Customer Reviews

Spider

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This movie is a strange mood piece with a tremendous performance by Ralph Fiennes as a man who's been released from a mental institution and has returned to the London neighborhood where he grew up. The nature of his illness is deliberately unclear. We simply watch as familiar surroundings trigger disturbing memories of his boyhood, and through them we slowly piece together his story.

The mood is set by a long, long tracking shot as the movie begins, as passengers disembark from a train in a large London terminal. The camera seems to be searching through this throng for someone in particular, and after what seems like an eternity, Fiennes as Spider emerges painfully and awkwardly onto the platform with a beat-up suitcase. And we are plunged from a scene of everyday activity into his world, which is far, far removed from the everyday and ordinary.

There's a twilight-zone kind of ambiance in the movie, as the camera shows us interiors and exteriors that are typically empty of furnishings and people. Street scenes, for instance, have no passing traffic, no pedestrians, not even cars parked at curbs. The lighting is often like stage lighting, coming from unexpected sources and providing an eerie flatness. The soundtrack alternates between strange rumbling noises, a small group of strings experimenting with mournful dissonance, and a lovely old-fashioned ballad that Spider remembers from childhood.

The supporting actors are wonderful, as they waver in our perception between what their characters really are and how they appear to Spider. Miranda Richardson has the task of playing three different characters, each as Spider sees them. Gabriel Byrne and Lynne Redgrave in brief scenes give richly nuanced performances. As with many indie movies, the commentary and other features on the DVD provide further interesting insights.

This is not a movie for an audience looking for entertainment. It is a psychological study and something of a mystery, as we make what sense we can of what the movie slowly reveals of its central character. I recommend it to anyone fascinated by the darker sides of the human psyche, the puzzle of mental illness, and the strange ways that the everyday world can be transformed by a troubled and isolated point of view.

...and that takes absolutely NOTHING away from the stunning contributions from everyone involved in this project. As soon as I read Patrick McGrath's incredible novel a few years ago, I knew I had discovered something wonderfully unique - then I read that there were plans for a film, with McGrath writing the screenplay - and when the pieces began to fall into place (Ralph Fiennes in the title role, along with Miranda Richardson and Lynn Redgrave, with David Cronenberg directing) I knew that the film would be something very special indeed. I was almost afraid to see it when it appeared in theatres (delayed for months in the US after its European release, evidently to keep it from being confused with SPIDER-MAN) - I feared that I had built up my expectations to a degree that they could not be fulfilled. I needn't have worried - the film floored me completely, from the performances by the great actors named above, to Cronenberg's masterful direction, to the perfect set design, Howard Shore's dead-on score, everything. This is as perfect an adaptation as a film could be. I couldn't wait for the DVD to come out, so I could view the film and have the ability to stop it and run it back in order to absorb all of its nuances.

It's also a difficult review to write - the plot twists are so delicious, and so perfectly rendered in the film, but to reveal too much about them would spoil it for any potential viewers. I'll try my best not to do that - I don't want to deprive anyone of the full effect. I have to agree wholeheartedly with another reviewer below when he states that `Hitchcock would have killed' to direct this story, and that it quite possibly surpasses anything that Hitchcock ever did (how many contemporary films could you say THAT about, and mean it...?).

According to Cronenberg's commentary on the DVD, when the script was sent to him, Ralph Fiennes had already decided that he wanted to play the part. Cronenberg stated `...two pages into the script, I knew that no one else could do it'. Plagued with financing difficulties - the director said that the financing actually had to be acquired a second time, after some sources backed out - it's a wonder the film was made at all. The cast and the director deferred their salaries, making it possible - and turning the project into a true labor of love. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their dedication and sacrifice.

`Spider' is Dennis Cleg - a man just released from a mental asylum to live in a halfway house in London's East End, very near his childhood neighborhood. Fiennes slips into the role completely - he pulls every ounce of the character's fiber out of the script, and added some touches of his own (the constant muttering was his idea) to round it out perfectly. Spider had a troubled childhood - as is evident from the memories that haunt him. The question is, which ones are real and which ones are manufactured...? As the story progresses, the web gets more and more intricate. Cronenberg films Spider in various environments - the halfway house day room, as well as his private room; on the streets in his neighborhood; in a local café, as well as the pub his dad used to frequent. All of these places trigger memories in him. He sees the characters from his past - his dad and mum, the `cheap tart' Yvonne - appear before him as if it were yesterday again. We see the adult Spider looking in through the kitchen window of his boyhood home, watching his mum and dad and himself as a child having dinner. He eavesdrops on their conversations, mumbling lines from each character before they speak them. Each place that he goes caused more doors of his memory to open - he tries desperately to put the pieces together, and it's a painful struggle, very difficult to watch.

I can't stress enough how mesmerizing Ralph Fiennes is in this role - watching him, it's very easy to completely forget that it's an actor playing a part. Miranda Richardson is stunning in multiple roles - she plays Spider's mum, as well as the tart Yvonne...and she makes an appearance, briefly, as a third character (watch for it!). Lynn Redgrave has long been admired as a masterful actor - she brings the perfect combination of authority and coldness to her portrayal of Mrs Wilkinson, with a dash of cruelty and seductiveness thrown in. The subtleties she invokes are amazing. Gabriel Byrne does a very nice job indeed in a difficult role as Spider's dad - he has to portray his character both as he is and as he is imagined and remembered, and he does it with a naturalness that betrays the daunting task. Bradley Hall, the young actor who portrays Spider as a child, combines loneliness, vulnerability, desperation, fear and an aching need to understand what is going on in his family and his world - amazing work from one so young. John Neville is very effective as Spider's fellow halfway house dweller Terrence - `...we're not to be trusted, are we, Terrence...?' muses Mrs Wilkinson when she introduces the two. Terrence speaks a line that is very evocative of the isolation and pain felt by victims of schizophrenia, when he tells Spider, `...it's a loud world.'

I can't say enough about this incredible film - but I know I don't want to inadvertently give too much away, and I know I'm approaching my word-count limit. Pass it by at your peril - the DVD is beautifully rendered, with great bonus material - but should you ever get the chance, see this one on the big screen. It wasn't a box-office smash - and the public once again has ignored a masterpiece.

This is a disturbing film because its depiction of madness conveys an astonishing realism. Director, David Cronenberg, (Crash, Naked Lunch and The Fly) has managed to merge the leading character's disquieting mind with the audience. This is no small task considering the subject matter, and the fact that the protagonist is suffering from intense delusions concerning his past. We see through the eyes of Spider - the memories of his childhood, though as the tale unfolds, we begin to distrust his memories and see that they blend with fantasy. The film is a study on the mechanics of repression, and the psychological notion that memory cannot be trusted.

Spider (Ralph Fiennes) arrives at a halfway house somewhere in London. Mrs Wilkinson, (Lynne Redgrave) meets him at the door. This woman is everything you would expect from a proprietor of a house for newly released mental patients. It is here that we begin to learn of Spider's childhood: his relationship with his mother and father, which is the key to the cause of his present condition. Miranda Richardson plays three different roles in the film - Spider's mother, the prostitute and later, the proprietor of the halfway house. The mother and the prostitute are entirely different, but the proprietor is an impressive blending of all three. As we learn more about Spider's childhood, we really don't know what to make of his father (Gabriel Burne)...is he an abusive man, an adulterer and drunk or merely a man doing his best to cope with an unhappy marriage? Gabriel Burne admitted that this was one of the hardest roles he's had to do, because he had to play the character on a fine line, so as not to give anything away to the audience. When you see the end of the film, you'll agree that he succeeded in his intended performance.

David Cronenberg is well known for his fascination with the darker more disturbing aspect of the human mind. He's one of those unique directors that will capture the right atmosphere for the subject under study; in this case, madness is realistically represented and seems to exude that strange feeling of the uncanny. A good example is the scene where Spider lays in the bathtub in the foetus position, blankly gazing into space. This is a disturbing image of a lost soul in the throes of passive insanity.

I would not say that this picture is an enjoyable one, but it is certainly an intriguing journey into a troubled mind, attempting to come to terms with his past and the truth.

I'm not going to say I thought the film was brilliant, but it was interesting, and a very realistic depiction of madness. Feinnes did his usual amazing job in a very difficult role, Miranda Richardson shifted back and forth nicely from the solidly middle-class good mother to the reptillian whore-mother. Gabriel Byrne wasn't given much to do, and the boy who played Dennis did quite well.

However, I'm seeing reviews from people who simply didn't get this film at all, and I feared that might be the case though I don't think Cronenberg could've been more unambiguous about the identity of the women. There was no prostitute, there was only his mother and his father. The issues Dennis had with his mother's sexuality was the basis of of his madness. When he sees his father murder his mother and replace her with a prostitute, it's in his imagination. His parents' sex life effectively kills the good, non-sexual mother and replaces her with the bad whore-mother. Both sides of the mother, whore and good mother, were played by Miranda Richardson. And if that wasn't clear enough, by the end, Dennis is seeing the manager of the halfway house he's in with as this same whore-mother, also played by Miranda Richardson.

I understand that sometimes plots can throw people for a loop, but this sort of casting is, as I indicated, pretty unambiguous and that people aren't catching it suggests that they're not paying adequate attention to the film. Sometimes you have to put a little work into your viewing.

This movie builds suspense unlike few films. David Cronenberg is the master of unsettling thought provoking cinema, and this movie is a great new chapter in his career. Ralph Fiennes is an underappreciated actor with powerful dramatic skills, which are on full display here. These are the kind of roles in which truly talented actors shine in. The sparse dialouge requires Fiennes to portray his character without spitting out thoughts and feelings in words but rather in expression and body language, which in my opinion is far more difficult. Tom Hanks in Cast Away, Bill Murray in Lost in Translation are good examples of less is more such as this. I really enjoyed the supporting cast as well, Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Bryne are both excellent. Cronenberg is a genius surrounded by hacks when compared to the majority of living film directors, a brilliant and original maverick of the cinema. He is a true class act who has never compromised his art to be commercial and for that I applaud him.

Ron Howard's gentle & ultimately manipulative A BEAUTIFUL MIND had Hollywood & award ceremonies in raptures over his sugar coated look at mental illness. My advice? Skip it!!! Buy this instead. Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne & David Cronenberg deliver an up-close & at times, claustrophobic study of mental illness that is as close to perfection as a film with subject matter such as this can get. Nothing can prepare you for the final twist. Cronenberg spins the best web of his career with this masterful journey. Perfect! Just Perfect!!

From the opening frames of the credits, the church hymn, the Rorschach prints and the measured and precise pacing of them, we are entering a world of a severely disengaged man, who has had the spectre of schizophrenia as his constant companion, both in his waking and sleeping hours. The mumblings and rememberances of Dennis Clegg (Ralph Fiennes) combine to make for a journey down Memory Lane that is unlike any that rational, thinking people would care to take, let alone inhabit and from which there is very little chance of escape.

Fiennes spends the length of the film attempting to piece together bits and pieces of times past in his childhood, that may or may not have happened. The prize in this herculanean effort is not so much to discover the unseemly goings on of his father, but rather seeking a discourse into the inner workings of Clegg's mind and what it potentially holds and abandons at will.

Dennis Clegg has been released into the care of a matron (Lynn Redgrave) in a halfway house in a decaying, dying section of London, that has become the home, heart and soul for others of his ilk; the mentally disabled, discharged from the asylum, but not quite ready for habitation in the outside world at large. His lodgings represent the underbelly of a netherworld that caters to no one and where rehabilitation is a foreign word, absent from the vocabulary of those in charge.

Redgrave plays Mrs. Wilkinson, the spawn of Nurse Ratchet, with a demeanor as cold as the grave and as uncaring as any you are likely to see. Hers is a job, nothing more, nothing less; an automaton in the flesh. John Neville (teamed again with Fiennes. He was in Sunshine.) as Terrance, another resident of the house, has etched a character who sums up the medicated and serene patient seen as a non-threat to the establishment, but who attempts to warn Clegg of the queenly attitudes of Wilkinson and the powers she holds. This British character actor's small part in this film is a gem deserving of recognition.

Every movement that Clegg makes is guaranteed to bear witness to a recollection and to focus on events as perceived in his ever crumbling mind. Once his journey into neverland begins, we are brought along ever so slowly so that we capture these moments precisely and without seeing error. We learn that his mother, as played by Miranda Richardson, had nicknamed him Spider and it is through his newly gained name that his mannerisms take on the skin of the animal. Each newly remembered facet of his world is honed on the impressions of a spider web -- the string, broken
glass, the jigsaw puzzle, the string game he plays at the kitchen table -- spiraling and spinning the child and the man into its deadly web and further from reality as we know it.

Richardson portrays three multi-faceted characters in this film, three spirits, and with each one she sheds a skin and grows another, entirely different in bearing and manner. It is a tour de force performance. Gabriel Bryne as Bill Clegg is dark and daunting, shown as a family man bored and tired with the mundance existance that is his life. Or is he?

The performance of Bradley Hall as the young Spider is eerie and precisely on the money. You can feel a kindred spirit between his child Spider and the adult that he is to become in Ralph Fiennes.

The best has been saved for last and that honour belongs to Ralph Fiennes. His Spider is haunted and haunting, gritty and realistic. This crumbling vestige of a man has been finely honed and not once did I think that I was watching a performance but rather as true a representation of a schizophrenic as one is able to command. It is not a glamour role or a safe role, not a trace of pretty boy about it and thank god, none attempting to project itself from the proceedings! Fiennes, who is known for the research he puts into his roles, has scored all aces with this one.

Another added plus is that Hollywood has not managed to ruin a good thing -- a film that truly makes one THINK about what they have just seen. I cannot help but put another role as a schizophrenic into play -- that of Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. When you see these two films and attempt to add the similarities, about the only one that comes to mind IS the fact that schizophrenics are being represented and nothing more. Fiennes has left, for all intents and purposes, Crowe's portrayal in the dust, and if Hollywood has any guts come Oscar nomination time, they will credit a true acting triumph, rather than the orchestrated ones that usually win because of huge studio mounted pushes. Spider is the little film that could, did and should.

Spider is not an easy film to watch, but then seeing madness never is. There are those who will be turned off by it, or perhaps momentarily subjected to moments of quiet. Then again, others will cheer a peformance that is worthy of the accolade, a job very well done indeed! BRAVO! Cronenberg, as director, has launched a film that is as subdued and unassuming as a breath of air as it brushes past a cheek. The hollow streets, the absence of crowds and the delicate renderings of cast and crew alike, have conveyed a dream or as some would insist, a nightmare and
forsaken a Hollywood beginning, middle and end.

I sincerely hope that Spider is not lost in the shuffle of films that will spill forth over the course of the spring, or be considered as "too arthouse" to warrant consideration by other than those who know absolute talent when it is put in front of them. This film is not "entertainment" per se, and that would be the wrong word to use. Rather, eye opening and thought provoking would be a more apt description. It's a step on the edge of the abyss and the eventual and catastrophic conclusion that must become Spider's reality.

It is minimalist and daring and I can't say strongly enough how much this ensemble cast has brought forth for our inspection. See this film and be amazed at it in all its consummate glory!

Though this movie is rated R, as a fact is a movie suitable for all, I mean this is a David Cronenberg movie and a lot of people are scared simply by knowing he is directing; though Cronenberg continues to explore the dangers inside of the human mind, Spider is the more sober film ever shot by the canadian filmmaker. The film has a great cast: Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne aren't big stars but are great actors indeed. It's really strange that this movie - presented at Cannes last year - didn't gathered awards: directing, cinematography, screenplay, acting are all first class here: everything contributes creating the best cinematic represenation of schizofrenia ever.
The DVD is very good. The video track makes justice to the moving image while the audio track - though this isn't a film you can expect a lot of surround work - offers clear dialogues and it's involving with the essential Howard Shore music. The extras are interesting, especially the commentary by Cronenberg. Overall film and DVD worth buying, especially if you aren't a Cronenberg fan this could be the right point to start exploring the great work of this artist.

This is not the sort of movie I would normally see but I'm glad I did otherwise I would have missed Ralph Fiennes remarkable performance as a very disturbed personality, Spider Cleg..

It is watching Fiennes that really made the movie come alive for me. He presents the schizophrenic character so perfectly, facial expressions, body language, mannerisms, the entire persona is so believable even though he says very little direct dialogue. His first appearance, soon after the start, sets the scene, a train arrives at a London terminal, the passengers stream past the camera until the platform is empty and then Spider steps down from the carriage, immediately you sense that here is a person who is different and you're hooked. I would suggest that this movie is recommended viewing for every acting/drama class in the country.

Director Cronenberg has turned out a fascinating movie with lots of little subtleties that could easily be missed on the first viewing.

After all these years, Cronenberg is still an artist. He's made another low-budget, sure-to-bomb-at-the-box-office movie that he just HAD to make. His career suffers a little, but the audience benefits.

With a great script (by the author of the novel) and Ralph Fiennes already attached to it, Cronenberg couldn't say no. Fiennes is amazing, playing what turns out to be a pantomime role --- he hardly speaks. He conveys everything through gestures, mumbling, and his eyes. The rest of the cast is just as good.

The pace might put you off, but you can't really judge this film until you've seen it twice. It's subtle movie. The final moments bring it all together in a way that makes the second viewing much more satisfying.

The Cronenberg audio track is also very good. The director explains the movie as it goes along. This would be a bad idea if the story was simple, but it isn't. He explains, for example, that he didn't want this to be a clinical examination of schizophrenia, so he didn't bother to get every detail of that particular mental disorder correct. Once you take the movie for what it is --- concise, light on special effects, and impressionistic --- it turns into a very rewarding experience.

Even the length is impressive. Rather than take the bloated approach of a Oscar-ready Hollywood "mentally ill guy" movie, he sticks to his horror-film roots and keeps it down to an hour and a half.

The only real weakness is the lack of small touches, the memorable moments that turn a good movie into a great one. The "quickie in the tunnel," for example, is unforgettable. Cronenberg should have added more of these small shocks and simple visual effects to keep the audience on their toes.