Spider

From the DVD's back-cover blurb:

Spider (Ralph Fiennes) has been allowed a second chance at life after a long stay in a mental institution and sent to a halfway house under the stern watch of Mrs. Ilkenson (Lynn Redgrave.)

Revisiting his old neighborhood reawakens memories of his where his mother (Miranda Richardson) and his father (Gabriel Byrne) raised him. He soon begins to uncover the real truth shifting seamlessly back and forth between the tragic events that polarized a boy's adolescence to the shell of a man enduring the surreal plausible reality of today.

It's a pretty good summary of the film except for two details, the first minor and the second major:

1. Mrs. Ilkenson should be Mrs. Wilkinson, and I'm not sure why a mistake like this could be made, given the credits and how Wilkinson is a far more common surname than Ilkenson. Like I said though, this is only minor.
2. The description of Spider's process of "uncover[ing] the real truth" provides an image of a traditionally active protagonist, but the title character is most definitely not one of those, floating as he does through most of the film's running time.

This perhaps is why so many people find Spider "boring." I personally found it quite gripping, not despite but because of the languid pacing of the film.

It's also neither contemplative nor meditative in the fashion of such films as that of, say, Krzysztof Kieslowski; Spider's mental illness, after all, results in his lacking the capacity for orderly contemplation and meditation.

Instead, it's the collective efforts of cast and crew guided by David Cronenberg, along with the participation they demand from the viewer, that performs this work of reflection in a more metaphorical and almost-poetic sense.

Above and beyond flawless performances from a cast that also includes John Neville (who has done supporting work in Little Women and The Fifth Element, but is perhaps best known for playing the Well-Manicured Man of The X-Files as well as the title character in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) is Cronenberg's characteristically clinical direction.

I'd go so far as to call it elegant, despite it seeming inappropriate for this film's visuals. He's aided by the work of a few constant collaborators:

• Composer Howard Shore's mournful yet understated score, in a style closer to his work in two other films about insanity: Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs, aside from most of Cronenberg's other films.
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Article Author: Andrew Albert J. Ty

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