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Spider
**
Cinema
Reviews - Week of January 31, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. Canada/UK.
98 minutes. Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Patrick McGrath; from
his novel. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Bradley
Hall, Lynn Redgrave, John Neville, Gary Reineke, Philip Craig, Sara
Stockbridge.
"Bluh bude buni num op suh djcu jb asjk in
om um ibbit asdopnmin spider muh gnrdpfrm abababababab spider jubr bluh dub
prrr spider mub num por bah typ."
-Dennis 'Spider' Cleg
Or something like that.
"Spider" plods and stutters its
way to a conclusion that isn't nearly as smart or touching as it thinks it
is, through a first hour of maddening obscurity and a remainder of pathetic
obviousness. I saw it at last year's Telluride Film Festival, where the director,
David Cronenberg, chuckled about how he had finally moved from experimental
genre filmmaking to the realm of the "hardcore art flick". Are we supposed
to take that as an admission of pretentiousness?
Ralph Fiennes plays Spider, a man-child in a 1950s
London halfway house who likes to shuffle about the place, make weird noises,
sniff at the air and point his eyes in whatever direction his head is not.
He begins to walk about and rediscover the neighbourhood -- his memories
are hazy, you see. He hallucinates spying on his own flashbacks of childhood,
where his dad is played by Gabriel Byrne, his mother by Miranda Richardson.
And yet other characters, in both the past and present, are played by Richardson.
And although Lynn Redgrave is supposed to be playing the
landlady...
...well, you get the idea. The look of "Spider"
is brownish and flat, with an atmosphere of low-key stillness, and yet the
material is full of mysteries, switcharoos and mix-ups of time and space.
It's supposed to be a glimpse into the schizophrenic mind that builds into
a mystery, but interest quickly gives way to frustration and irritation,
and before long the movie is simply boring. Cronenberg is more interested
in confounding the audience than in amazing or even engaging us. The breathtaking
colour and weirdness of his earlier films are gone, and that would be fine
if all interest had not gone with them. "Spider" is a calculated, smug and
pointless bag of tricks. Say what you want about "A Beautiful Mind", but
its twist was at least effective at making us rethink a point of
view.
Byrne, Richardson and Redgrave try their best
to create forceful personalities, but Cronenberg constructs his story and
pacing so carefully that his actors end up being used too rigidly to have
any effect. Fiennes is just terrible -- it's possible to admire his commitment
to this limiting role, but the specifics of his behavioural ticks are just
so much risible babbling. He mumbles repetitions of half-sentences, he scribbles
into a pocketbook unconvincingly, and I don't think he manages to once fully
open his mouth. Sometimes his character walks along the side of a canal.
We pray for him to fall in.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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