By Robert Scucci
| Revealed
Working as an workplace drone is the worst doable approach to spend your time, particularly in case your doppelganger is displaying up for work, operating circles round you, and tarnishing your good title. Not solely does Jesse Eisenberg’s doppelganger do all of this stuff in 2013’s The Doubleno one else at work appears to note that his main antagonist is his precise physique double. It’s a bleak reminder of how little your coworkers truly take note of issues like who they’ve been working with for the previous seven years, what they appear like, and what they do for a dwelling.
After excited about it for a minute, it’s not even that far-fetched of a state of affairs. Having to put on a shirt and tie, commute to a central workplace, and sit in a cubicle inside a windowless room, all whereas attending conferences that might have been an electronic mail, solely to be rewarded with a slice of room-temperature pizza left over from yesterday’s gross sales assembly, is greater than sufficient to suck the soul proper out of you and switch you right into a shell of a person who locks in with out soaking of their environment.
Whereas The Double is clearly an unrealistic story, what’s depicted right here doesn’t really feel that far faraway from what workplace tradition might simply devolve into over the following decade.
An Workplace That Makes Workplace Area Look Like A Seashore Paradise
Set largely in oppressively dank residence buildings, nook workplaces, and cubicles, The Double facilities on Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg), an workplace drone of the very best order who’s wandering aimlessly by life. Although everybody at the workplace works for a cold-hearted authority determine identified solely as The Colonel (James Fox), it’s by no means made completely clear what anybody truly does for a dwelling. It’s apparent they’re clerks for some wide-reaching, dystopian authorities company, however past that, your guess is nearly as good as mine.
This stage of impersonality in The Double feeds instantly into its central battle. Simon continuously forgets his ID badge and is rarely acknowledged by the safety guards or his coworkers. He has to signal a customer’s kind simply to go to work, as if he barely exists. Simon feels this identical form of invisibility in terms of his coworker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), who lives within the residence constructing throughout from him however doesn’t even know he’s there. He admires her from afar, typically amassing her torn-up artwork initiatives and saving them in a pocket book for himself.
It’s a lonely existence for Simon James, till he meets his doppelganger, James Simon (additionally Jesse Eisenberg), who seems out of nowhere and instantly begins working on the identical workplace.
James Simon is all the things Simon James shouldn’t be in The Doublewhich instantly creates numerous issues. Simon is shy, reserved, and missing confidence, content material to mix into the background and quietly transfer by life. James, alternatively, is charming, assertive, and immediately acknowledged as a standout worker, regardless of doing comparable work to Simon, who barely will get acknowledged by anybody. Slowly however certainly, James begins intruding on Simon’s life, ultimately incomes Hannah’s affection, a lot to Simon’s dismay. To make issues worse, no one on the workplace appears to note that Simon James and James Simon are an identical, calling Simon’s grip on actuality into query.
As Simon spirals, he will get to know James higher, and the 2 even swap locations every now and then in an try to dwell in one another’s sneakers. These exchanges often backfire, additional straining their already poisonous relationship and forcing Simon to query what it even means to be alive.
Sounds Like One other Film That Got here Out At The Similar Time
Based mostly on the 1846 novel of the identical title by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double shares an identical premise with 2013’s Enemystarring Jake Gyllenhaal. Whereas it is likely to be tempting to chalk this as much as parallel improvement, the coincidence is definitely stranger than that. Enemy is predicated on a very totally different novel from 2002, additionally titled The Doublewritten by José Saramago.
Each movies discover what occurs when two completely an identical males occupy the identical area, and the non-public fallout that follows when one’s likeness is utilized by another person with questionable intentions. Whereas they inform very totally different tales, they make for an attention-grabbing double function if you wish to see how two doppelganger narratives launched in the identical yr find yourself echoing one another in sudden methods, as in the event that they had been one another’s doppelgangers all alongside.
Surprisingly sufficient, each movies additionally exist inside liminal, brutalist environments, trapping their protagonists in fluorescently-lighted areas as their identities fracture and their private lives collapse whereas they fight to determine the place they belong on the planet.
As of this writing, The Double is streaming at no cost on Tubi. Enemywhich explores comparable themes and got here out the identical yr, is at present streaming on Max.