"The Double" (2014)

In recent years extrovert and introvert as representative buzzwords of the general duality to personalities has come in vogue. The Double plays off this divide in personality traits in quite literal terms. Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a quiet, lonely person whose life is shaken up with the sudden appearance of uncanny doppelganger James Simon (Eisenberg) who is exactly like Simon except for an abundance of charisma, confidence and charm. 

James is the id to Simon’s superego. He is an outward manifestation of everything Simon wishes he was, a return of the repressed.

The film, as directed by Richard Ayoade and written by Ayoade and Avi Korine based on a Fyodor Dostoyevsky novella, has the eerie, detached vibe of a dystopia. Ayoade plays this for dark comical effect but there’s still something highly sinister and unsettling underneath the humor. The film resembles the style of fellow Brit Terry Gilliam, particularly the bureaucratic nightmare of Brazil. But Ayoade also brings a signature flare; like his debut Submarine, Ayoade loves precise, eye-catching images. 

Also like Submarine, Ayoade’s male protagonist obsessively fixates on a female, in this case Simon’s isolated neighbor Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), projecting rather than owning up to his own flaws. Simon is hopeless when it comes to sociability, and he’s creepy, though weirdly earnest, in his pursuit of Hannah. He stares at her through a telescope at night from their adjacent apartment buildings, and he collects and reassembles her sketches she is too down on herself to see the value of. Hannah works in Simon’s office building, where non-descript, mind-numbing business is carried out. 

When Simon initially meet James, it seems oddly helpful and hopeful. James attempts to help set Simon up with Hannah. But James is selfish and egotistical, and he begins forcing Simon out of every corner of his tiny world. James starts dating Hannah while using Simon’s apartment to carry out affairs, and James steals credit for all of the hard work Simon does. 

Simon is such a non-showy and closed-off person that he’s practically invisible. He’s worked at his job for seven years and his boss Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn) still doesn’t know who he is. 

As James steals more and more of Simon’s life, Simon realizes that he needs to start taking action in his own life. Things don’t just come to you because they ought to. Hannah is a kindred spirit but staring from a distance isn’t the same as making a real connection. The only thing standing in Simon’s way, like all of us, is himself.

Grade: B