The Double (2014) directed by Richard Ayoade, (the British actor you might know best from the famous Fire! video clip) is a visually stunning film that manages to be quirky without being cliche, and unique while harkening to past films. The flavors I detected within The Double came from The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Eraserhead (1977), and Fight Club (1999). All films deal with themes of feeling like an outsider, the modern industrial wasteland, the corporate grind, the cruelty of bureaucracy, alter egos, being a fraud, and suicide.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
Hissing smoke, the distant clunking sound of metal on metal, a train horn in the distance. All dear and familiar sounds...
Within the first few minutes of The Double, I concluded that it was a
technicolor Eraserhead.
There's something decidedly timeless about the universe they live in. Somewhere wavering between the 1950s and the 1970s, industry and machinery rule, and a formal approach to dress keeps characters rigid and conformed. The mechanical equipment in both films are unidentifiable but vaguely familiar. They are metal, have buttons and lights, produce items, but their function is based on fantasy.
The people they encounter are hostile. The protagonist just can't catch a break. No matter how meek, submissive and nonthreatening, he is berated, belittled and steamrolled - most notably by older women.
The films are both padded with elderly characters that contrast the youthful protagonist, but mirror his feebleness.
He is in love with a young woman, but she doesn't love him back in the same way.
Her approval is just out of his grasp. In The Double, Hannah (Mia Wasikowska) is the victim of two extremes in male behavior, which Simon has the ability to execute (whether he knows it or not). Simon watches Hannah from afar, silently hoping to gain a connection. In an anecdote about a man who committed suicide in her building, Hannah explains that she is unnerved by this style of courtship - which he is guilty of himself. Simon's alter ego, James Simon, harms Hannah in a more aggressive way: loving and leaving, cheating, and even slapping her in an argument. Hannah attempts suicide and miscarries James's child. Simon James and James Simon are opposites, but both still land outside the spectrum of suitable.
In Eraserhead, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) finds herself indelibly tied to Henry by their illegitimate and deformed child. Mary is thrust into motherhood, living with Henry in his cramped apartment. The stress of raising this ill infant, who she can't recognize as her own, causes Mary to move out. Henry's meek spirit doesn't exactly encourage her to stay.
Simon and Henry's romantic exploits are met with ridicule and embarrassment.
Even the elevators are cruel.
At least Henry is "on vacation." Eraserhead is already saturated with quintessential nightmare versions of everyday life; the Eraserhead workplace would be bleak and torturous on Jheronimus Bosch levels. Maybe we get a glimpse of this at the pencil factory - where Henry's disembodied head is sold to make erasers.
Both Simon and Henry's stories end with their heads smashed on the pavement, and their spirits being taken to Heaven by people who truly understand them. More on that later...
The Hudsucker Proxy and The Double have their tones set by suicide early on. Simon is going about his usual routine of spying on Hannah across the courtyard, when he sees a man pirched above her apartment staring back. Suddenly he's dropped. The tragedy brings Simon and Hannah together as neighbors and co-workers.
Waring Hudsucker, the founder and president of Hudsucker Industries, commits suicide by jumping out of the skyscraper window during a meeting. Knowing Hudsucker's stock shares will be sold to the public, board member Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman), schemes to buy the
controlling interest in the company and temporarily depressing the stock
price by hiring an incompetent replacement. Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) a lowly mail room clerk on his first day, comes to deliver a letter to Mussburger, but decides instead to pitch his invention of a simple circular toy. Believing Norville to be the right idiot for the job, Mussburger immediately promotes him to president.
Is he a fraud?
Simon James is irked by the presence of a new employee named James Simon. It's like looking into a mirror, but no one seems to notice but Simon James. There's something about James that's so charismatic, he can get away with murder. James impresses with minimal effort. He lies and cheats on a psychopathic level. On the other hand, there's something so unremarkable about Simon, that he seems to be a "non-person." Simon's malfunctioning work ID causes him to be shut down on a bureaucratic level. If the ID doesn't work, you aren't in the system, and if you aren't in the system, you don't exist. The system is uncaring and exclusive, though it is run by humans.
Simon James is irked by the presence of a new employee named James Simon. It's like looking into a mirror, but no one seems to notice but Simon James. There's something about James that's so charismatic, he can get away with murder. James impresses with minimal effort. He lies and cheats on a psychopathic level. On the other hand, there's something so unremarkable about Simon, that he seems to be a "non-person." Simon's malfunctioning work ID causes him to be shut down on a bureaucratic level. If the ID doesn't work, you aren't in the system, and if you aren't in the system, you don't exist. The system is uncaring and exclusive, though it is run by humans.
The Hudsucker Proxy captures the insanity of bureaucracy as well. It's comical in it's absurdity, yet recognizable. My favorite scene from Hudsucker is the one pictured above right. It's Norville's first minutes in the mailroom, and he's being screamed at by a supervisor. Without warning the man rattles off, "6787049A/6. That is your employee number. It will not be repeated! Without your employee number you cannot get your paycheck." The rest of the quote can be found here.
Work can feel this way at times; designed for automatons and not humans.
Simply on the basis of premise, The Double and Fight Club share the same story. A young man, fried by the corporate machine, splits into a second persona whom he believes to be his savior and also his tormentor, only to find that they were one in the same person.
The young man does not live his life to the fullest, he might be categorized as a nerd. The alter ego is the exact opposite. He is suave, and has good luck with women. He has the answers to everything, and seems to move smoothly through life by his wits. By all accounts this mysterious man is a jerk who should be punished and not praised for his behavior, but the prevalent theme appears to be "nice guys finish last."
Through bouts of self-harm, culminating in a suicide attempt, the alter ego is freed.
The main difference is that the alter ego in Fight Club, Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden, looks nothing like Ed Norton's character (simply called "The Narrator"), while Jessie Eisenberg plays both characters, as Simon James and James Simon. This creates a comically surreal nightmare scenario where the sanity of every other character is questionable. That anyone would believe these men were not twins or even see a resemblance between them is outlandish, but this is Simon's lament.
It's unclear in Fight Club if anyone besides the Narrator sees Tyler Durden as a separate person. This allows the charade to hold up, but ultimately lays the foundation for them to plausibly be the same person. Unlike The Double, Fight Club's Narrator is the only one who sees his alter ego as another individual, while we imagine the reality would involve the Narrator switching personalities as he interacts with people, and talking to himself a lot. The Double rides this line. There are many scenes where Simon confronts James to the point of revealing that he's an illusion. However, the rest of the characters are so certain that they are different men, Simon is left defending his personality, and attempting to prove that they are the same. The Double is part scifi fantasy, part psychological case study.
The suicide attempt by The Narrator in Fight Club is ultimately nonfatal, but the gun shot to the cheek appears to rid him of Tyler Durden. The suicide concluding The Double is most likely fatal, but left to our imagination. Simon is loaded into an ambulance after jumping from his apartment window, while James dies from the injuries as he is restrained inside the apartment. Simon appears alert, and Hannah is inside the ambulance. A happy ending seems likely. Then the Colonel (the owner and idol of the company Simon works for) appears in the ambulance with them.
In The Hudsucker Proxy, Norville almost falls to his death from his skyscraper, but is saved by a supernatural force, and visited by the angelic apparition of Waring Hudsucker. Near death, Norville and Simon are both visited by the beloved god/bosses of their respective employers.
In the ambulance the Colonel comments that Simon is a special person. His untimely presence and encouraging tone is unsettling, considering the circumstance. It is then we realize the ambulance ride is most likely a heavenly dream.
At least Simon gets to go solo.
