Spider

We watch Spider (Ralph Fiennes) at the present time, trying to live at a boarding house which takes pity on people who should legally be in mental institutions, and, in parallel action, watch him reliving his childhood, doomed to stand watching those events play out again and again, an observer as impotent as he felt when they originally happened.

This film is a mystery into the character and history of Ralph Fiennes' character. Its a little film, dealing with the mind of one troubled little man, and a patient film. Its also a very mature film from Cronenberg, where he has done away with the shock tactics of the past, and the results are delightful. But if you don't like patient films (and you might see it as a slow film - don't expect big action, expect to watch a fascinating character - and maybe discover why he's so troubled), watch any of Cronenberg's previous efforts instead.

Its not a very big or important film - not one of the most essential films of 2002, but if you've seen those more important choices, and are looking for something different, Spider may just be an interesting, atmospheric experience for you.

8/10. Maybe I was just in the perfect mood for it, but i loved Spider. I thought it was a beautiful and atmospheric character study. Spider is a real unique character, brought to life vividly by Ralph Fiennes.

Spider is a wonderful entry into the Cronenberg cannon. I strikes me as Cronenberg trying to do a Ken Loachesque style movie with all of his usual hard philosophical questioning, sniping at your assumptions of what reality really is.

The overwhelming impression I was left with was the sheer creepiness of the film, highly appropriate in a film about a Spider. This impression is built up with wonderful cold and dismal sets and cinematography and a relentless slow pace that draws you in to the inevitably horrifying conclusion. There is always an undertone of the horrors that have driven the protagonist to his fate though you never really see that underlying terror. You almost feel as if his psychotic reaction to events was almost the only thing he could have done. The acting is first class all round I feel it would be unfair to single out any one of the stunning performances.

This film is really about growing up and how you cope with it. Everyone has to go through it and most seem to emerge the other side with only minor ticks and deviancies. Some people however are crushed by the terror of the things that come to light between the ages of 6 and 17 and this is the perfect illustration of this. This could have been you. More worryingly, if something really bad happens to you, this still could be you.

Are you so sure that everything you remember happening in your childhood really happened? Those little anecdotes you trot out when you're with friends? Are those memories coloured by how you saw the world when you were that age? What are childhood experiences are you hiding from yourself? In a sense these are all very Freudian concepts given life in a film that has as it's central plot a case of Oedipus twisted way beyond it's classical borders.

Some have found this boring, I didn't. I can understand that the slow pace and, for Cronenberg, the simplicity of the storyline might lead one to not engage with the film especially if you find the entire concept of mental illness alien. However, that feeling of wanting to run away from this film as fast as possible whilst screaming is one that should really recommend it to you in the strongest possible terms. Not all horror is jumps and monsters, some is atmosphere and the ordinary. And that's the scariest sort.

spider is a strange but beautiful film. don't let yourself be influenced by all the intellectual approaches to define the plot of the movie. it's not necessary. spider whispers a silent story about different perceptions of reality and truth. it is touching and rather adressing the heart than the brain. the story is driven by a strong sexual theme concerning the relationship between mother and son.

the performances are throughout excellent. cronenberg hat created one of his best films. go and see it.

David Cronenberg's film, based on a novel adapted by its author, Patrick McGrath, is set in London in the late 1980's, and explores the effects of an infamous Conservative government policy, whereby expensive, outdated mental hospitals were streamlined and the inmates released with limited supervision, a process that was termed Care in the Community. The film focuses on Spider, an elusive mental patient, institutionalised for most of his life, now released and returned back to a halfway house in East London, the place of his childhood, to fend for himself in the outside world.

This does not look to the uninformed like a Cronenberg film, there being no teleportation, telepathic head-blowing or the like, but once viewed, the film is clearly in Cronenberg's territory. From the beginning of the 1990's, he has seemed to be searching (it seems to me at times desperately) for new subjects in which to explore his morbid fascination. This fascination concerns the consequences of illness. Illness is given outrageous forms in his earlier films, a car accident which debilitates Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone, for instance, one of its effects being morbid clairvoyance. In Spider, Cronenberg focuses on the effect of illness on the brain, with its manifestation in what we would call the real world, when scientists actually view our 'real' world as a simulation made by our brains (and therefore our bodies).

As ever, Cronenberg, unlike other directors, does not condescend and go for the easy option, in other words making Spider a neatly disturbed, good-looking human, glamorised by his tragic sense of unreality, i.e. A Beautiful Mind. Instead, he really explores what it might be like for an intelligent man who tries to make sense of a world and past warped by mental disturbance, and questions his perception and sense of reality. Cronenberg gives Spider pathos and humanity, but never glamorises him.

Ralph Fiennes inhabits Spider naturally and impressively, bringing to the role his consistent qualities of commitment and intensity. The supporting cast is wonderful. Gabriel Byrne plays Spider's father with his rich sourness and Miranda Richardson, in a double role, shows why she is such a hidden, rough gem of British acting (at least to the wider world).

In Spider, Cronenberg Is Back To His Best With A Characteristically Original Film About Society and Mental Illness

SPIDER (2003) *** Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Bradley Hall, Lynn Redgrave, John Neville. Filmmaker David Cronenberg does it again : mixing psychological drama with Gothic mystery with the cloak of violence in the air with Fiennes (in a brilliantly mannered near mute turn) as the titular character, a schizophrenic recently released to a halfway house, nicknamed in his youth by his mother (Richardson who gives an excellent turn to the third power; she inhibits three interlaced roles that act as the story's linchpin) for his cat's cradle yarn confections which sends his scattershot memories into overdrive as he attempts to connect the missing pieces of his life. Told in intersperses of flashback Cronenberg expertly uses his persuasive powers of dread eke out the thin plottings of Patrick McGrath's novel – who adapted the screenplay too – that can tax on the nerves in long, baroque stretches of near silence. Dank, rotting production design by Andrew Sanders, excellently lensed by Peter Suschitzky and the chamber music-like score by Howard Shore makes the most of its broken-minded protagonist's living nightmare.