The Double

What happens if you are a genuinely nice person? Willing to go the extra mile for others, always submissive to the wishes of your family and are generally a nice guy. You are taken for granted and treated like dirt. By your folks, colleagues and even the girl you so fancy treats you as a nonexistent entity.

As if this was not discouraging enough, a new colleague joins who is identical to you in appearance but has the completely opposite personality.

A smart telling of the Dostoevsky novel about a person who has the capacity to tolerate everything but his own double whose existence causes him a dilemma: continue to silently tolerate everything or change and adapt.

Perhaps not the easiest of movies to watch but its quirky wit and creative cinematography will win you over.

Here's the basic gist- this film is pretty ambitious on a visual level. It's reminiscent of the type of film Lynch would have made in his early days (yes, I got memories of Eraserhead for whatever reason). On a storyline-level, it's more straightforward. You can pretty much guess where the narrative is going and the strings it's going to pull. The film still works however, largely because of its cast. Jesse Eisenberg's performance here stands alongside his Oscar-nominated turn in The Social Network as the best acting he's ever given. It's truly superb work. Wasikowska is also quite effective. The score is effective and sort of haunting. Overall, I wish I'd liked it more, but it's definitely recommended.

I am currently studying Russian Literature at the University of Bucharest and one of this semester's assignments involves reading three of Dostoyevsky's novels: Crime & Punishment, The Double and The Brothers Karamazov. Having finished the second book today, my memories in regard to the source material are still clear & well-defined, so I will try to pinpoint some things I've liked and some things I didn't about Richard Ayoade's 2013 film.

What I didn't like.

• I understand that the movie doesn't aim to be the most accurate adaptation, hence it's modern setting, but the truth is, the movie is just loosely based on the novel. I say that because it only makes use of some plot devices that are to be found in the book, but mostly fails in capturing the inner emotional turmoil, dilemmas, paranoia and mental dizziness of Simon, elements that make Dostoevsky's Golyadkin an interesting case for me. Here the character of Simon is simplified a bit. For example when Simon meets his double, instead of the sheer dread that makes me feel the horror of this unspeakable resemblance, one can see a sudden cut to a Simon that has just faint - an easy gateway for the screenwriters and the director. Or the very first encounter with the double, when James takes the photos of the Colonel and other employees, that seemed a bit too abrupt and in a certain sense - rushed.

• an unnecessary comedic tone, with tasteless jokes for a rather profound story.

• The mild Chinese racism - did the screenwriter try to copy Dostoyevsky's sense of mocking towards the ethnic Germans?

Things I did like

• the color grading, the tones, the hues, the sick greenish of the office; Better that I'd have imagined.

• Jesse Eisenberg's (The Social Network) and Mia Wasikowska's performances.

• ''a person can get really sick by just floating by''

• also the speech about Pinocchio and feeling like you're not real. And the subway scenes especially.

Bottom line: I think The Double is 100% worth the watch if you like weird, stylized things, but it does suffer from an unfulfilling ending. If you're not generally into "weird stuff", then this is probably not going to be the film for you. Worth mentioning that it is very bleak and confusing at times.

If this had a better ending to tie it up then it would have easily been an 8+

The Double takes you for a real ride. It's effective at making you feel a sense of non-stop stress and dread, while remaining very engaging. You feel like you can't look away without missing something right until the end.

The atmosphere is great, portraying a truly bleak, dystopian nightmare. The set design is really interesting and has a unique vibe. The work they do at the company, and many other things about the world in general, is vague in a way that they really pull off to build an effective tone.

Unfortunately, I felt the ending was unfulfilling. The ending itself is fine enough, and some of the stuff they introduce there is cool, but it doesn't feel like a real conclusion. It didn't wrap up as nicely as it seemed like it was going to, and when looking at it closer there's a lot of tough logical holes. When discussing it after there was lots of "but if *that* theory was right, then *this* thing wouldn't have happened" and it just didn't seem like any one narrative fit correctly.

Overall, I really liked the experience. It was very cerebral, very weird, and very "interesting" (in it's own bleak and unexciting way). I enjoyed it all the way through, but was let down by the ending not being fulfilling enough.

Everybody thinks they are special. Everybody thinks they are unique. Everybody also thinks there is someone deep down that can and must come out so they are better people. As our protagonist thought. But in this case, that person was not that great but was what our protagonist thought he was missing.

I am not familiar with Dostoevskys book but this adaptation from Ayoade was really more like Kafka. A bizarre story set in a bureaucratic, soul-less environment where humanity tries to come out like a flower through concrete. Or as an obnoxious douchebag.

But the memorable Brazil-like imagery aside it's a few degrees too weird and loses you a bit.