Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a timid office clerk working in an ominous government organization. He is overlooked by his boss (Wallace Shawn) and colleagues, scorned by his mother, and ignored by Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), the lovely copy room girl he pines for. Undermined and undervalued everywhere he turns, it seems that his directionless life couldn’t get any worse—until the arrival of James Simon, his new co-worker. James is both Simon’s exact physical double and his opposite—confident, charismatic and seductive with women. To Simon’s horror, James slowly starts taking over his life.
British director Richard Ayoade returns with this darkly comic adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novella, featuring a tour de force dual performance from Jesse Eisenberg and co-starring Mia Wasikowska, alongside a strong ensemble cast including Wallace Shawn, Noah Taylor and Cathy Moriarty.
About the Production
Robin C Fox and Amina Dasmal operate their Alcove Entertainment on the basis that the creative talent leads the process – always. Their partnership with Harmony Korine as producers on 2009‘s Trash Humpers came about because, as Fox has it, “we hunted him down, and told him that whatever film he wanted to make, we’d do it!”
In 2007, Fox and Dasmal met Harmony’s brother, Avi Korine, who was working on a script adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella The Double. It struck the producers that this story of a solitary, troubled man whose life is upended by his over-confident alter-ego might appeal to another name on their creative wish-list – the British writer, director and performer Richard Ayoade, then yet to make his debut as a feature director.
“We’d been stalking Richard,” Fox ruefully recalls, “using every method we could think of to get him interested in something… but it was difficult, because he’s got taste! With this script, we thought at last we might have something on which he might not go so cold and quiet. We saw that it would suit his sensibility – both his sense of humor, and his understanding of the subject matter.”
They also saw, however, that the project would need time to evolve: “Richard wasn’t just going to come in and shoot someone else’s script.” But, says Dasmal, “if we feel excited, we go at the pace the talent needs. It’s about supporting the process, if you want the best. Of course there are days when you want to be shooting rather than waiting – but it’s incredibly fulfilling when you do read that next draft.” It helped that co-producers Film4 also “believed in Richard’s ability to deliver what was in his imagination”, Dasmal says. “They’re in a different category and rightly so. They were genuinely brilliant to work with.”
The result of letting Ayoade pursue his vision to the hilt is a film that resists obvious commercialism, and genre categorization. Fox points out that concern for the supposed demands of the market is reduced by “spending time around people who talk about market conditions, and seeing the abject failures that spawn from that!”
Dasmal notes that the producers use themselves as a guide: “This is a film we want to watch, so there’s an audience out there.” If the world in which The Double takes place is an unfamiliar one – claustrophobic; jittery; at once futuristic and redolent of a non-specific, dusty past – its emotions are accessible. “Loneliness and feeling undervalued are universal,” says Fox “as is romance”. “The love story is very beautiful,”
Dasmal adds. “Richard really surprised us with how he captured it.” Ayoade also impressed with his confidence in making his imagined environment into a real space. “He can go into a room,” says Fox, “and completely capture what he’s trying to create.”
Australian rising star Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre; Stoker; The Kids are All Right), who plays Hannah, was interested in Ayoade having seen his feature debut Submarine, which she describes as “brilliant”. Her interest in his second directorial outing was further stimulated by her friendship with Harmony Korine, who encouraged her to look out for his brother’s script when it came her way. Working with Ayoade was, she says, “really amazing. I haven’t had an experience that’s been this fulfilling in all areas. His direction is so clear, and he has a really sensitive way of dealing with actors and getting the best out of us.”
Moreover, Ayoade’s treatment of the material, and the clarity of his vision of the atmosphere of the piece, surprised her. “He’s elevated the material in a way that I didn’t really expect – he had a really unique way of seeing things,” she says. “It’s not completely specified what kind of world we live in here, and Richard’s brought such a strong vision to it.” The ambiguity of the story’s time and place, she feels, reflects a story that says different things to different people. “There are so many ways of seeing the idea of someone who’s exactly the same as you. It’s subjective – so everyone who sees the film will have a different view of what it means.”
That’s a sentiment echoed by Ayoade’s lead actor: Golden Globe, BAFTA and Academy Award nominee Jesse Eisenberg. Working on The Double was “the most interesting experience I’ve ever had”, says the star of Zombieland, The Social Network and Now You See Me. “The stuff Richard was doing was amazing. Every room, every scene was located in this ambiguous place and time. And he never wanted anything to be standard. Often, an actor comes with his own strange ideas, and the director takes them and shapes them into a normal movie scene. Richard takes actors’ strange inclinations… and pushes them farther. It’s an approach that brings rewards. Something about the way he works makes it impossible not to engage completely. That applied to all of the actors, even those who came in for one day.”
The actor’s own interest in working with Ayoade stemmed from his own uncharacteristic response to Submarine, which was sent to him as background before The Double had a completed script. “I don’t watch movies,” Eisenberg laughs, “so I just put it in to watch the first five minutes. Not only did I watch the whole thing – I watched it two times in a row. I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever seen. Every moment was full of emotional richness, and funny, and real – it was just unique. Then I met him and realized why. He has this unique sensibility, this aesthetic that is totally his own.”
The Double also presented Eisenberg with a challenge: that of playing two characters in one film. “I thought it was a really interesting acting opportunity,” he says. “Richard’s goal was not to create a traditional comic dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters, but something much more psychologically complicated.” Shy, dysfunctional, resentful Simon and his cocksure mirror image James are, says Eisenberg, “not so much different people as different manifestations of the same psyche. So for me it was about coming up with different gestures and voices to convey the visceral experience of each character. Once I figured out the emotional tone of Simon, James came more quickly.
Simon isn’t traditionally hapless and well-meaning, he’s emotionally fraught and inept; and James isn’t evil and malicious, he’s charming and capable. Simon’s emotional response is histrionic, so he lives in a dystopian world. James lives in the same world, but for him it’s utopian.”
The Double
Directed by: Richard Ayoade
Oyuncular: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor, Cathy Moriarty, Paddy Considine
Screenplay by: Richard Ayoade
Production Design by: David Crank
Cinematography by: Erik Wilson
Film Editing by: Chris Dickens, Nick Fenton
Costume Design by: Jacqueline Durran
Set Decoration by: Barbara Herman-Skelding
MPAA Rating: R for language.
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: May 9, 2014
Visits: 66
