Faux-semblants

Identical twin brothers Beverly and Elly Mantle are successful gynaecologists in Toronto. Their relationship is intense and very close - perhaps too close. The Mantles experiment with sex, drugs and personal identity, to the detriment of their practice, and ultimately of their psychological health.

This is a David Cronenberg film, so we are in the familiar realm of horror, mind games and perverted science. The director/producer/writer appears in the credits above the title and even ahead of his stars, Irons and Bujold. Essentially, the 'dead ringers' of the title are the brothers, who regard their mental and emotional oneness as being something more. They see themselves as siamese twins, bound by their flesh, and fated to share every experience, even unto death.

Irons does wonders to play two complex characters in one movie. A new technique called 'motion control' allows the actor to appear as two people in the same frame, but there is also plenty of the old 'body double' method, filming over a shoulder, then reversing the angle.

As teenage boys, the Mantle twins are clearly very bright, and display a precocious interest in surgery and women's reproductive apparatus. They are also creepy geeks. By the late 1980's they are handsome forty-somethings, and hailed as brilliant gynaecologists by everyone in the medical profession.

The screen actress Claire Niveau becomes Elliot's patient, and the brothers are soon sharing her. They frequently swap places without her knowledge. She has a unique uterus, and as Beverly (or is it Elliot?) explores this feature with his fingers, it is difficult to tell whether he is examining her or masturbating her. Before long, both brothers are doing both to Claire.

Elliot is a few minutes older than Beverly, microscopically taller and a nuance darker in colouring, but by nature he and 'baby brother' are utterly different. While Beverly is shy and diffident, Elliot is a callous, manipulative smoothie. When Claire, still unaware that she is sleeping with two men, expresses an interest in mild masochism, Beverly recoils but Elly enthusiastically obliges. He uses surgical tubes and clamps to tie Claire down for sex, and as he releases her after orgasm, we sense that for him the experience has been 'surgical' - almost a dispassionate experiment.

If Beverly is Jeckyll and Elliot is Hyde, we are always conscious that both personalities inhabit one awareness. "You haven't had any experience until I've had it too," Elliot tells Beverly, and the twins certainly seem to share everything, treating each other's patients (without telling the patients, of course) and working in tandem on research papers. The twins have a twin obsession in common - work and sex. Beverly sums it up with, "We do women - that's our speciality."

Identity is at the core of this film, and the dualities and ambiguities of personality recur with brain-teasing frequency. The twins are interested in female genitalia, both professionally and recreationally. Claire attracts them because of her dualities - she is a big personality who adopts other personas for her work: a strong woman who is turned on by being submissive: a gynaecological 'star' who happens to be infertile: and the French Canadian 'twin' to the English Canadian brothers. Elliot sleeps with two call-girls who are twin sisters, and identifies them by getting each to call him either 'Bev' or 'Elly'. The film has layer upon layer of these dualities. Genevieve Bujold is a French Canadian actress playing a French Canadian actress. We see her being made up for a movie, but when we see her left side, the make-up is of cuts and bruises. The Mantles prescribe drugs to each other, and each to himself, criss-crossing the doctor/patient demarcation lines. They take pills to cure their addiction to pills. Cary is having a relationship with Elliot, but when she gets both brothers at once, she is deeply aroused. The film, like the brothers, oscillates between oneness and separation. "I want to see you two together," says Claire, confused by their duality. So do we.

I was in a Cronenberg kick when I picked up Dead Ringers. I had just seen The Fly and eXistenZ, both of which I loved, and I was bent on renting Crash, but the idiotic Puritanical video store (Hollywood Video) only had the R rated, edited for content version. So I saw this video, so I rented it.

And boy was I impressed for an hour. I was utterly interested in all the characters. The cast was flawless, and it was a masterpiece. I was absolutely fascinated.

And then, about an hour through, every single character gets addicted on prescription drugs. It becomes so completely run-of-the-mill that I felt robbed. Also, some of the characters' decisions seem completely unbelievable. For instance, one twin, to understand his brother's drug habit, gets himself hooked on drugs. I realize this is based on a true story, but I doubt that that was the reason the second brother got hooked on drugs. I found myself not caring about the characters anymore. I felt bored. I even thought the ending, which many find amazing, unsatisfying. It was very difficult to understand what was going on, and even when the film ended, I was confused. But by that point, I didn't care enough to figure it out.

This film is surely worth seeing for its amazing first half. I loved it. But when the characters all get hooked on drugs, just shut it down. 7/10

While I like "The Brood" quite a bit, Dead Ringers gets my vote as Cronenberg's best work.

Follow along as the twin brothers spiral out of control when they unsuccessfully try to break free from each other. One's more confident, the other more timid. But they depend on each other, and at middle age neither has the psychological strength to be their own person; they still don't have a sense of self. Among many favorite moments, I love the scene where Elliott, the more confident twin, tries to kiss Claire. It's his way of trying to synchronize himself with his brother Beverly, whom Claire has a true connection with. "I'm sorry but I can't", she intones. Elliott turns to the mirror, disturbed. "Am I really that different from my brother?". He absolutely does not know who he is.

Although it's not without some humor, Dead Ringers is very bleak. It has an emotional intensity that most movies can't touch. It is sad AND beautiful.

The movie itself *looks* great. Good script, and AWESOME performances from both Irons and Bujold. As another reviewer suggested, watch it twice if you don't like it the first time- it might grow on you.

This is my all-time favorite movie.

Known as a director of "weird" films (unfortunadely unusual means bad for many), Cronenberg is actually a serious studious of the human mind, not unlike Ingmar Bergman, and here he does it better than in any other of his films i have seen (Spider, The Fly and Videodrome- the last one about the influence of TV in society and the least introspective of them). Like in the pictures mentioned above, the very strange premise is a excuse to a deep analysis of the human psychology: what is identity? where is the line between love and obsession? how dependent of another person someone can be? where does one ends and the other begins? It can be seen the influence of Bergman, most notably Persona and The Hour of the Wolf, and arguably Hitchcock's Vertigo, and, as the masters, Cronenberg does not provide easy answers, or any answer at all. But no matter how great the director is, the film would not be successful without the talent of Jeremy Irons. An actor capable of very good performances even in bad films, like The Man in the Iron Mask, he delivers here one of the greatest performances of all time, playing two extremely complex characters without being over-the-top or inexpressive in any moment, confusing us of which is Bev and which is Elly when he is supposed to, and making clear who is he playing in the right moment. Dead Ringers is not an ordinary film, so is not for ordinary moviegoers: it is very complex, not commercial at all, can be very hard to look at it in some moments, and don't expect to feel good after watching it. But if that does not drives you away, i strongly recommend.

This movie is a masterpiece depicting the same actor as twins. Very good technique but the emotion is lacking. There was so much potential yet the movie failed to impress me with its story. Its pacing is slow, the relationship between the characters has to be assumed, and there is nothing really shocking where there is supposed to be.