ENEMY – Fear of commitment

 

“Control, it’s all about control. Every dictatorship has one obsession and that’s it.”

Enemy is one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen. And it was the first movie I saw from Denis Villeneuve. In my first viewing of the movie, I was left puzzled. I enjoyed what I saw. I liked the performances and the atmosphere, but I didn’t know how to feel about the movie. And what was up with those spiders? Like a lot of Villeneuve’s movies, this is something you have to watch multiple times. Enemy is a movie about one man’s subconscious battle against his unfaithful self, driven by lust. 

Enemy opens with a man, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, going to an erotic show in an underground club. In this scene we see a woman crushing a spider. We’re then introduced to Adam Bell, a college history professor, also played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Adam’s life is empty, repetitive and shallow. Spending most of his day at work and the rest with his girlfriend, Mary. He rents a movie recommended by a colleague, Where There’s a Will There’s a Way. In that movie he notices an actor who looks identical to him. He later discovers the actor’s name, Anthony Claire. The man who was at the show. He becomes obsessed with Anthony, even going so far as to stalking him. Anthony’s life is healthier, fulfilling and wealthy. He’s married and is expecting a child soon. But his wife, Helen, is suspicious of him. Leading us to believe that Anthony has been unfaithful in the past. Adam and Anthony then later meet in a hotel room, realizing their exactly identical. After some time paces, Anthony confronts Adam and accuses him of sleeping with his wife. For getting even, he demands he take over Adam’s life to have sex with his girlfriend. Adam breaks into Anthony’s apartment and notices a picture of Anthony and his wife that reminds him of a torn picture he has. Which leads us to believe, they’re the same person. Adam decides to stay at the apartment with Helen, while Anthony has a fight with Mary while driving, which ultimately results in their death.

The next day, Adam starts his life as Anthony. He finds a key in his jacket pocket. A key for the club at the very beginning. He then tells his wife, that he will be busy this night. When confronting his wife in the next room, he encounters a large spider, frightened by him.

Denis Villeneuve describes this movie as a documentary about a man’s subconscious. He decides to leave his mistress to go back to his wife and we see this all from his subconscious point of view.

Enemy is all about one man’s fear of commitment. Anthony is afraid that he will lose his freedom. He’s afraid that his wife and baby will take control of his life. Because he’s a lustful man. And this leads back to a quote in the movie at the beginning of my blog. It’s all about control. Anthony fears control. At the beginning of the movie, he goes to an erotic show. To satisfy his sexual urges. The rest of the movie is a subconscious battle between the part of him that wants to be better and the part that wants to continue lusting over women. But one question is still unanswered. What do the spiders represent? This one took me some time, but I believe the spiders represent his wife and his fear of her. The erotic show is a place where Anthony can be free. The spider being squashed represents his wife. A place where his wife doesn’t have any control over him. When a beautiful woman passes him by, he glances at her, before he imagines her head as a spider’s head. The giant spider moving through the city is his wife watching over him. His whole fight with his subconscious self leads to nothing when he decides that he wants to go back to the underground club. His wife again turns into the thing he hates and fears. A spider.  His whole journey leads him back to where he started.