Spider (October 30, 2007)

Before this, the only David Cronenberg film I had seen was “A History of Violence,” which I loved for many reasons. The slow creepy slope of its plotline. Aragorn’s re-descent into the carnal being we all knew he was. The awesome shootout at the end. Ed Harris getting his brains blown out. But, I had avoided seeing any of his other movies. This was largely because while living in Canada I grew very resistant to and annoyed by the way Canadians champion their countrymen who succeed internationally and emphasize that they are, in fact, Canadian. Not American. Definitely not American. Now that I’m not in Canada I’m reading Alice Munro and watching David Cronenberg, and loving them both.

I don’t want to spoil Spider for anybody who wants to see it, because it was really fucking good. A big part of it being so good was that for about the first 2/3 of the movie I had no idea what was going on – what was fantasy, what was reality, what was flashback, what was some combination therein – and then it all clicked and was amazingly poignant and sad. This is not an easy feat for a film that essentially only has 5 characters.

It’s also one of the best depictions of schizophrenia I’ve seen on film. For sixteen months, I saw schizophrenics on a nearly daily basis while going to work at the lab, which was on the grounds of a big mental hospital in Montreal. On nice days, they would be shuffling and mumbling outside, occasionally interacting with people walking by. Asking for a cigarette. Asking what time it was. Asking if it was going to rain. Simple, sad. The violence in the movie is atypical of schizophrenics, but the confusion and sadness and loneliness and disconnect that is there, that you see when you interact with schizophrenics, was extremely well done. It’s not just crazy, it’s an inability to be a normal person, for whatever reasons, much as they may try.

It’s a very slow movie, also, so maybe that’s a Cronenberg thing. I’m not sure, I’d have to see more of his films, which I am most definitely planning on doing. It felt much longer than the hour and forty minutes that had allegedly passed when I turned my phone back on as I left the cinema.

I found it strangely satisfying at the end, despite there being no reason that it should be a satisfying movie at all. Its resolution worked, was consistent, and was not sentimental. With serious mental illness, most of the time the resolution is unfortunately not happy. Since mental illness is rarely shown in such a realistic light on film, I was glad that the resolution to the story was also realistic.