Movie Review: Enemy [2014]

Enemy is a new thriller by Denis Villeneuve, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon. 

Adam Bell (Jake) is a history teacher, has a girlfriend Helen (Sarah Gadon) and lives a quiet, black and white, troubleless life. His life mostly takes place between school, where he teaches and home, where he merely has sex with Helen. This is important, because it seems there relationship does not go further than that. One day, his co-worker very randomly suggests a movie to watch and he decides to give a try. The movie turns out to be as plain and not really special as his life, consequently he quits it and goes to sleep. But it does not end here, since he's seeing scenes from that movie in dreams and he sees himself in some episodes, or a guy who just looks like him. It turns out that this guy is Anthony St. Claire (also Jake) - an actor and exact copy of history teacher. This is where life gets messed. 

As a general impression, the movie is good - it is thrilling, well acted, interestingly shot. Technically it is far from perfection but screenplay is brilliantly thought and written. It gives so many hints to understand the film in so many interesting ways that one watch is never enough. Jake delivers a great performance by differentiating two characters by his acting You never mix a teacher and an actor. And this flexibility of his to switch from shy, unsociable teacher to successful, hunky, the man actor is impressive.

Jack the teacher and Jack the actor

At first, you might think that the story is gonna never end and the first half of movie is irrelevant. It is not! Because everything is relevant here to answer the main question are Adam and Anthony the same or different people? Yeah, the question is that "simple". There is no definite answer to this question, because, as I said, there are tons of hints in Enemy and it is almost impossible to find all of them.

HERE IS WHAT I THINK [spoilers ahead, if you have not watched the movie, do not read further]

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