Enemy - a tale about the city as much as the characters? [REVIEW] (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by Legendsofanus@lemmy.world to c/movies@lemmy.world

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"Chaos is order yet undeciphered."

Enemy was exhilarating, I was so tensed during the whole movie about what was going on and couldn't look away. Even if you set aside the doppelganger plot of the movie, the world and details in it that Denis Villeneuve created are beautifully exhausting and suffocating. I was taking screenshots and zooming in to a scene of a character turning off lights because I wanted to see if the design of the switches mean the setting is a dystopian one, that's what this movie was doing to me lol

It has this dystopain kafka-esque feeling to it that you can't stop what's happening and you don't know what's happening. The city in Enemy has this perpetual yellow haze over it that seems to wash over on everything and affect the characters as well as what's going on in their minds. The two characters often have vivid dreams of the city scape with a giant deformed spider walking above it and it seems to represent to me, this influence of ugliness and stagnant-ness. It's like a cloud of yellow exhausting cancer over everything which detoriates itself into people's subconciousness and makes them do ugly things.

Regardless of whether or not you understand it or not or whether there is something to understand about it, Enemy is a suffocating, beautifully acted and well-directed movie that evokes feelings in me that movies rarely do.

It's a very focused and well constructed movie, like details I mentioned feel intentional, like they mean something or maybe they don't and it's just a stylistic choice.

I loved it, 7.5/10

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Legendsofanus@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

I understand the sentiment. I have lot of thoughts about whether this movie is just too much style and little substance, like most of the story beats that drive the plot forward happen randomly but you must have seen how atmospheric it is, the movie has a lot of spider imagery even without showing them on screen

[-] YoFrodo@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I guess, for me, its an issue of expectations.

spoiler

The movie didnt seem to be avant garde until that very end where they hit you with (I guess) an entirely metaphorical ending scene. Nowhere else was the film as symbolic or whatever, so me as the viewer is expecting an actual ending scene about the whole life-swapping/pregnant wife situation but instead I get hit with a giant tarantula and have to basically go back to re-examine the entirety of the film for its spider symbolism.

If that intent was built up more throughout the film I may have been primed more for it and could interpret it more openly, but it felt like a total shift in context that essentially made me feel like I wasted all that time.

I put this up there with endings like 'it was all a dream after all'.

[-] Legendsofanus@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

I did get a "it was all a dream" feeling out of this so ig you're not wrong. The giant spider was a step in the right direction but we could have used more surrealist images

this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024

13 points (100.0% liked)

Movies

7400 readers

249 users here now

Welcome to Movies, a community for discussing movies, film news, box office, and more! We want this to be a place for members to feel safe to discuss and share everything they love about movies and movie related things. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow!

Related Communities:

!books@lemmy.world - Discussing books and book-related things.

!comicbooks@lemmy.world - A place to discuss comic books of all types.

!marvelstudios@lemmy.world - LW's home for all things MCU.

While posting and commenting in this community, you must abide by the Lemmy.World Terms of Service: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
Shitposts and memes are allowed until they prove to be a problem.

Regarding spoilers; Please put "(Spoilers)" in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers, as we do not currently have a spoiler tag available. If your post contains an image that could be considered a spoiler, please mark the thread as NSFW so the image gets blurred. As far as how long to wait until the post is no longer a spoiler, please just use your best judgement. Everyone has a different idea on this, so we don't want to make any hard limits.

Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread. Most of the Lemmy clients don't support this but we want to get into the habit as clients will be supporting in the future.

Failure to follow these guidelines will result in your post/comment being removed and/or more severe actions. All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. We ask that the users report any comment or post that violates the rules, and to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

JonsJava@lemmy.world