Enemy (2013)'s comments - page 2

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Joker of Gotham

Jake Gyllenhaal is one of my favourite actors and no one can deny that he is one pretty good actor.
Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon are beautiful and delivered great performances.
This movie is quite confusing, but it is so good and enjoyable to watch.
4.25/5

Movie Explained:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9AWkqRwd1I

9 years 10 months ago

Louis Mazzini

Took me 10 minutes to search and find the movie here.

10 years ago

jihado86

I hate it when symbolism dictates the story, making it incoherent, it's the case in this film and it's forced and made me feel conned in the end. This is what I call 2nd level of symbolism (1st level is even dumber like Barbie, Poor Things,...), where the filmmaker thinks he's deeper and more intelligent than the 1st level, but in the end it's still superficial symbolism.

1 month 3 weeks ago

guffaa88

Agree with the top comment here by greenhorg, perfect summary.

Just to add, the key is the fact that no one ever sees them together in the same room (except them two). The tip off is when the pregnant wife calls her husband and he picks up THE SECOND the professor walks off screen behind the university wall

1 year 8 months ago

DaniloFreiles

La locandina ha spoilerato.
Alquanto irrealistico. Senza risposte. spoiler

4 years 4 months ago

E. T. Blunt

The payoff doesn't quite work for me, but I enjoyed every minute of it nonetheless.

3 years 6 months ago

ikkegoemikke

“The last thing you need is meeting strange men in hotel rooms.”

“Enemy“. Directed by Denis Villeneuve and Jake Gyllenhaal in a leading role (or roles). Hell yeah ! The director and one of the protagonists of “Prisoners” . This has to be be an excellent movie since I’ve put “Prisoners” in my personal top 10 of reasonable brilliant movies in 2013. This was a slightly incorrect assumption

A few tips before you watch this bizarre and very strange movie.

Don’t call the electronics shop, where you recently purchased your ultramodern 55″ LED TV, in a panic and don’t start screaming at the helpdesk employee because the RGB color settings are severely screwed up and they need to replace the unit immediatly. Trust me, the color palette that you get to see on your TV the entire movie, is fine. It’s as if you are exploring a coffee-colored land full of yellow , beige and (probably spider excrement) brownish hues. At times I thought I was still wearing my Boss sunglasses with slightly tinted glasses still. Also, are you having a period of persistent sleeping disorder and you need benzodiazepines with the annoying side effect of feeling sleepy during the day, then I don’t recommend this movie. Because it’s painfully slow. And finally don’t watch it if you don’t like movies where you say “Huh!” at the end and you frantically start googling forums and wikipedia-pages to find any explanation about the movie.

But are you a big fan of Jake Gyllenhaal ? Then you’ll surely don’t want to miss this one, because he plays even two personages in it. Or one ? And when you’re not into movies with a straightforward , predigested and terribly simplistic storyline, but rather a complicated movie with a maze of possible storylines and plausible explanations , this is really a must see for you.
Adam is a slightly neurotic teacher who’s teaching about dictatorial regimes and how they maintain control over people by applying certain strategies. And more important (probably an exam question) it’s a pattern that repeats itself throughout history. After a suggestion of a colleague, he rents a movie one evening and sees to his surprise his exact image acting in this film. What follows is a complicated voyage of discovery. You’ll be wondering the whole movie whether there are indeed two persons or that these two individuals are fused together into a schizophrenic person with apparently an identity disorder .

It wasn’t a totally confusing story for me. I took into account that Adam might possibly have some psychological problems. The behavior and phenomena that were shown like regular headaches (frequently depicted), mood swings, sexual dysfunction (his girlfriend gave up after the third attempt) and lose sight of the time, were an indication. The used metaphors at the end were also evident. This was in my opinion nothing more than leaving the past behind in a psychological way and starting fresh in the present.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays an excellent character role. The acting of Sarah Gadon was at times simply breathtaking brilliant. The look on her face as she glances at Adam and you clearly can see the suspicion and confusion appear on her face, is simply masterful. The film editing was sometimes really ingeniously worked out. Stopping and restarting images at the rhythm of the music. The delusions were sometimes quite hallucinatory. The perverse beginning gave you immediately a sinister feeling. Applying Adam’s teaching material (about the patterns and the repeating) on reality, so that recurrent sequences were used in the beginning, was ingenious. Also, the ending is a compound with the beginning. If you think about it more deeply you’ll notice it’s a well-crafted movie.

And yet it it left me indifferent. For me it’s just a movie to spawn “the experts” of the better movie and give them something to entertain (as the Romans did with the common people) so they can analyze the different layers of this film and discuss it in detail. For me, it was a slow and boring movie with a straightforward story in which eventually someone wants to leave his “cheating days” behind him. I love a well-prepared mind fuck, but in this movie I was like, “Yeah guys tell me the denouement so I finally know how it fits together.” And this already fairly early in the movie. Too bad, if you look at the acting performance of Gyllenhaal.

More reviews here

6 years 6 months ago

royalspikey77

left a big smile on my face at the end... nicely done

8 years ago

The_Comatorium

This entry is kinda fucked up.

Lately I have been thinking of what up underrated directors do I think are going to be the next big thing in film. Obviously guys like Paul Thomas Anderson and Spike Jonze have been receiving recognition for their work due to their originality and dedication to their work They aren’t pumping out films left and right and what we are ultimately left with is engaging cinema that is going to be talked about for years to come. Denis Villeneuve should be added to that list. He is seriously growing into one of my favorite directors working today. This film just etched it into stone that he is the real deal. While I still haven’t seen his first film “Maelstrom”(I just added to the top of my Netflix queue), I enjoyed “Prisoners” immensely and “Incendies” is one of my favorite films ever. I ended up driving over a half hour to see this is a little indie theater in south eastern New York and it was worth the time and gas mileage. Denis Villeneuve decided that when he was making this film, adapted from the novel “The Double” by Jose Saramago, he decided to make the best David Lynch film since David Lynch’s last film. Look at my profile picture. Do you think I loved the film? Sure did guys. Sure did.

“Enemy” stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Adam, a history professor who gets a movie recommendation one day and after watching it, finds a completely identical person to himself in the film. With some research, Adam finds the man and works up the courage to confront him. That’s all you’re getting guys. The film twists and turns so much while staying eerily still and creepy that any other information about the plot will ruin things Plus, if you’ve read my ramblings you will have learned that I hate giving away plot. Hell, I don’t even like watching trailers anymore due to my interest in holding complete surprise when I enter a theater. This is why you read who made the film ladies and gentlemen and also why you remember their names. I didn’t see the trailer to this but as soon as I heard that Villeneuve had a film out I made time to see it. I ended up being the only person in the theater. The box office attendant told me that everybody has been ripping on the film and that nobody liked it. I told him that those people expected a more polished and cookie cutter film. That is not what you will end up getting. What the film is is a puzzle that only serious pondering will solve. I’m not even bragging. I had to look up the damn meaning of the film after driving a half hour and not getting really anywhere besides a few more obvious mysteries. This is where the David Lynch in this film flourishes. There are a lot of scenes that make little to no sense up front but when you start putting pieces together, those pieces start t look like something recognizable. Even then it can be so abstract that the finished product still will turn people away. That;s okay. The film is definitely not for everybody but I applaud Villeneuve for trying something different and pleasing the shit out of me.

If I were to find some more general appreciation that more people would like, I’d have to go with both color scheme and the acting of Jake Gyllenhaal. I always knew Gyllenhaal was a great actor but he’s really been coming into his own as of late. His role and the last two Villeneuve films have been fantastic and even his work in more mainstream films such as “Source Code” has been good. Playing two characters, Gyllenhaal plays with subtly brilliantly as we really aren’t given any other clues as to who is who besides body language and voice tics. He played both versions of himself great. The other standout is the color scheme. The very bleak and hazy colors that bled into the film were very comforting but also melted with each scene so well. The films score, an eerie and haunting storm of violins and cellos blended with the colors flashing on the screen. The camera work was amazing just as every one of his films has been amazing. I just can’t wait to see another one of his films.

I wish I could discuss more without going into the plot of the film but that would be a disservice as this is really a film to be experience with no prior knowledge. It’s in a very limited release right now and may be hard to find but if you can find one under an hour drive and are fans of films that don’t make a lot of sense but invite the viewing in for serious thought process, then take the drive and see it. The film will certainly give you a one of a kind experience even if you end up not liking it. Shit, the ending alone was one of the most unique things I’ve ever seen and I still have no idea what happened. You won’t be disappointed.

www.thoughtsfromthebooth.com

10 years ago

Celkens

This great movie is called Enemy, not an Enemy. It's directed by Dennis Villeneuve (Incendies, Prisoners) and stars Jake Gyllenhaal.

10 years 2 months ago