what do you expect? As mentioned before, the film works from an entirely subjective viewpoint, in which everything in the film has been rearranged and readapted to better suit the crumbling mindset of the central character.

With this in mind, Cronenberg creates a depiction of Britain that has more in common with The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) than anything resembling old London town. There are no cars in the film and, save for a few scenes, very little in the way of extras. This allows Spider to wander the empty streets and empty allotments as if constantly roaming around his own damaged and alienated psyche. Gabriel Byrne is also interesting as Spider's father, but his performance is one of great subtly. Even more subtle and criminally underrated is John Neville as Spider's only companion in the halfway house. He gives a very restrained, understated portrayal of psychosis and old age, which is both intriguing and disturbing; with many viewers picking up on the circular thematic of these two different characters. Is Terence a prototype for Spider? Perhaps. Even more intriguing is the character of Mrs Wilkinson, who may or may not be the very same woman who initially flashes her breast at young Spider, thus triggering the events of the film. If she fails to register, it is perhaps down to the streamlining of the character from book to film, which will inevitably leave out major plot details.

Regardless, Cronenberg ties all of these ideas into the images of the film; creating frames of Kafka-like complexity, with damp, bleak, washed-out scenes brimming with symbolism. Try and count how many times we see Spider framed through bars and grates, or how many times the web symbolism is used. The obsession with gas is also a clever allusion to later events and wonderfully represented by the looming gasworks that linger constantly on the horizon. This is a film that rewards multiple viewings, and, as a fan of engrossing, suspenseful, intelligent cinema, I greet it with open arms. Some will no doubt find the film to be a real chore, while others, I would hope, might find something to enjoy within this dark and troubled story. Sufficed to say, for those willing to allow themselves to be tangled in the spider's web, the film will reward....

unsettling, disturbing...yet strangely moving
Review date: 2007-10-27 Rating: 8 out of 10

After the critical mauling of two of his previous films, the incomprehensible Naked Lunch and the equally preposterous Existenz, and the moral outcry caused by the filming of J G Ballard's crash, you would have expected David Cronenberg to go back to what he does so well, the genre known as "body horror" that he practically invented.
So it was a bit of a surprise when he came back with this movie, a small, intimate exploration of one mans mental illness. The film focuses on Dennis Clegg (brilliantly portrayed by Ralph Fiennes, who immerses himself in the character and clearly relishes the challenge of portraying this mans fractured mental state), a man recently released after a long stay in a mental institution, who returns to his home turf and finds rooms in a bleak halfway house run by Mrs Wilkinson (Lynn Redgrave in a fantastic supporting turn playing a woman so unsympathetic to her charges that it is something akin to a slap in the face). It is in this bleak environment that Dennis (or spider as he was nicknamed by his beloved mother) attempts to piece together his fractured childhood memories. Flitting in time between a grimy London of the 80's, Spiders present, and his equally colourless childhood in the 60's, his memories gradually come to focus on the apparent spur of the moment murder of his doting mother (played with a quiet dignity by a wonderful Miranda Richardson) by his brutish boozing father (Gabriel Byrne). However, the fact that Richardson also plays the floozy who takes the place of Spiders mother in the Clegg house following this event suggests that everything may not be as it seems.
And it is the truth underlying this tragic event that we, the viewers are here to witness as we try to understand this confused, muttering and crushingly lonely cipher of a man. This is a film that offers no easy explanations, with no men in white coats pooping up to offer an easy to digest answer to Spiders haunted mind. Abandoning his more recognizable milieu, Cronenberg has fashioned a film that is horrific in a much more subtle, disturbing way, and marks a welcome change of direction for the Canadian auteur, whilst still dealing with his common themes of psychology and transformation, though here focused firmly on the cerebral rather than the anatomical.


Never haunt your infancy again
Review date: 2007-05-08 Rating: 8 out of 10

A simple, very simple film. A child loses his mother who is killed by his own father and replaced by another woman. He eventually kills this substitute as a vengeance but also as an act of justice for himself and maybe the mother he is remembering in his empty mind. He feels like a spider in the middle of its cobweb, but also like the very prey of the spider in that very centre of that very cobweb. He will be taken away to some mental hospital and will come back a long long time later and he will revisit the scene of his crime and he will start all over again just to revive his past and what he lost a long time ago, his mother who is probably still alive in his mind, his memory. And he will be taken away again, this time for good. Sad vision of these men who are the prey of the world and become vultures because they are punished for what they did instead of being understood or just even being prevented from running into a situation of this type. Killing is a catching disease for one and an incurable disease for two. Cronenberg is the bleakest pessimist of them all and there is no escape from his fatal fate, his lethal death, his morbid moribund sense of black dis-humor that makes you feel as if you had eaten some live eel or snake, head, tail and venom alike.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Gabriel Byrne
Ralph Fiennes
Lynn Redgrave
Miranda Richardson
John Neville

Creators:
Ralph Fiennes (Primary Contributor)
Miranda Richardson (Primary Contributor)
David Cronenberg (Producer)
Catherine Bailey (Producer)
Charles Finch (Producer)
Guy Tannahill (Producer)
Hannah Leader (Producer)
Jane Barclay (Producer)
Patrick McGrath (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Lions Gate Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Lions Gate Home Entertainment
EAN: 7321900946391
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2003-07-14
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 98 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2002
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired)
Language: English (Subtitled)

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