Customer Reviews

Spider

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Written by Patrick McGrath, based on the novel of the same name by Patrick McGrath; directed by David Cronenberg; starring Ralph Fiennes ("Spider" Cleg), Miranda Richardson (Mrs. Cleg/Yvonne/Mrs. Wilkinson), Gabriel Byrne (Bill Cleg), Lynn Redgrave (Mrs. Wilkinson) and John Neville (Terrence) (2002): David Cronenberg, bless his soul, likes to go places other filmmakers don't, won't, or can't. In the case of Spider, he heads back into the territory of Dead Ringers, giving us a horror story in which there is no catharsis, no growth, and no hope. It's an astonishingly bleak film.

Ralph Fiennes, complete with hair that was apparently an homage to Samuel Beckett (the playwright, not the Quantum Leaper), plays the titular schizophrenic without the bells and whistles someone like, say, Robert DeNiro might have demanded. There's no showiness, no look-at-me-acting scene of yelling or imploring the audience for empathy. Spider is almost completely mute, and when he does talk, he mumbles incoherently.

Spider's been released from a mental asylum into a halfway house when the movie begins, in a rundown, vaguely 1980's-looking urban England. His nickname comes from a tendency he's had since childhood to weave elaborate webs out of string and pieces of rope. He's a pattern maker. But he's also schizophrenic. The patterns he makes, the viewer needs to remember, may look sound, but they're inherently flawed.

The movie takes us through Spider's reminscences of his childhood, of what seems to be an ogre-ish and unfaithful father and a saint of a mother. How reliable are Spider's memories? Therein lies the mystery of the movie, inevitable as death. This isn't a movie to enjoy in a normal way -- it's horrifying, and there's no attempt to make Spider warm and cuddly, a Hollywood madman. He's very sick. And schizophrenia doesn't spring from some easily understandable childhood trauma: it's a disease, a cancer of the mind.

I was exhausted by the end of the movie, and that was from watching it in 20-minute increments over several days. But it was a good exhaustedness. But this isn't Rain Man or A Beautiful Mind. There are no easy life lessons here, no Nobel Prize, no well-meaning brother who learns valuable things from someone with cognitive difficulties, though there are, even for Spider, flashes of clarity amidst the crushing horror. And the clarity just makes the horror worse.

This is an incredibly tedious film from the usually excellent David Cronenberg. It takes a huge amount of patience to sit through the seemingly interminable 93 minutes. That said though I will give it one more go just to make sure before I consign this disc to the trash.

Patrick McGrath is a fine writer of bizarre, beyond the edge stories and finally someone has found the courage to tackle one of his basically 'inner mind' stories. SPIDER dates back to 1991, before McGrath wrote ASYLUM, DR HAGGARD'S DISEASE, BUTCHER BOY, MARTHA PEAKE etc and that story showed all the promise of the author's ability to find entry into the dark interstices of the ill mind, a line of detail he continues to follow and expand.

David Cronenberg, that master of the macabre, was the absolute right director to transpose this map (read 'web') of the schizophrenic mind to film. His cast is impeccably correct: Ralp Fiennes manages to create a three dimensional character out of the title role, while Miranda Richardson, Lynn Redgrave, and Gabriel Byrne and all the bit players feel fully in character at all times. The grisly story is beautifully photogrpahed and meticulously scored (a very finely orchestrated score by Howard Shore) and if at times the film feels longer than the usual movie, realize that this is the way a disturbed and immobile brain deals with the outside world.

For the story read the other reviews. For your edification, buy or rent this amazingly disturbing film and keep your mind open.......

After sitting on my self for well over a couple of months I decided to give this movie a try. My expectations weren't very high and I expected something on par with Willard.
From the very beginning I was captivated with Ralph Fiennes' performance and he really communicated the feelings of being totally drawn in on himself.
The unfolding of the story was depicted in such a way that we experience the confusion and emotional turmoil of the main character.
While I've never been a big fan of Freud, the movie does make use of Freud's Oedipal Complex theory and models Spider's entire relationship with his parents is based on it. Spider's idealization of his mother made him incapable of seeing her negative qualities. While his mother did make efforts to be a "good mum" she also shared her husbands wrecklessness and drinking problem. In order to displace his mothers undeniable neglect he displaces her, in his mind, with a bar fly who flashes her breast at him at the local pub.
In reality Spider's father isn't too far removed from his mother. A man who makes efforts to be a good father but doesn't do much to eliminate his vices, however, Spider staying true to Oedipal victimhood takes a hostile view of his father and ignores the good qualities and demonizes his father.
While it is clear that Spider's memories are often twisted and others are mere imagination that he uses to make sense of what's going on around him, we can still say with relative certainty that his parents were too selfish in their drinking and partying to have any idea what their actions were having on their son.
The truly sad part of the movie is that Spider is never willing to look the truth straight in the face and the only time he admits to himself that the drunken woman really was his mother is when he kills her. So he selectively chooses to see the truth only when he is at fault. This partial look at the reality of his life is what keeps him locked in his past.

A truly sad movie and one I will not soon forget.

Ralph Fiennes' performance as 'Spider' is captivating. He is well supported by the rest of the cast: Gabriel Byrne ('In treatment'), Miranda Richardson ('Rita Skeeter' of 'Harry Potter' films), Lynn Redgrave, and John Neville (title role in 'The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen', and former artistic director of the Stratford Festival).

This is a quietly intense film examining the perceptions of an apparently schizophrenic man as he is released from an asylum into a half-way home located near his childhood neighbourhood in London. Something happened in his childhood, and he struggles to make sense of his memories. But his memories may be real or delusions, past or present.

I'm no expert, but the quality of the DVD transfer seems to be just fine on my LCD TV.

Some find this film dull, and a few find it depressing. But after multiple viewings I find it to be neither. In my opinion this is a unique film with a virtuoso acting performance by a masterful set of actors under the excellent direction by David Cronenberg.

Lots of extras on the disk for those interested in interviews with the cast and director.

This movie, by Canadian director David Cronenberg, fulfills the earlier promise of his tragicomic reprise, The Fly. Get the connection? I just wish Rod Serling ("Hollywood's a great place to live - if you're a grapefruit") were alive to appeciate "Spider" - he would have loved it, as would the great French crime writer Georges Simenon, who loved to explore the psyche behind the crime.

This is a thinking person's story, superbly filmed in chameleonic tones of gray, with a pace that makes a laughing stock of the entire Hollywood production culture, and with an absolutely dedicated cast. I needed to watch it twice just to begin to appreciate Cronenberg's "spin" on the story. You can get penicillin from spiders' webs, and from this brilliant movie you can unexpectedly find a cure for some of your darkest thoughts.

If Samuel Beckett himself had written and directed this film, I would not have been surprised. I would qualify that statement by saying that Beckett probably would not have considered it one of his best.

While the film is undeniably powerful, and Fiennes' performance deserves an Oscar, there is a certain malaise (perhaps deliberate) about it which reveals a certain laziness in direction. "Spider" the novel is as distant from "Spider" the film as "The Metamorphosis" is from "Kafka" starring Jeremy Irons.

Fiennes' character, Spider, is borderline insane. He has one foot in reality and one foot in his horrific memories of a sordid, miserable, neglected and misunderstood youth. The best parts of the film are the scenes in which Spider stands outside the scenes of his past, reciting verbatim the dialogue between his father, mother, and his repulsive mistress. The ugly reality of insanity is presented here with no romantic embellishment; Spider is deranged, and does not understand the motives behind his own actions. Awash in misery, the mood of each scene is more or less consistent: tragedy and confusion. The only parts which even approach humor consist of Spider's entrance to the madhouse.
We feel sympathy for Spider, but for practically no one else in the film (except at the end, which reveals the somewhat predictable truth behind the murder of his mother.) Cronenberg tried a little to hard to shove the viewer's face in every nasty form of human behavior: alcoholism, degenerate sexual encounters (between his father and his real or unreal mistress), domestic abuse, etc. The mood is almost TOO much Beckett.

Nonetheless, this is a film that deserves to be watched, if only for some scattered scenes and am ambiance of degeneration I have rarely seen in a film. Watch especially for the opening, with Spider stepping off a train. Not a masterpiece, but a worthy curiosity.

Spider is unlike most films you will see. A slow, deliberate pace, sets the tone, as we first get to learn the current circumstances of the newly released mental patient, Mr. Clegg. Later, we walk side by side with Clegg as he searches his own memories as to how he ended up in his current situation. Spider has an interesting take as to what these memories mean, and the methodology it uses allows us to see exactly what Clegg remembers, at the exact time he is remembering.

Very atmospheric, with the grey forgotten landscape of empty industrial buildings seeming to fit, all too well, the forgotten souls.

You must really pay attention, in order not to miss to much, and in the end, the movie is quite a moving experience. Perhaps the viewer will know even better how it is to be on the brink of sanity. Brilliantly done by Cronenberg.

Director David Cronenberg and lead actor Fiennes do a dead-on job of not only showing the viewer, but by sucking the viewer into the life of a schizophrenic.
This portrait of a schizophrenic is an expressionistic piece of art. Watching this, I couldn't help but be moved by the sheer emptiness, and frustration of Fienne's character as he recollects his past, and tries to come to terms with a murder commited in the family.
The acting is superb by Miranda Richardson, Fiennes, Gabriel Byrne, and the kid who played Fiennes' charchter as a boy. Those familiar with Cronenberg films will recognize this as one of his right away, as it is shot as only he can think of. The directing, the set, the camera angles, the minute details all add to this poignant world of layers, it leaves a feeling of helplessness..you will realize just how creepy this movie is in the following days, as it lingers on.
A certain must-see for all lovers of fine film.

'Spider' is a deftly drawn character study of a schizophrenic who relives his past when he returns to the area where he grew up. Like Christopher Walken in 'The Dead Zone' and Peter Weller in 'Naked Lunch', Ralph Fiennes lives inside his visions and memories. Cronenberg is careful to set us inside Spider's point of view, never overtly mentioning mental illness. The starkness of the set design and Spider's tattered wardrobe evoke the plays of Samuel Beckett more than anything else and indeed the bleakness of the story isn't far removed from Beckett's own dramatic outlook.

Cronenberg's movies always focus on different aspects of sexual psychology and in 'Spider' Ralph Fiennes's character suffers from jealousy of his father's role in the family. Spider's love for his mother eventually makes him see her in all women, his father's mistress, his landlady, even a pair of photos featuring a pair of topless models. As a consequence Miranda Richardson plays a number of roles within the film, ever present in most of the female characters. Cronenberg also intensifies Spider's isolation on screen by having him walk London streets that are almost totally empty of people and automobiles. Howard Shore once again provides an eerie and evocative soundtrack.

Unfortunately the main difference between 'Spider' and a Samuel Beckett play is the former's lack of humour. At the beginning of the film one of Ralph Fiennes boarding house companions, John Neville, welcomes the central character to his new abode and in the course of their initial companionship Neville is rewarded with some laugh-out-loud lines. We don't see much of him again after the first 30 minutes, which is a shame as it would have been wonderful to see more this charming character.