Venturing through the memories of mumbling schizophrenic Dennis Cleg (Ralph Fiennes) is no simple task, but under the direction of David Cronenberg, character psychology is translated into exciting visuals that keep the audience interested even when it isn’t clear where the story is headed. While his new film Spider is by no means perfect, mainly because the material is too mystique for its own good, Cronenberg does manage to externalize the internal thoughts of an unbalanced protagonist better than most of his peers; chief among them being Ron Howard and his Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind.

Spider is intriguing in the same way David Lynch’s Mullholand Drive was. A mood is established and maintained while the audience watches the filmmaker put together the pieces to his puzzle. Unlike Mullholand Drive, however, Spider’s ending leaves little to the imagination. Cronenberg has indeed constructed an interesting puzzle, but while said puzzle is pretty to look at, and has more than enough symbolism to go around (at one point Cleg himself is at work on a puzzle), the pieces are greater than the whole. Then again, Cronenberg was obviously more concerned with the process than the outcome.

Based on the novel by Patrick McGrath (who also wrote the screenplay), Spider is rife with psychological complexities and features a disturbing look at the Oedipul Complex. After his release from a mental institution in London, Dennis, whose childhood nickname, Spider, comes from his skill at weaving webs out of rope, goes to stay at some dilapidated halfway house run by Mrs. Wilkinson (Lynn Redgrave). It’s a dingy, cracking building that is populated by no more than three or four other guests, all of them as weird, if not weirder, than Spider. "The less a man, the more the clothes", comments a fellow resident after discovering Spider wears four shirts under his jacket.

During his stay in the halfway house, Dennis begins losing control of his sanity. The grown Dennis reminisces to a period in his childhood where he witnessed a disturbing incident between his mum (Miranda Richardson) and dad (Gabriel Byrne). These flashback scenes are made all the more interesting since the grown Dennis is present throughout, alongside his 10-year old self (Bradley Hall).

The trippy identity-changes that follow, thanks to Dennis’ delusional condition, keep attentive viewers peaked, but those expecting a stroke of brilliance to connect the protagonist’s tangled memories might be slightly disappointed at the downer, but sensible, conclusion.

Spider is David Cronenberg’s most mature film to date. While that is not saying much, considering the director’s last film, eXistenZ, featured a virtual-reality game where pods are connected to the players' spine, I always thought Cronenberg brought a sense of realism to his sci-fi material, and that is not excluding stuff like Scanners. With his latest, the filmmaker brings a sense of science fiction to reality. 

GRADE: B

-Copyright 2003 by Shaun Sages


 

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