The Double (2013) - Review

Jesse Eisenberg in THE DOUBLE, a Magnolia Pictures release.
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. Photo credit: Dean Rodgers

Every frame of Richard Ayoade's new film The Double aches to be seen as quirky, absurdist, and the artistic descendant of filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Luis Buñuel, and, dare I say it, perhaps even Wes Anderson (though Anderson might faint at the thought of such darkness in the frame). Ultimately, Ayoade is never able to achieve a singular vision and the entire film feels half-formed.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon, a painfully shy and timid man who has been toiling in some bureaucratic corporation. The corporation so little appreciates the work that Simon does that Simon seems to be falling out of the computer rolls of the company's employees and, with the exception of one co-worker, no one even recognizes or remembers the young man.

While Simon struggles to deal with his employment situation, he pines for his co-worker and neighbor Hannah, played by burgeoning indie film muse Mia Wasikowska. Hannah barely knows Simon exists until their mutual neighbor commits suicide, but even then she barely remembers the young man. Simon is just too timid to tell her how he feels.

Enter James, who is Simon's doppelganger. James is everything Simon is not: confident, brash, a winner with their mutual employer, and a stud that can bed down any woman he wants. Simon is distressed but James seems to want to take Simon under his wing to help the poor lad. And then Hannah falls in love with James, and Simon's world and mental state crumble.

Ayoade tries to create a Brazil-like workplace bureaucracy, but everything in the film seems so small and confined. Rather than feeling like some absurdist bureaucracy, it feels like 10 cubicles placed on a soundstage. The artifice is too obvious and mannered. Ayoade is never able to visually generate a maze-like feel or to create an absurd landscape on any kind of grand scale. Ayoade's color palette in the film is so small (brown and black mostly) that when he tries to work in pastel colors it feels forced - such as with an aging band at a party that is so obviously a ploy for ironic laughter in the audience that it feels cheap.

Ayoade's camera is too tightly confined, too still to create any frantic energy in the film, and that leaves the whole thing feeling a bit dead. He tries to work in a series of background noises and sounds, particularly early on, to create some sense of layered action in the background, but it again feels too forced and is more annoying than anything else. As the film goes on, the soundtrack is too flat and too predictable, and like much of the rest of the film feels half done.

Perhaps feeding into the flat, lifeless feel of the film is Eisenberg's performance. I think he is responding to Ayoade's direction here to keep things flat, but it just ends up hurting the film. There needs to be some energy source for this film and it just isn't there. Wasikowska is there mainly to serve as a totem for the object of Eisenberg's, and Ayoade's, affection for quirky girls. Otherwise she has too little effect on the proceedings and, again, she's asked to play the role too flatly. A minor note: I think Wasikowska was going for an American accent, but her Australian accent kept poking through.

Perhaps the highlight of the movie is Ayoade's imagined retro-futuristic TV show, which Simon loves and serves as his fantasy vision of the man he would like to be. Alas, it comes in a package of the forced retro-quirkiness that feels more about Ayoade and his production designer going through a second-hand store to find things they like than it is about creating any kind of new vision.

I could have loved a story about a man dealing with his timidity and the resulting feeling of invisibility - it's right up my alley. The Double, however, is just too flat and too inert to grab my attention and bring me along for any kind of ride. There's too much imitation here and not enough innovation. And for a film that so desperately wants to be quirky and, to borrow from the film's ending, unique, such lack of innovation is deadly.

Screened in the theater at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas.