Enemy

Eine mentale Trance, die bei mir in der Vergangenheit nur Shutter Island, Femme Fatale und die besten Lynch-Filme ausgelöst haben. Überwältigend, eiskalt, visionär aus einer anderen Welt. Ein Schlag ins Herz. Danke, Herr Villeneuve. (30.03.2015)

I felt downright disappointed immediately after the screening. Unlike other films with unsatisfactory and unclear endings, Enemy woke in me a desire to know what is really hiding in the back. And the more I think back about it, the better I find it. In any case, it’s been long since a film messed with my head so much. (22.03.2014)

After I saw Sicario, I started believing that Denis Villeneuve was a genius among contemporary directors. So, when his movie Enemy, which received mixed reviews, was said to appear on TV, I didn’t hesitate a single moment. The fuckup is that when I was watching it for the first time, I totally dozed off and I had to catch the rest the next day. Enemy is no simple movie. And the first 30 minutes even more so. At first sight, nothing seems to be happening. After watching the final scene, however, you will feel as if everything happened in it because you won’t understand anything in the movie at all. Generally speaking, however, I think that this might be the worst movie with a deranged character, who on top of everything suffers from a split personality. Such stories rarely disappoint, but this one disappointed me quite a bit. (22.11.2015)

Nothing for xanotphobes, arachnophobes or an audience who would like to see something more than just a regular, run-of-the-mill Lynch movie. And my theory “what’s going on and what are these gigantic, totalitarian spiders and loss of identity"? Villeneuve just wanted to make Jon Peters happy. (29.03.2014)

An intimate, also very abstract movie told in hints. Villeneuve is doing what he does well and leads the viewer through an industrial city to a room where somebody is taking a bath in the dark. The door opens, he takes you inside and then disappears, leaving you there with all your questions and fears... time to die? Gyllenhaal 1 awesome, Gyllenhaal 2 a real swine. Chaos is order yet undeciphered. (25.04.2014)

A formally captivating film with brutal yellow camera filter, lots of industrial shots, a properly suffocating atmosphere and ambient music: psychedelic like crazy, or Villeneuve showing what his greatest asset is. I understood the content, but not the spider metaphors escaped me. The attempt to be the second Lynch seems unnecessary to me; I actually liked the more classical Prisoners more, where the director played similarly with the camera, the dark atmosphere, and amazingly stylized music, but it was more emotional, less of a mindfuck, and got under my skin very well. (15.07.2014)

Maybe there is a rational explanation, maybe there isn't, and maybe it doesn't matter either way. Mindfuck as hell, with excellent atmosphere, ultra-brutally sumptuous music, two beautiful women, and one rude spider who shrouds its fate in the story with a solidly strong thread of mystery and maybe even LSD. Gyllenhaal plays his part, but the biggest star is surely Villeneuve, who can compose his shots into an impressively compelling and symbolic tapestry like no other contemporary director. Enemy shows the power of film as a mental medium, capable of attacking the inner drives of our mostly passive minds, even at the cost of a weaker surface experience, which is also almost 100% in Lynch's Lost Highway, for example. (10.02.2017)

This is not a bad movie, it is interesting, it contains ideas that I like, but overall it just disappointed me. I think the movie would have told me more if I watched it again, but it evoked such feelings in me that I don't even want to watch it again. (27.05.2014)