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Publication Date: Friday, August 01, 2003

Spider

Director David Cronenberg is one of my favorite enigmas that has carried over into this new millennium. His films have always had a sobering affect on me, despite their outlandish premises, and Cronenberg has never flinched from uncovering some sort of psychological wound and making us question the very nature of the wound itself. He is existential without being overtly fantastical; detached while finding a new way to show intimacy; obscene while never failing to entertain; and economical down to the last frame. I feel that his work (the best includes "Crash," "Existenz" and "Dead Ringers") is a time capsule of ideas, emotions and theory that has been preserved from another era when experimentation and art were embraced by a curious public. Cronenberg loves to deal, essentially, with the intricacies of people and their physical manifestations upon their environment.

His latest, "Spider," is a reinvention of sorts of the detective story. The twist, however, is that the main character, Spider, is a schizophrenic who is trying to solve his own perilous crime and is not the atypical tragic-noble crazy that typically wins an actor an Academy Award. He is, in the hands of Cronenberg and actor Ralph Fiennes, a distancing, disturbing and pathetic creation whose constant mumbling (he never says more than one or two intelligible words), strange shuffling and transient look are enough to signal a warning to the viewer.

The film starts with an amazing tracking shot of a train pulling into a London station and we are escorted through the crowds for what seems like an eternity until the camera rests on the last passenger, who seems unsure of the reality of the platform. This is Spider who, upon his release from a mental institution after 20 years, will now begin his journey to a halfway house and possible re-approaching madness. The film begins to spew Spider's story through a series of flashbacks, all of which are hallucinations, so we have to determine what was real or perceived past. Spider begins to haunt his old neighborhood, always scribbling his diary (in a type of hieroglyphic code) the events that took place before his incarceration. We find that his working class home was dominated by his kindly mother (wonderful Miranda Richardson in dual roles) and distant father (Gabriel Byrne). The event that seemed to trigger the 7-year-old's mental deterioration is an encounter with a harlot who teases Spider while he tries to fetch his father home for supper. What ensues, through unreliable flashbacks, is a puzzle on many planes that leads to a pathetic tragedy. What keeps "Spider" from slipping into a total downer is Fiennes' transparent portrayal of the doomed man.

Fiennes, who is always underrated, never overacts and is never allowed a scene to chew; instead he lets himself creep around in a daze that leaves you in awe of such a complete characterization. What also is unnerving is the portrayal of schizophrenia itself, with Cronenberg wisely never showing us the hallucinations. Instead he creates tension through ominous sounds of factories, creepy shadows of stoves, deserted London streets and a hideous reappearing character that leaves Spider tormented. "Spider" may not be mindless Saturday night entertainment but it is probably one of the most honest and intelligent films about a mental disorder that I have ever seen and is a distinguished addition to the works of one of the most interesting filmmakers working today. @reviewertag:-Joe Ramirez